The Velvet Anguish of Bluegrass: A Post-Modern Heartbreak
The song “It Doesn’t Matter” is a quintessential track from the Grammy-winning album So Long So Wrong by Alison Krauss & Union Station, released in 1997. This album marked a pivotal point in Krauss’s career, cementing her shift from traditional bluegrass to a more contemporary, haunting style often dubbed “post-grass” or Americana. While the album itself was a major success—reaching Number 4 on the Billboard Top Country Albums chart and earning three Grammy Awards—this specific track stands out as a jewel of lyrical melancholy and atmospheric arrangement.
“It Doesn’t Matter” is a masterclass in controlled, agonizing grief. The song is not a fierce cry of pain but a quiet, chilling realization of utter helplessness in the face of a lost love. Its power lies in its resignation, delivered with Krauss’s signature, ethereally pure soprano that sounds simultaneously youthful and ancient.
Lyrically, the song is a litany of futility:
It doesn’t matter what I want It doesn’t matter what I need It doesn’t matter if I cry Don’t matter if I bleed
This repeated motif of self-negation underscores the depth of the heartbreak. The singer has reached a point of acceptance where her own desires, pain, and very existence are irrelevant to the person who left. It is the ultimate expression of unrequited or finished love, where the only thing that matters is the other person’s indifference.
Musically, the song is far removed from the high-tempo breakdown of traditional bluegrass. It’s a slow, minor-key lament, bathed in atmosphere. The arrangement by Union Station is masterful: the delicate strumming of Dan Tyminski’s guitar, the subtle pulse of Barry Bales’s arco bass (bowed, rather than plucked, creating a mournful depth), and the chilling, echo-laden background vocals combine to create a soundscape of profound loneliness. It signaled a major move for the band, demonstrating that bluegrass instrumentation could achieve the same dramatic, emotional weight as any orchestral ballad.
“It Doesn’t Matter” gained an additional wave of appreciation from outside the country and bluegrass world when it was featured prominently in the premiere of the second season of the cult hit television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Its inclusion in the show’s 1997 debut episode cemented its status as a piece of ’90s pop-culture melancholy, a perfect sonic pairing for themes of supernatural angst and deep, human sorrow.
More than two decades later, the song remains a powerful and sophisticated piece of music. It’s a reminder of Alison Krauss’s incredible talent for interpreting and inhabiting sorrowful lyrics, turning simple resignation into a moment of pure, luminous art.