“Blood Red and Goin’ Down“
Tanya Tucker
Written by Curly Putman
Billboard
#1 (1 week)
September 29, 1973
“Blood Red and Goin’ Down” goes straight for the jugular and keeps tightening its death grip until its shockingly violent climax.
Of all of Tanya’s early Southern Gothic hits, this is the one that packs the most potent punch, not allowing a single ray of light to shine through. The visceral lyrical imagery is only heightened by Tucker’s haggard vocal, with the storyline justifying why a teenager would be able to sing such a harrowing tale, given the trauma she witnessed when she was only ten years old.
You feel the pain in her legs as she struggles to keep up with her raging father, her quiet hope that he’ll never find the right honky tonk, and, finally, her anxious fear transform into horrifying, traumatizing grief as she looks through the door and sees her slaughtered mother “soaking up the sawdust on the floor.”
It’s the unholy godmother of “Independence Day,” drawing its power from its refusal to let the listener look away as domestic violence ends the life of a parent and the childhood of the orphaned narrator in one fell swoop.
“Blood Red and Goin’ Down” gets an A.
Every No. 1 Single of the Seventies
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