Children of Children

Jim Adams is our host of Song Lyric Sunday, and he has posted a challenge suggested by Di of pensitivity101 to post a song about a family member. I was happy to be able to share this song by Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit.

I think this song is beautiful and poignant. In it, he addresses the burden he put on his teenage mother when he was born, and the cycle of children having children. The song begins with acoustic guitar but switches to electric guitar. I love this song. I hope you enjoy it.

I have included the lyric version that includes pictures of Jason Isbell and his family, and a live version wonderful guitar work.

Children of Children

Song by Jason Isbell ‧ 2015

Lyrics

Pictures of the farm before us
Old men in a gospel chorus Sephia
And saddle horses easy on the reins
Eighty-one a motor in your mama’s seventeen again
She’s squinting at the dusty wind
The anger of the plains

You and I were almost nothing
Pray to God that God was bluffing
seventeen ain’t old enough to reason with the pain
How could we expect to stay in love
When neither knew the meaning
Of the difference of sacred and profane

I was riding on my mother’s hip
She was shorter than the corn
All the years I took from her
Just by being born.

Didn’t mean to break the cycle
At seventeen I went by Michael
No one ever called by my own name anyway
Half full generations
Living all these expectations
Giving way to one late to have a baby on the way

You were riding on your mother’s hip
She was shorter than the corn
All the years you took from her
Just by being born

Source: LyricFind

Songwriters: Jason Isbell

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