5 Meanings
Add Yours
Follow
Share
Q&A
Annabelle Lyrics
Lease twenty acres and one Ginny mule
From the Alabama trust
For half of the cotton, a third of the corn
Get a handful of dust
We cannot have all things to please us
No matter how we try
Until we've all gone to Jesus
We can only wonder why
I had a daughter, called her Annabelle
She's the apple of my eye
Tried to give her something like I'd never had
Didn't want to ever hear her cry
We cannot have all things to please us
No matter how we try
Until we've all gone to Jesus
We can only wonder why
When I'm dead and buried, I'll take a hard life of tears
From every day I've ever known
Anna's in the churchyard, she's got no life at all
She only got these words on a stone
We cannot have all things to please us
No matter how we try
Until we've all gone to Jesus
We can only wonder why
From the Alabama trust
For half of the cotton, a third of the corn
Get a handful of dust
No matter how we try
Until we've all gone to Jesus
We can only wonder why
She's the apple of my eye
Tried to give her something like I'd never had
Didn't want to ever hear her cry
No matter how we try
Until we've all gone to Jesus
We can only wonder why
From every day I've ever known
Anna's in the churchyard, she's got no life at all
She only got these words on a stone
No matter how we try
Until we've all gone to Jesus
We can only wonder why
Song Info
Submitted by
smallwonderrobot On Sep 17, 2006
More Gillian Welch
Time (The Revelator)
I Dream A Highway
Everything Is Free
The Way It Goes
Hard Times
Add your song meanings, interpretations, facts, memories & more to the community.
Life is full of suffering, especially for a sharecropper who is the voice we hear in this song. Bad things happen. Children die. The crop fails. Life is hard.
The only consolation is to have faith in the afterlife. Why is life so full of suffering? His answer is that he doesn't know. Maybe it's just the way the world is. The world isn't here to please us. It's all a mystery.
When we've all gone to Jesus, then he'll tell us what it all means. There be an answer in the sweet bye-and-bye.
One of my favorite lyrics off all time is this chorus...
"We cannot have all things that please us, no matter how we try. Until we've all gone to Jesus, we can only wonder why."
So amazingly honest and real.
The versus revolve around the chorus, telling the story of a struggling 19th century sharecropper who loses the only thing that really matters to her, her daughter Annabelle. There's nothing that can really explain why bad things happen in life so you just need to keep going on with your life and not worry why they happen. You'll get everything you want/need in the afterlife.
Terribly sad song, but beautiful as well.
Absolute bull sheet cop-out to pie in the sky pablum.
What a song ! So much pain, beautifully crafted, full off compassion and faith. The hardest test by God that ever was, losing your child. Even as a childless woman I can feel this pain through this song.