I've always loved a John Prine song about little girls having babies, "Unwed Fathers", because it's so beautifully written. I only know two songs on the same topic, the other one being Tom Paxton's "Little Girl". I think Tom's song is too literal and not as good as the Prine song.

I have a friend named Boram who is a huge John Prine fan and a huge Iris DeMent fan too. I thought he would love "Unwed Fathers" as it was released as a Prine/DeMent duet. So I asked him about the song last month. To my surprise, he told me that he hates the song. He thinks the song is bad because it's so beautifully written and leisurely sung that it would actually diminish the severity of the topic itself. Here is what Boram said about the two songs:

When people listen to "Little Girl", they would realize how seriously terrible the situation is, and maybe do something about it; but when people listen to "Unwed Fathers", they would only think "hey, that's a helluva song", and not give a f- about the situation itself. If a teenage lover has listened to "Little Girl", she would never become an unwed mother - not so sure for "Unwed Fathers". It lacks the deep thinking. What we really need is to prevent this from happening, and Paxton's battery of questions would absolutely do better than Prine's beautiful storytelling.

I find his statement pretty convincing. What do you think?

S.