My Top 20 Robbie Fulks Songs: Where I Fell (#15)

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Before I read everyone else's discussions in bed I'll finish off with my incredibly popular (yes, that is sarcasm, thanks for asking) series of 20 favorite songs by the alt-country great Robbie Fulks. #15: Where I Fell I frequently cheer great songwriting. You wanna hear some? Here you go. Fulks sings so quietly that the bitterness of the narrator screams through the lyrics. A guy stuck in a dead-end job ("I sling hash for what all spills off the interstate") in a small town with very little to offer except "a plaque to our war fallen" and a polluted river ("daddy used to catch his supper in this river, now you can't swim it, it smells like a 20-ton truck full of paint thinner sank down in it"). He really hates his life here, declaring, "I'd'a chose a place more fine, but the choice was never mine, so I dwell where I fell." This is how to write -- and perform (as I said, the quietness of the delivery really emphasizes how bitter the man taking the listener on the tour of this town really is) -- a superb song. Where I Fell Written by Robbie Fulks From Gone Away Backward, 2013 Robbie and Robbie (Gjersoe, on electric) performing the song about a year before its release: