Continuing our series of songs about women who turn the tables on their abusers permanently, today’s murder ballad is country star Martina McBride’s “Independence Day“. Right and wrong lose their ordinary meanings for a child whose mother’s desperate act can only be understood by other survivors.
I’m aware of the video, the lyrics, the songwriter, and the singers. To the best of my recollection, the writer of the song (Ms Gretchen Peters) has basically stated that both the husband and the wife died in the fire. Martina McBride has, to the best of my recollection, that the wife didn’t die in the fire; presumably only the husband did. There are, as I can gather, four possibilities. You wrote, “Right and wrong lose their ordinary meanings for a child whose mother’s desperate act can only be understood by other survivors.” Presumably, “survivors” means survivors of marital abuse. I hadn’t read that before. Perhaps maybe it can *only* be understood by other survivors (of marital abuse). But this gets complicated.
Look. If it had really been a murder ballad, then the one who related the message (the daughter) — the one who sang, “I’m not sayin’ it’s right or it’s wrong” — would have not ruled out murder.
You understand me so far, right?
Regards, Todd