See here for my introduction to this series.
This beautiful and poignant song is from Trace Adkins’s 1999 album More…. The songwriters are Tim Johnson and Mark D. Sanders. The peculiar artistry lies in its skillful periphrasis, its oblique suggestiveness: the singer’s beloved, Emma Lou, died young, but this is never actually said; up to the line I know she’s really gone at the end of the song we might think he left her behind in the traditional small Oklahoma town as he went off to lead his modern dream life in some big city. The richness of the traditional, ritualistic teenage love-encounter on the front porch, too, is wonderfully suggested (apart from the reference to the porch itself) merely with the red ribbon in her hair. This song really gets the generational nostalgia across that is implicit in front-porch songs. Emma Lou is a young American sweetheart who died young, but she is also a metaphor, and the song is an allegory, of a whole way of life that is passing from the scene. Notice the contrast between the “scattered” lives of the friends and Emma Lou’s “standing” on the porch in the memory of the singer.
She’s Still There
Darlin’ here’s a photograph of my old high school class
No I ain’t been back in quite a while
See there that’s Emma Lou, the one I gave my heart to
But there’s a story you can’t see behind her smile
It was gonna last forever, we were gonna see the world
So I guess you’re curious just what became of her, well
She’s still there in Oklahoma
She’s still seventeen
She’s livin’ with her Mama
Workin’ at the Dairy Queen
And she’s still standin’ on the front porch
With a red ribbon in her hair
The rest of us have scattered everywhere
But she’s still there
Everett went to Omaha, he majored in business law
Jill’s in Arkansas with husband number two
That’s her best friend Jolene, she joined up with the Marines
I hear Billy Green’s on a beach in Malibu
Yes and Emma would be happy if she could only see us now
‘Cause we’re livin’ out the lives that she only dreamed about
She’s still there in Oklahoma
She’s still seventeen
She’s livin’ with her Mama
Workin’ at the Dairy Queen
And she’s still standin’ on the front porch
With a red ribbon in her hair
The rest of us have scattered everywhere
But she’s still there
Lord, I know I’ll never see her
With silver in her hair
I know she’s really gone
But in my heart I’d swear
She’s still there in Oklahoma
She’s still seventeen
She’s livin’ with her Mama
Workin’ at the Dairy Queen
And she’s still standin’ on the front porch
With a red ribbon in her hair
The rest of us have scattered everywhere
But she’s still there
Emma’s still there
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