Ren Barlow’s “Poor Poor Pitiful Me“ runs a country version that gets that you can’t take romantic disaster at face value. The track is a revisit of Warren Zevon’s 1976 classic, famously popularized by Linda Ronstadt, but through a lens built on dark humor, self-deprecation, and grit, for Barlow’s tribute project and album “The Songbook of My Heart.”
The overblown feeling of romantic calamity is part of what makes this song so good. Rather than turning heartbreak into a simple tragedy, Barlow’s approach brings messy relationships and unfortunate encounters into the entertainment, with the narrator taking a tongue-in-cheek pity-party attitude.
The song’s world also redistributes power, subverting the classic heartbreak dynamics and making victimhood a little more resilient and self-aware. Barlow’s approach is to take the story as an opportunity to show survival, not surrender to romantic dysfunction. The country setting fits the mixture of storytelling and irony in the song. The tribute aspect ensures that the focus remains on the spirit of the original composition.
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