Murder Ballad Monday #1

Deep Red Bells by Neko Case

Hello Dear Readers,

Welcome to my new series- Murder Ballad Mondays- in which I’ll be deep diving into individual songs (if you have a request please let me know) and musicians, as well as exploring different aspects of the genre, every Monday!

As I noted in my intro to murder ballads, these narrative songs arose from the oral tradition of storytelling, making the genre, millennia old, the original true crime. As much as I write, read, watch, listen to and adore horror, I sometimes have issues with true crime, because of a tendency to glamorize the killers rather than honor the victims of violence. Traditional murder ballads themselves often fell into this trap, flattening the young women who were frequently at their centers, often based on real victims, into either vixens (she deserved it) or idealized virgins (making her death all the more tragic….as Edgar Allan Poe famously wrote in 1846, “The death of a beautiful woman is unquestionably the most poetical topic in the world”).

Neko Case goes in the opposite direction with her gorgeous and haunting ballad “Deep Red Bells,” off her 2002 album Blacklisted, a deeply felt lament for the murder victims that society often overlooks.

Where does this mean world cast its cold eye

Does your soul cast about like an old paper bag

Past empty lots and early graves?

All those like you who lost their way

Murdered on the interstate

While the red bells rang like thunder

Like many of us, Neko Case grew up haunted by violence against girls and women.

“Deep Red Bells” tells the story of the victims of the Green River Killer, who was active for nearly two decades in Washington State, where Neko Case grew up. Gary Ridgway was one of the most prolific serial killers in history; when he was arrested in 2001 (shortly before ‘Deep’ Red Bells came out) the police attributed at least 49 murders of vulnerable girls and women to him.

In an interview with Kyle Ryan for AV Club, Case noted that “on the news, they never talked about them like they were women. They just called them "prostitutes." Myself and other little girls in my neighborhood didn't make that distinction; we thought the Green River Killer was going to kill us. We'd go to school with steak knives in our pockets.”

In “Deep Red Bells,” Neko Case exorcises the demons of her past, paying painful tribute to Ridgway’s victims, those ghosts of the highways and forests of the Pacific Northwest.

True crime is especially popular among women, despite or because of the fact that women are often the victims it describes. Growing up, my friends and I would always remind each other to be careful and check in after a night out by saying “Don’t end up on Dateline!” Or as the creators of true crime podcast “My Favorite Murder,” Georgia Hardstark and Karen Kilgariff, like to sign off on their show, “Stay sexy and don’t get murdered!”

As Janet Beard writes in her Crime Reads essay, “Murder Ballads, the Original True Crime,” one similarity between murder ballads and contemporary true crime is that, “the stories about female victimhood were often sung by women for an audience of women. Historically, folklore has always been a way for women, as well as all poor and marginalized people, to share stories when they were unable to access more formal means of expression. Many reasons have been given for why women in particular are attracted to true crime, but surely one of them is the combination of comfort and terror that comes from facing the natural fear that comes from living in a world full of violence against women.”

Traditional ballads and fairy tales, as well as modern true crimes stories, often function(ed) as cautionary tales for women and girls, which can be used to uphold the patriarchal status quo. But these forms can also be empowering- just as horror is the genre that tells the truth about the terrors that plague women, reflecting a funhouse mirror version of our misogynistic world back at the viewer- murder ballads and true crime can give women and girls a sense of relief that our fears are not unfounded, that we are not, as some men still seem to think, just making it up.

The care Neko Case shows for the victims of the Green River Killer in “Deep Red Bells,” is what makes the song so haunting and poignant.

The red bells ring this tragic hour….

When speckled fawns graze ‘round your bones’

Who took the time to fold your clothes

The women and girls killed by Ridgway were not garbage to be thrown away in the trees by the side of the lonesome highway, they were real people with hopes and quirks and loved ones who are still haunted by their absence. “Deep Red Bells” boasts lyricism equal to any murder ballad, but it is Case’s tenderness that will really break your heart, and that makes the horror of this tragic and beautiful song cut even deeper.

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