Any afficianado of music of the 50s 60s and 70s can tell you that every genre from rock and roll to disco has an amazing variety of songs devoted to saying "Goodbye".

These songs fall into two main categories: break-up songs, and swan songs. The break-up song will be discussed later. For now, we will turn our attention to the swan song.

Also known as the tear-jerker, the swan song, in all its lachrimal splendor, was elevated to high art in the 50s and 60s.

Who will ever forget "Darling Jane" who went out with her fella on a sailboat ride and was swept overboard. I learned my lesson from that one - don't go out on a sailboat. Some fella will be only too happy to write a tear-jerker about you!

Mark Dinning's "Teen Angel" met a similarly gruesome fate, diving back into a car stalled on the railway tracks with the freightliner barreling down on her, all to retrieve her boyfriend's high school ring. There's a moral in that one, somewhere. She may now be "somewhere up above", as the song suggests, but whether she is still his own true love might be moot.

The epitome of lyrical weeping over unrequited love would have to be the ubiquitous "Leader of the Pack". A great 'girl song' complete with the vroom-vroom of the doomed lover's motorcycle, it simply oozes sentimental innocence.

These young ladies sob for their lost love as only a girl group can. The guys, however, are certainly due equal billing for this version of the ultimate goobye:

Laura and Tommy were lovers, he wanted to give her everything,

Flowers, presents, but most of all, a wedding ring...

He saw a sign for the stockcar race, he was the youngest driver there,

He couldn't reach Laura on the phone so to her mother, Tommy said -

"Tell Laura I love her,

Tell Laura I need her,

Tell Laura not to cry, my love for her will never die"

Can you smell it coming? If you've heard this one, especially if you heard it as a tender-hearted teenager, you remember exactly how it ends. The race does not go well for poor, inexpereinced young Tommy, and he never gets to be an old Tommy... but his love for Laura lives on in song.

There are many entries in this style of song, and they are all great for singing along with the recording artist. What teenage girl (or guy) suffering a crisis of the heart has not welcomed the opportunity to wail along with someone else. After all, shared misery is so much more attractive than one's own.

One that was always good for a few tears when I was much younger was an offering from the Everly Brothers. In it, a young serviceman describes waiting for his sweetheart, who is traveling to join him. The bridge sets up his trusting expectation of their eventual, loving reunion:

My 'Ebony Eyes' was coming to me,

From out of the skies, on Flight 1203;

In an hour or two, I would whisper "I do"

To my beautiful 'Ebony Eyes'.

Well, you gotta know this is going to end badly. As luck and the lyricist would have it, the plane crashes and the young serviceman is left to mourn his lost love in perpetuity.

Patti Page lends her smoky tones to this entry into the field, a delightfully doleful ditty of love, revenge, and the other woman, "One Of Us Will Weep Tonight". Though tunefully rendered and achingy sorrowful, it can't hold a candle to the much-later "Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte", the title song from a movie of the same name.

The plot featured a rather nasty love triangle involving a philandering fiance and naughty sister trying to drive Bette Davis (Charlotte) mad so they could inherit her money along with the family estate. Spooky, and atmospheric, this psychological thriller, hyped to the max in its theatrical trailers, featured a severed head bouncing down the sweeping curves of the grand staircase to land at the distraught heroine's feet. Unfortunately, when the much awaited head arrived, it did not quite live up to its advance billing.

The chorus of the theme song, though, featured the following phrases, again crooned by the inimitable Patti Page:

Hush, hush, sweet Charlotte, Charlotte, don't you cry;

Hush, hush, sweet Charlotte, he'll love you 'til he dies...

...and he did - die, that is. In the best tradition of biter bit.

Nowadays, we seem to have consigned the major responsibility for penning the 'goodbye song', both the swan song and the kiss-off, to the tender mercies of the Country Music clans...and they certainly have done us proud.

