One song that has always bugged me is "The Leader of the Pack" by The Shangrilas.

In case you haven't heard this song before, Jimmy, also known as "The Leader of the Pack", is a motorcycle-riding boy from the "wrong side of town". Betty, the narrator of the story, is Jimmy's cowardly, weak-willed girlfriend.

The premise of the song is that Betty falls in love with Jimmy at the candy store. Betty later dumps Jimmy when her parents object to their relationship. This inadvertantly causes Jimmy to have a fatal, and possibly deliberate, motorcycle accident.

One day my dad said, "Find someone new".
I had to tell my Jimmy "We're through".

What has suddenly changed? Just a few lines earlier, Betty was saying:

My folks were always putting him down (down! down!)
They said he came from the wrong side of town
They told me he was bad
But I knew he was sad
That's why I fell for
The leader of the pack.

If you really love Jimmy, when your dad says, "Find someone new", you don't say, "We're through".

You say, "Pick me up at the library from now on, Jimmy".

Nevertheless, at least give poor Jimmy the courtesy of an explanation:

He stood there and asked me why
But all I could do was cry.

Really?

Here's a radical idea!

"I'm sorry, Jimmy, but my dad said, 'Find someone new'".

Of course, instead of telling Jimmy, "It's not you; it's me", Betty lets the poor guy think the worst, and Jimmy rides his motorcycle away at top speed in the rain to that big candy store in the sky.

After the fact, Betty has the audacity to walk around school wearing Jimmy's ring, crying, and lamenting:

I felt so helpless, what could I do?
Remembering all the things we'd been through

If only there had been some way of preventing this senseless tragedy ...

I'll never forget him
The leader of the pack ...