It is time for you to stop all of your sobbing.

I hear Meade playing the Garnet Mimms version of "Cry Baby," and after a conversation that I will discuss below, I ask him why he was playing that. He pointed to this comment by Kirby Olson in the "Nate Silver does the math" post:

I wonder if anybody else remembers the Garnett Mimms hit, Cry Cry Baby, that briefly lit the charts in about what 1964? Janis Joplin later covered it, but Garnett Mimms had such a wonderful range in his voice. Mimms is still alive, but I bet he can't still sing like he did then. What an athletic, operatic voice for lovely rock. We should turn it on for all our Democratic friends who have come home crying that they lost again.

People do need to grieve when they've lost, but an invitation to cry coming from the winners is more of a taunt. And I've spent so many nights, reading comments on this blog, and so many times, lefties have countered the complaints of righties by saying things like "whine and bitch, whine and bitch," "call the wahmbulance," and "waaaaaaahh." It's meant to rub it in, and it's not Mimmsy at all.

But what I said to Meade was I remember when that song — and I mean the Garnet Mimms version — was on the radio. It was 1963. I was 12. I listened to top 40 AM radio, and I liked the songs that felt like they were about teenagers. There was a brightness and a happiness to the songs that dominated the top 40. Even the songs about crying. The biggest song about crying in 1963 was "It's My Party." Lesley Gore is gloriously triumphant in her claim of the right to cry.

"Cry Baby" seemed to come from a dreary 1950s world of old people and their problems. Meade says he loved music like that. Maybe that look into the weighty, complicated lives of adults was enticing to some really young radio listeners, but I wanted it on a different station. Here, I said, here's my answer to that "Cry Baby":



I love the original Kinks version too, and you'd better believe I had all the early Kinks albums. Kinks, Kinda Kinks, and Kinks Kontroversy. I still love that kind of [kinda] thing. It still appeals to me more than the anguished bellyaching of soul music.

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Bonus: "Best Songs About Crying."