Of all their many modern takes on the 'goodbye' theme from Martina McBride's rousing, stand-up-and-cheer anthem to overcoming an abusive relationship, "Independance Day" to the more gently humorous, "I'm Sure Gonna Miss Her", wherein the hero chooses fishing over the chains of love, the artists and writers of Country's finest odes have shone in their dedication to mining this theme. They have not shunned their duty to supply us with an unending stream of paens to heartbreak and loss.

Though most of these ballads tend towards a rather melodramatic view of life and love, or death and love, as the case may be, the prize for one of the saddest and most meaningful goodbye songs would have to go to Reba McIntire's hauntingly voiced ode "She Thinks His Name Was John". This moving offering describes the last months of a young girl who indulged in a one night stand and is now dying of AIDS. The plot may be improbable, but the message of everything the girl will never live to experience is heartbreakingly real.

Although we have a great propensity for indulging our fascination with departed loves, there are, as well, a staggering number of song lyrics devoted to the subject of 'the kiss-off'.

What is it about us that we feel the need to celebrate this in song? Isn't the process painful enough without hearing about it at every turn? ...well, perhaps not every turn, but that 's certainly how it feels when you are on the receiving end of the kiss-off. Otherwise, we certainly seem to enjoy a good wallow in the pity pond.

One of my personal faves, just for the sheer fun of it, is a tearful little ditty entitled "Goodbye Cruel World". This would seem to be, at first glance, a swan song, but take a closer look at the first verse.

Goodby cruel world, I'm off to join the circus, gonna be a broken-hearted clown -

Shoot me out of a cannon I don't care,

Let the people point at me and stare,

Because that mean, fickle woman wherever she may be,

That mean, fickle woman made a cryin' clown out of me...

...not your typical 'she's-done-gone-and-left-me' snivel. The Everly Brothers score high again with "Cathy's Clown":

Don't want your love anymore;

Don't want your kisses, that's for sure;

I die each time I hear the sound,

"Here he comes - that's Cathy's clown"

- do I see a theme developing here? For typically teenage angst, though, look no farther than Neil Sedaka's irrepressably bouncy "Breaking Up Is Hard To Do":

Com-a come-a down dooby doo down down

Come-a come-a down dooby doo down down

Breakin' up is hard to do

Don't take your love away from me, don't you leave my heart in misery,

Come on, Baby, let's start anew, cause breakin' up is hard to do...

To be sure, there are many serious entries into the field. Most of us have heard Elvis' lament about his emotional accommodations in "Heartbreak Hotel".

Not to be outdone, Ricky Nelson moved to a whole new part of the country when his love left him:

There's a place where lovers go, to hide their troubles away,

And they call it Lonesome Town, where the broken hearts stay;

You can buy a dream or two, to last you all through the years,

And the only price you pay is a heart full of tears.

It seems that for every couple heading to the Chapel to get married, there are at least two more heading there to grieve their loss. For every budding romance, there is a whole crop ripening to thorny harvest.

Sometimes, not only the faithless lover comes in for a lambasting. In "West Side Story", a whole country, Puerto Rico, is kissed off in this lively song and dance number, entitled "America". Maria sings of the beauties of their former homeland, while the the Shark's girl friends scornfully reject her notions and sing the praises of their new home.

The '"Love Child" of this offering by The Supremes is rejected out of hand because of her lack of legal parentage. Arguably, it is not truly a kiss-off number because the girl takes herself out of the running in the love stakes.

For my money, though, Carly Simon delivers the ultimate goodbye song in "You're so Vain". Not only does this scorching diatribe deliver chapter and verse on her erring ex, her tone makes it painfully clear that she doesn't care who hears her scorn. The hint of softness, or perhaps, of regret creeps into the last verse, but her independant spirit soars triumphant again at the end:

I had some dreams, they were clouds in my coffee, clouds in my coffe,and...

You'r so vain, I bet you think this song is about you;

You're so vain, I bet you think this song is about you,

Don't you? Don't you?

Now there are some mighty fine Goodbye lyrics, folks.