THE END OF THE WORLD x 12

A sad and simple ballad, "The End of the World" has out-lived Skeeter Davis, the woman who in a never-ever-topped feat, brought the song to the Top 4 of all four major Billboard charts: country, pop, contemporary AND rhythm and blues. The song was played at Skeeter's funeral, which is appropriate for another reason. The song is as much about death as it is the end of a relationship. Skeeter felt that way; when she sang it, she called up the memory of a friend who had recently died in a car accident.

Under her pseudonym Sylvia Dee, lyricist Josephine Moore sketched the words after the death of her father. Gradually it smoothed itself out to a ballad that could be about death or just a break-up: "it ended when I lost your love." The survivor sings, "I wake up in the morning and I wonder...how everything's the same as it was. I can't understand — no I can't understand — how life goes on the way it does."
Life goes on, and many singers have taken their turn with this song that touches on that tragic situation when finality comes a little early, and leaves another behind...grateful to still be alive, but forever dealing with emptiness and heartache.
No other song proved a bigger hit for Skeeter Davis or for Sylvia Dee, who also wrote the lyrics for "Angel Lips, Angel Eyes," "Puschart Serenade," "Moonlight Swim," "Somebody Nobody Wants," and "Please Don't Talk to the Lifeguard." Nobody touches Skeeter's version, though the download has many worthy attempts and moving arrangements of this enduring, humble tune.
Skeeter died of cancer, September 19, 2004. "The End of the World" was played at a memorial service for her at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, a service attended by contemporaries including Vince Gill, Bobby Bare, Marty Stuart, Martina McBride, Connie Smith, Jan Howard, Jeannie Seely, Jean Shepherd, Del McCoury, Lorrie Morgan, Sammy Kershaw, Donnie Fritts, Dickey Lee, Jack Greene, Billy Walker, Bill Anderson, Jimmy Dickens, Charlie Louvin and George Hamilton IV. In June of 2005, one thousand fans came to an estate sale at her Kentucky home to buy her clothes, memorabilia, and other items she left behind.
Your download offers a dozen versions, (some ripped from rare vinyl just for your listening misery) including Claudine Longet, Leigh Nash, Sonia, Brenda Lee, Vonda Shepard, Agnetha Faltskog and The Carpenters. While the tune is more in keeping with a woman's emotion of woe, there are two male versions here...the teen angst of Peter Noone (Herman's Hermits) and a take from Jerry Lanning which...well...you hate to hear a grown man sing this song...

Oct 20: New Rapidshare Link END of the WAITING