For My Sunday Song #270, we are discussing the final song in the Will Hoge series, “Sweet Magdeline”. The song is off the his self-released 2001 album called ‘Carousel’. The album didn’t chart, the song wasn’t a single and yet it is still all fantastic. A deep cut that is better than anything on the album for me. I believe the song was written by Will Hoge and Dan Baird frontman of the Georgia Satellites. Dan signed on as Will’s lead guitarist for this album so that is a nice endorsement.

The song is about a young girl named Magdeline who wasn’t so sweet anymore. She fell hard and deep into to drinking and that grew in to drugs and some not so nice things she did to get those drugs. The drug references are throughout with phrases like “altered dreams” and “needle and silver spoon” and the bad things such as “she is going down” to her medicine man. I don’t know if she made it back to the sweet side, but it doesn’t sound promising.

Vocally, Will sings in a more rocking style, loud and gritty. On a couple lines Will does something he hasn’t done frequently and that is sing in a high falsetto voice which comes out of the right speaker and sounds like a turned down low radio before fully filling the speakers and back to rocking it out. Musically, it is a rocker with some great guitar work by Dan and the drums are slamming. This album is a far cry from where he is style wise now and if you like his rock side more than that country/southern rock side, then this one will be perfect for you.

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Give the song a listen and let me know what you think. I wanted to end with a rocker and something a little different than the rest of the songs so I hoped you liked it. Thanks for stopping by and next week we will find out the artist for our next 10 songs. Have a wonderful and Happy Sunday!

“Sweet Magdeline”

Here we sit again and tales begin to spin about the things that we’ve done and seen
Stories of wine glutton and glory and the occasional altered dreams
Appetites for memories grow as the sunshine begins to fade across the hill

It’s the same old chill lurking right there in the shade
Just as a child with bright eyes and a smile laughter was all she knew
Her mama was away and all papa did was pray so the wanderlust slowly grew
She spread her wings and a couple other things for the medicine man downtown
With his bottle of elixir he said that he could fix her and soon she was going down

[Chorus]
And everything begins to look the same
Feel the burn from the same old evil flame
We watched her fall from sweet and kind and I wish she could come back sweet magdeline

She was gone on a bad trip followed by a needle and a silver spoon
Mama sat and cried and papa told us lies said she’d be back real soon
Suddenly the seasons changed from the fall back to the spring
Answers live like peasants here when the questions reign as king

[Chorus]

[2nd verse]

[Chorus]

Written by Will Hoge and Dan Baird