The Phantom’s 50 Ways to Say My Girlfriend’s Dead

Train’s 50 Ways to Say Goodbye is a completely reminds me of two completely different songs. And for different reasons.

1. The Vandals’ My Girlfriend’s Dead

Conceptually, My Girlfriend’s Dead and 50 Ways to Say Goodbye are quite similar. One is a little more self-loathing? Maybe? Okay, no, not really.

Train: Placing blame on self, looking for sympathy. “It’s not you, it’s me”
Vandals: Embarrassed, matter-of-fact, avoiding the situation. “It’s a total lie but it’s easier on me / Than having to admit that she likes someone else”

Vandals lyrics:
“I say it’s leukemia or sometimes bulimia / Or a great big truck ran her over and chopped off her head”
“Please change the subject, I’m going to go / Jump off a building and join her in heaven”

Train lyrics:
“She went down in an airplane / Fried getting suntanned / Fell in a cement mixer full of quicksand”
“She met a shark under water / Fell and no one caught her”
“She was caught in a mudslide / Eaten by a lion / Got run over by a crappy purple Scion”
“She dried up in the desert / Drowned in a hot tub / Danced to death at an east side night club”

I guess this just goes to show that the “she died” excuse is still…alive?

2. Phantom of the Opera

There’s two occasions of roughly 1.2 or so lines of lyrics that have strikingly similar notes/sound.

Cast: “In sleep he sang to me/ In dreams he came”
Train: “My heart is paralyzed / My head was ov–”

Cast: “And do I dream again / For now I find”
Train: “You said it’s meant to be / That it’s not–”

 

Here are all three songs in a Spotify playlist:
Train/Phantom/Vandals

Am I crazy?!

4 thoughts on “The Phantom’s 50 Ways to Say My Girlfriend’s Dead

  1. I don’t know exactly why I am reading and responding this more than three years after the original post. But it came up and I decided to see if anyone else thought the same arbitrary thoughts on the matter. I definitely instantly thought of The Vandals when I heard the Train song. But if you actually know the vandals song to hear the similarity, you probably think Trains sucks, as I do. . So…..yeah.

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