"Are there any specific old songs that changed your life after you discovered them?
There were several Anglo-Celtic ballads that helped me understand that many circumstances of life have changed little over the centuries. There’s a brutal song that I heard when I was a teen-ager. The chorus was [singing] “Beat your drum slowly and play the pipes lowly, / Sound your death march as you bear me along. / Into my grave, throw a handful of roses, / Say there goes the bloomin’ girl to her last home.” I believe it was originally written about a soldier who had died of venereal disease. But the lyrics were changed to be about a young girl who had died tragically from a self-abortion."
Mike Sacks & Natalie Merchant
"Natalie Merchant’s Lost American Songs"
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-new-yorker-interview/natalie-merchants-lost-american-songs
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