The End Of The World (1963) – Skeeter Davis (Sylvia Dee/Arthur Kent)

A piano revolves sullenly on an axis of heartbreak as Skeeter Davis plaintively ponders how life can be so insensitive to her misery, carrying on unabated when she no longer has anything to live for. A heavyhearted Davis sinks under the weight of her melodramatic millstone, happening upon a bridge that solicits consolation with classic country woe-is-me-ism, crying steel guitar tears that are dried with wipes of violin. Despite its exaggerated sense of calamity, the egocentric self-pity that pervades “The End of the World” is one that is globally understood, and at some point or another, universally suffered.

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