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By the late 1950s and early ’60s, a wave of pop ‘teenage coffin songs’ swept the charts that snuffed the lives of various young lovers. Read all about it in songs like Endless Sleep, Teen Angel or Tell Laura I Love Her . The Everly Brothers’ Ebony Eyes and Roy Orbison’s Leah followed suit. Teen tragedy was big business for a few years. What’s happening in the songs on this collection? The answer is: Pretty powerful stuff and it’s all bad. These are mawkish, sentimental songs that celebrate sadness for its own sake. The victims are ordinary people. But these are not topical songs about train wrecks, earthquakes or mining disasters. The bad things that happen here sometimes come from within. Many of the subjects of these songs have fatal flaws and it’s just a matter of time until the damage is done. You don’t need a PhD in musicology to know that this 4 Red Foley PREVIEW