"Cat's In The Cradle" in Clapton's Corner: The Speed of Bittersweetness - sr60/10=0.7745... sec predicts Harry Chapin's Happiness, *Tinged with Grief*
The song CAT’S IN THE CRADLE by the late performer--Harry Chapin is the category of Bittersweet, where memories and happiness and sadness occur at the same time.
This is a song about an especially intense love that did not work. Sounds like ‘Let It Grow’, by Eric Clapton, does it not? Except this song, voted The Most Sentimental Song About Men by the Robert Blythe Associative Organization of the Changing Man, is the ultimate father/son altruistic family love dilemma.
The lyrics are stark, harsh, and a slap in the face to live life while, well, when you are alive. But LIVE! Here’s what Harry is saying: as men and parents and providers of the family, most men do not have a chance to spend as much time with their sons as they would like---and when they do get such chance the two really don’t know what to say to each other, there are misunderstandings, broken memories and promises. Harry died young in a car crash, and Jim Croce died young in a plane crash, and if any two themes were more similar than Croce’s I Got A Name—a tribute to his father ‘after the fact’.
I do not know anyone who does not know the lyrics to this one by heart. The parent-child relationship has always been awkward. Are the issues regarding “my daddy never spent time with me” on the Dr. Phil show any different than Bible stories of Joseph being hated by his brothers and having his coat stolen and his disrobed body left in a pit to die?
The song symbolizes the ideals every generation has as they look to the parent and child relationship. Every generation "isn't going to make the mistakes of the previous,"
- yeah, right, okay.
Parents and children both feel from ourt own perspective: maybe we cannot do it today - therefore, let’s do it *tomorrow*. Harry Chapin’s everyday language “the car keys” “the usual way” here lies on top of a speed where the timing is simply that of the too long goodbye, the Trying To Keep From Crying In Public (and embarrassingly failing – the embarrassment being that you were trying not to cry – keep it together. Look at Clapton’s "Let It Grow" and "Tears In Heaven" Helen Reddy's "You And Me Against The World"at this speed of the sensitive ego: all tell the story of the life cycle of one father and son, and the times never come: father and son remain estranged or dead.
The song also includes an acoustic guitar vamp that modulates eerily from F major to Db major and quickly back, adding to the overall atmosphere of surreal bittersweet emotional expression.
The song spends a full within minute below in the category of Grace—such time of song containing lyrics about a new born child where the father was not home for the birth, but heck, there’s a lifetime ahead at that part in the story in the song. As you can see in the chart, however by beat 80, Harry has taken us into the land of sublime mixed emotional nostalgia, and spends much of the middle third of the song at the speed of Loneliness. By the end of the song, Harry has accepted that such relationships grow cold not on purpose, but simply because while we promise that we are going to spend more time with our parents, in the end we have to accept that they are taking care of business and ‘bring home the bacon’ for the next generation, continuing the cycle of introspective memory overload. The song is a live recording with a start to finish linear trend that shows 4-6% acceleration.
