"Paradise" and "Your Flag Decal Won't Get You Into Heaven Anymore", by John Prine

Even at 24, on his first album, John Prine twice imagined his own death – or at least wrote songs in which the narrator does. "Paradise" ends with a final return to the Green River in western Kentucky, one focus of the song's memories: "When I die, let my ashes float down the Green River." If this conservationist song criticizes the Peabody Coal Company, "Your Flag Decal Won't Get You Into Heaven Anymore" challenges easy patriotism – with the speaker dying in a car accident when his "window shield" gets "so filled with flags I couldn't see." In each case, imagining the narrator's death adds a final twist to the song's sociopolitical critique. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 11 April)