2910: The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald

The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald

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Title text: You know that asteroid that almost destroyed Earth in the 90s? Turns out the whole thing was secretly created by Michael Bay, who then PAID Bruce Willis and Ben Affleck to look heroic while blowing it up!

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Explanation

The comic features Cueball on a pier with a guitar, sharing a conspiracy theory about the origin of Gordon Lightfoot's song 'The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald'. This song, which was one of the most recognizable and successful of Lightfoot's career, recounts the fate of the SS Edmund Fitzgerald, a Great Lakes freighter which famously sank during a storm on Lake Superior, resulting in the deaths of the entire crew.

The song was written only a few months after the incident. In Cueball's version, it was Lightfoot himself who engineered the wreck, in order to provide material for lyrics to fit a tune he'd already composed. Cueball then goes on to suggest that a "young" director James Cameron engineered the much greater maritime disaster, the 1912 sinking of the RMS Titanic, so he could create a film about it 85 years later (when Cameron was 42 years old).

This theme is carried further in the title text, which suggests that director Michael Bay created an actual asteroid in the 1990s and directed it toward the Earth, in order to provide material for his film Armageddon. However, there was no such asteroid: unlike the other examples, this film was not based on real events.

The first, third, and fourth lines of Cueball's song are identical to the 9th, 11th, and 12th lines of Lightfoot's. Cueball's second line, "It was due to set sail for Cleveland" does not match Lightfoot's 10th, "Coming back from some mill in Wisconsin", but is closer to Lightfoot's 14th line, "When they left fully loaded for Cleveland". It is possible that Randall made this change in order to tighten the otherwise fairly loose rhyming scheme of the song. After Cueball's first four lines, his song departs significantly from Lightfoot's.

In real life, the cause of the ship's sinking remains unknown, but it's speculated that the ship's hull broke up in the rough waters of a storm. Lightfoot, who wasn't involved with the ship at all, [1] devoted considerable time, effort and money to the families of the disaster's victims. In addition, while the comic presents Lightfoot as desperate for a career-making song, he was already internationally famous, with multiple hits, when the wreck occurred.

Only a day after the comic was released (March 23rd, 2024) a YouTuber recorded Randall's version of the song.

Transcript

[Cueball is holding a guitar and singing on a pier. Two pairs of connected eighth notes are on the left and right of Cueball, as well as a detached eighth note on his right. Three seagulls fly in the background on his left. Four pillars of the pier and the water below it are also shown. Throughout the comic, alternate pairs of lines of the song are indented as indicated below.]

Cueball:

The ship was the pride

of the American side

It was due to set

sail for Cleveland

As the big freighters go,

it was bigger than most

With a crew and good

captain well seasoned

[Zoom on Cueball facing to his right, still holding the guitar, without the pier, water, and seagulls. A pair of connected eighth notes to his right, a half note and a detached eighth note to his left.]

Cueball:

But taking a walk on

the shore by the dock

Was a songwriter named

Gordon Lightfoot

He was humming a tune

but it didn't have words

For it's challenging

trying to write good

[Close-up on Cueball's face. A quarter note and a pair of connected eighth notes to his right, a detached eighth note and a quarter note to his left.]

Cueball:

Poor Gordon sought glory

but needed a story

His career in folk

music imperiled

He mulled over this as

he watched them do work

On the hull of the

Edmund Fitzgerald

[Zoom back to second panel. Cueball is now facing to his left. A pair of connected eighth notes to Cueball's right, a separated eighth note and a pair of connected eighth notes to his left.]

Cueball:

Perhaps it was wrong,

what he did for a song

He should never have

bribed that mechanic

But his maritime crimes

are no worse than the time

Young James Cameron

sank the Titanic

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Discussion

well that was early. youtu.be/miLcaqq2Zpk 11:47, 22 March 2024 (UTC)

This singer is a bit fast and loose with the rhyme-scheme; aAbCd(?D)eC with the "dD", especially, being Go+Most, Tune+Words(!), ¿This/As?+Words and Crimes+Time. And scansion is potentially off (mid-line endings definitely are). I would hope that another shipwreck wouldn't happen until this new guy has tightened up his own art a little. (But once he gets good enough, fair enough!) 172.71.242.161 12:57, 22 March 2024 (UTC)

