1966 The Walker Brothers: The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine Anymore

In 2010, 'The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine Anymore' was used to soundtrack a trailer for AMC Television's adaptation of Image Comics' long running saga of a zombie apocalypse 'The Walking Dead'.* Which in its own way kind of tells you most of what you need to know - with a doom laden sweep of a broad brush from a palette of black, 'The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine Anymore' presents a Book of Revelation end of the world scenario born solely from the break-up of a love affair; "The sun ain't gonna shine anymore, the moon ain't gonna rise in the sky" - not literally, but because "the tears are always clouding your eyes", so it might as well be; how bad can things get? And what could have become high camp is massaged into believability by Scott Walker's deep and world weary baritone, suggestive of a dead man walking who can think of no good reason to get out of bed in the mornings.

Originally written by Bob Crewe and Bob Gaudio as 'The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine (Anymore)' for Frankie Valli in 1965, it's this Walker Brothers version that has become definitive, casting a long shadow that effectively eclipses any of the many other versions that abound. Most of the song's familiar tricks and motifs were already in place in Valli's cut, but there's a low calorie thinness about the recording that damps down the majesty and serves it up as just another doo wop weepy. The Walker's actually speed up the main tune and
match the far more definitive statement the removal of the brackets around 'Anymore' engenders by shifting everything to a minor key wall of sound on which producer Johnny Franz nails the Phil Spector homage by mixing Scott's vocal as part of the wall instead of having him constantly trying to scramble over it.

If there's a weakness here, then it's inherent in the song itself; for the most part Scott is a sympathetic observer ("Loneliness is a coat you wear"), but by the close, the cat's let out of the bag when the "Lonely without you baby, so lonely. I can't go on without her" reveals the third party "you" is actually a first person 'me'. It's a shift of focus that skirts a self pity that would hobble the song like a flat tyre, but the minor wobble is soon rectified by fade out where Scott is left howling at the moon on his own while his fellow Walkers clarify exactly why we're here by a repeating the title to burn out. By luck or judgment, 'The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine Anymore' presents itself as a natural sequel to 'Make It Easy On Yourself', but there's no luck at all in the fact that it lands as close to perfection as any song gets.


* Prior to this, I've tended to use the example of Ronnie Kray's shooting of George Cornell in The Blind Beggar pub and a stray bullet hitting the juke box that was playing this song at the time, causing the record to repeat the line "The sun ain't gonna shine, anymore, anymore, anymore." as Cornell lay dying. It's a 'nice' story, even if it is apocryphal, but that 'Walking Dead' example is a better one, not least because it's true.