“And anyways,
I’d rather listen to Coltrane,
than go through all that shit again.”

About the song:

“Sun Comes Up, It’s Tuesday Morning” is the first track off of the Cowboy Junkies’ album, The Caution Horses. The Caution Horses is the band’s fourth album that was released in 1990.

The Caution Horses was first album following their 1988 breakthrough The Trinity Session.

The Caution Horses features a more conventional, polished sound than that album’s spare, haunting country blues. As a consequence, the album was savaged by music critics, who charged that the band had sacrificed their distinctive style.

However, the album’s accessibility to mainstream pop and rock audiences also meant that it received more radio airplay and spawned bigger chart hits (“Sun Comes Up, It’s Tuesday Morning” and “Rock and Bird”, which featured Bruce Hornsby on the piano on the single version) than The Trinity Session had.

My thoughts:

On my ultimate break-up song list, “Sun Comes Up, It’s Tuesday Morning” is one of those songs that tries to celebrate a new single status. The voice of the song seems to be talking herself into the happy sides of having the bed, and the movie popcorn, all to herself…but…there is sadness, there is an undercurrent of loss and mourning, and missing, but there is that persistence to survive, too. The song isn’t jaded, it isn’t angry, but it is determined.

I’ve played this song loudly when trying to get over a love gone. I think, too, sometimes I have sung-a-long feeling more of the sadness and grief, and other times, I have sung-a-long truly rejoicing the extra space in the bed, the control of the movie choices, and the time to think on myself.

Break-ups are hard, no matter whose idea it was, and we need songs that hit on all the ways they feel, sometimes all wrapped up in one song even.

Sun Comes Up, It’s Tuesday Morning (1990) :: Cowboy Junkies
from the album, The Caution Horses