John Prine
American · 20th and 21st century
American singer-songwriter known for plain-spoken, sharply observed story songs. Unwed Fathers (1984, written with Bobby Braddock) follows a teenage mother abandoned by the child's father, the men who leave running "like water through a mountain stream".
Connection to Taylor Swift
Aaron Dessner, who wrote the music he sent Taylor for cardigan, is a stated Prine admirer. Community readers hear cardigan's "leavin' like a father, running like water" against Unwed Fathers' image of the leaving man as water that will not be held.
Notable Works
- Angel from Montgomery; Sam Stone; Hello in There; Unwed Fathers
Appears in the Archive
Context within the Archive
Unwed Fathers
“Leavin' like a father Running like water”
Community readers set "leavin' like a father, running like water" beside John Prine's Unwed Fathers, where the men who leave "can't be bothered, they run like water through a mountain stream". The figure is the same: the man who leaves rendered as water that will not be held. Aaron Dessner, who wrote the music he sent Taylor for cardigan, is a stated Prine admirer, giving the echo a plausible line of inheritance.