7th
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Everybody’s out of Town: B.J. Thomas (1970)
Most of Bacharach’s tunes, it seems to me, were crafted specifically for films or as smash hits for a very specific artist (see: Dionne Warwick). This tune, however, is so odd, so not a hit song, and as far as I can tell, not written for a comedy about a frumpy scalawag wandering around in a post-apocalyptic urban wasteland. But what do I know? Further investigation reveals that this oompah-fueled tune hit #26 on the U.S. charts and rocketed to an astonishing #3 on the U.S. Adult Contemporary charts.
“Everybody’s out of Town” (like Josie Miles’s “Mad Mama’s Blues”) often acts as a barometer of my mood. Feeling good? This is a silly little romp regarding centuries of unfulfilled doomsday prophecies, our obstinate resiliency, and wonderfully hopeless optimism. Feeling not so good? This is a joke that’s not funny at all – depressing in its accurate portrayal of humans as wasteful, ignorant, largely stupid, and destructive beings who will express a desire for change only when it’s clearly too late. It’s at this point that the song’s light-hearted tone is frighteningly chilling in its wholly indifferent, shoulder-shrugging disregard for our (nearly) complete annihilation.
