Whenever I hear 'Seasons In The Sun', I picture a deserted valley with two opposing armies facing each other on the opposite mountaintops, gesticulating angrily with their banners flapping terribly in the wind. On one side are the people who's heart breaks every time they hear the song, while on the other are those who voted it number 5 in CNN's 'Worst Songs Of All Times' (it appears in many other such charts too, but this is as good example as any). That valley floor is deserted simply because there's not a lot of middle ground with this song - people either love it, or they don't."Seasons in the Sun by Terry Jacks!!! ARRRGH! It makes me want to kill!!! It is so schmaltzy and saccrine-like (sic) it sucks to lowest depths of Dante's Inferno". No, I didn't write that, one 'Texas Johnny' on Sodahead.com did, but it seems to sum up the views of one of those armies quite succinctly. And it's a view that's always annoyed me in the same way that people who dismiss Morrissey as being 'miserable' annoy me. It's a lazy opinion, one that's been filtered down through an accepted common consensus until it's become a 'fact'. Even people who've never heard a note from Morrissey 'know' that he's 'miserable and depressing, ain't he?' Well no, no he's not, and I don't think 'Seasons In The Sun' is schmaltzy and Saccharin-like either.
The tale of Jacques Brel's original lyric being watered down in translation by Rod McKuen is well told and I'm not going to rake over it again here. "Goodbye my friend it's hard to die, when all the birds are singing in the sky" - yes, it could be taken as sentimental clap trap with a juvenile rhyme when written down cold, but I think the vocal from Canada's Terry Jacks effectively short circuits such a simplistic assessment. Jacks of course had already had a top ten hit with 'Which Way You Goin' Billy?' as part of the folk/pop outfit The Poppy Family, but on 'Seasons In The Sun' he doesn't so much sing the lyrics as resignedly speak them. It's a curiously detached vocal given the subject matter and his delivery goes some way to explaining (I think) the hatred many feel toward this.
From the point of view of a man facing imminent death, there's no fear in his voice, no rage against the dying of the light. Jacks neither reproaches himself nor his God for his fate and there's no bitterness at the unfairness of it all or any pleas for a little more time to right the wrongs committed as 'the black sheep of the family'. There's no positives in the song at all, no hope for an eternity in the afterlife or fond remembrance of the life being left behind ("But the stars we could reach, were just starfish on the beach"). All there is is simple, unquestioning, matter of fact acceptance that his time is up and in that at least the lyric is more cold and empty than mawkish, something ably backed up by the descending notes that open each verse and have an in-built sense of doom of their own.
To my ears, 'Seasons In The Sun' is more scary than sickly. Sure, the imagery is there to tug the heartstrings at base level (and the contemporary rumour that Jacks was in fact dying in reality couldn't have hurt sales either), but there's nothing to be done with the song except listen to it. True, the chorus is eminently singable, but to sing along risks a feeling of guilt that you're no so much intruding on Jacks' grief, but making light of your own inevitable fate. 'Seasons In The Sun' provides a stark reminder that the ride will eventually come to an end, it's a musical version of the skull slanting through Holbein's portrait. In short, something that nobody particularly wants to be reminded of. No wonder so many are keen to write it off as schmaltzy and Saccharin-like.
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