Saturday Redneck - Garth Brooks

Jay has an interesting Country Music question about Garth Brooks' "Learning to Live Again". Divorcee or widower? Stop by and leave your thoughts in the comments.

There is interesting ambiguity in that song, but Garth does non-ambiguous pretty well, too. The Thunder Rolls captures the ambiguity in the first two verses, and destroys them in the not frequently heard third verse.

Three thirty in the morning,
Not a soul in sight,
The city's lookin' like a ghost town
On a moonless summer night.
Raindrops on the windshield,
There's a storm moving in.
He's headin' back from somewhere
That he never should have been.
And the thunder rolls.
And the thunder rolls.

Every light is burnin'
In a house across town.
She's pacin' by the telephone
In her faded flannel gown.
Askin' for a miracle,
Hopin' she's not right,
Prayin' it's the weather
That's kept him out all night.
And the thunder rolls.
And the thunder rolls.

(Chorus)
The thunder rolls
And the lightnin' strikes.
Another love grows cold
On a sleepless night,
As the storm blows on
Out of control
Deep in her heart
The thunder rolls.

She's waitin' by the window
When he pulls into the drive
She rushes out to hold him
Thankful he's alive
Through all the wind and rain
A strange new perfume blows
And the lightnin' flashes in her eyes
And he knows that she knows
And the thunder rolls
And the thunder rolls

*chorus*

The music video only does these verses, but the story line gives away the ending.

The Thunder Rolls (video)


The third verse (mine is from the Double Live album) also removes all doubt:

She runs back down the hallway
To the bedroom door
She reaches for the pistol
Kept in the dresser drawer
Tells the lady in the mirror
He won't do this again
Cause tonight will be the last time
She'll wonder where he's been

*chorus*

Interestingly, the video was banned from CMT (and TNN) when it came out in 1991. When the GAC network first started, it was the first to air the video, and it was the first video they aired.