YMMV / Harry Chapin

• Alternate Character Interpretation:
  • Is the narrator of "Cat's in the Cradle" right when he says his son grew up just like him? After all, one of the reasons the son doesn't have time for his father at the end of the song is that his kids have the flu, implying that he plans to spend time looking after his sick children. So is the son really a Generation Xerox, or does his dad have a case of It's All About Me?
  • Also from "Cat's in the Cradle," is the son bitter and passive-aggressive toward his father, or has he simply come to accept that there are more important things than connecting with his often absent father?
• Anvilicious: Harry was never subtle. Listen to "Cat's in the Cradle" and see if you can't figure out the message. In this case, it was Harry's wife Sandy dropping the anvil on him, which inspired the song.
• Applicability: Thanks to an anti-terrorism advert from 1993, in Northern Ireland "Cat's in the Cradle" is associated not just with neglectful fathers, but the cycle of violence during The Troubles as fighters watch their sons follow in their footsteps.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • The line "There are songs I should have sung" from "Dreams Go By" took on a bit of this after Chapin's untimely death.
  • At the end of a concert at The Bottom Line nightclub in New York (released on CD), which happened to be his 2,000th concert, Harry calls out to the crowd, "Ahh, two thousand more, huh?" The concert took place in January 1981; Harry would die only a few months later.
  • Not to mention that one of his more popular songs, "30,000 Pounds of Bananas", was about a fatal road accident.
  • "Cat's In The Cradle", a song about a son and a father who never got to spend much time together and arguably Chapin's most well-known song, becomes this after Chapin's death in 1982, which happened when his children were still young, meaning they never got to spend that time with their dad.
  • When discussing Sequel in an interview, he joked about writing a third part of the Taxi series called Hearse where he killed the leads off. Sequel turned out to be part of the last complete album he made before his death. For bonus points of uncomfortable, the protagonist of Taxi and Sequel is a fictionalized version of Chapin himself, even named Harry.
• Memetic Mutation: "Harry? It sucks," a line which originated in the live version of "30,000 Pounds of Bananas" from Greatest Stories Live as Harry's brother Tom Chapin's reaction to the original ending of the song, a lighthearted parody of "Yes, We Have No Bananas." The saying became so popular with Harry Chapin's fans that it was included on concert T-shirts.
• Misaimed Fandom: "Cat's in the Cradle" does get misintrepreted as being about a father and son bonding, as showcased when Nissan used it a Super Bowl commercial about a race car driver's son.
• Signature Song: "Cat's in the Cradle" is his most well-known and played song, with "Taxi" coming in second.

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