"For it's challenging trying to write good" -boB (talk) 14:00, 22 March 2024 (UTC)

"This singer is a bit fast and loose..." This is Gordon and his First Draft. Just strumming to see if the song has legs (fins?). We know Gordon could fiddle the rhyme and line-breaks as good as anybody. But prolly not on a dock on Lake Superior in November. (OTOH Sittin' on The Dock of the Bay, Otis Redding wrote in August on a rented houseboat in Sausalito, California; a much nicer workplace.) --PRR (talk) 23:05, 22 March 2024 (UTC)

Lightfoot was a bit fast and loose with the rhyme scheme; the version of the first verse shown is arguably closer to rhyming than the corresponding verse in the song itself (the rhyme chosen there for "seasoned" is "Wisconsin" rather than "Cleveland"; "Cleveland" does appear as a rhyming word in the song, but it's rhymed with "feelin'"). The worst rhymes here are no more "off" than the worst ones in the canonical song. 162.158.186.95 19:14, 23 March 2024 (UTC)

Is the Cameron accusation also suggesting that he has actual time travel technology, as shown in his Terminator movies? Barmar (talk) 14:19, 22 March 2024 (UTC)

How long should we wait before using peoples' deaths as entertainment? Relatives and friends of the crew are still alive. Are the terrorist attacks of 2001 open yet for parody? ...or wait another decade or two? Please consider others. 172.69.214.108 14:26, 22 March 2024 (UTC)

Given that the original song turned it into entertainment less than a year after, and it's been widely parodied pretty much ever since, I think you may, if you'll pardon the phrase, have missed the boat on that one.141.101.98.53 14:59, 22 March 2024 (UTC)

Although it was performed as entertainment, the song was written as a kind of memorial or tribute. That's quite different from using the accident as fodder for a joke. Barmar (talk) 18:38, 22 March 2024 (UTC)

It's important to consider sides. Like, deaths of Russian soldiers in Ukraine are open to parody immediately because they are enemies. -- Hkmaly (talk) 18:39, 22 March 2024 (UTC)

Ukraine, itself, has issued postage stamps mocking Russian losses.These Are Not The Comments You Are Looking For (talk) 21:56, 24 March 2024 (UTC)

I have some bad news for you about the prevalence of 9/11 jokes. Within xkcd itself, no less! Esogalt (talk) 09:28, 23 March 2024 (UTC)

What if Cueball bribed Gordon Lightfoot to bribe the mechanic so he could write a song about Lightfoot bribing the mechanic to write a song? AoPS is superior (talk) 00:24, 23 March 2024 (UTC)

Was it rammed by the Cat Stevens? 172.70.211.144 04:57, 23 March 2024 (UTC)

The flags on the upside down eighth notes are backwards 172.71.146.211 06:21, 23 March 2024 (UTC)

Must be an inverted chord.172.70.160.172 17:22, 25 March 2024 (UTC)

My first reaction was, "this is not funny" because of the seriousness of the Edmund Fitgerald tragedy and the gravity of the song as tribute to the lost lives. My second reaction was that Randall is a really awful songwriter. My conclusion is that the only funny thing about this comic is the comically bad fake song. Rtanenbaum (talk) 11:47, 23 March 2024 (UTC)

I full agree with that. Yet, we can look at it another way: we need to have some "lesser" xkcd comics to better appreciate the "better" ones. Ralfoide (talk) 18:05, 23 March 2024 (UTC)

Concerning the “Too Soon?” discussion, we might consider Les Barker’s “Have You Got Any News of the Iceberg”: https://youtu.be/iKDakrjmwJc?si=v3cdDBP75T5gOc2H

Reminded me of American Pie for some reason when I first read this. Beautiful song that is. bye, bye, miss American pie... DollarStoreBa'al (talk) 15:51, 26 March 2024 (UTC)

Drove my Chevy to the levee, but the levee was dry. --The Daleks (talk) 19:33, 27 March 2024 (UTC)

Then I fell in the levee, thought I was gonna die. Psychoticpotato (talk) 18:30, 5 June 2024 (UTC)
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