There's a strange paradox in the world of sap. If a song has the traditional syrupy string arrangement, it's sap. Yet for certain other songs with arrangements that don't fit this mold, the very difference is itself a sap factor. This is the case with "Patches." The 3/4 time, waltzing guitar somehow makes this tale of stupid doomed love more sappy than it would have been with a traditional sap arrangement. The lyrics themselves are enough to make one gag. We have star-crossed lovers separated by class. His family won't let them marry, and he isn't man enough to stand up to them, or smart enough to find a clandestine way to tell her so. She kills herself. He decides to kill himself. So we've got a death fixation, overweening love, self-pity, cowardice, and emotional immaturity. Patches, we're sorry you're dead, but would you really want to be married to a mess like this? (Oh, wait, you killed yourself too. Forget that I asked.)
-- SAPster Half
The teen death song is a great tradition with roots in the classics (hey, what else is Romeo and Juliet?). Teen death songs are not, in my opinion, inherently sappy.
But when one or both of the protagonists is a complete and utter idiot, the song becomes sap. The guy in this song is such a yutz that (a) he can't love a girl his family doesn't approve of; (b) he doesn't even have the guts to tell her he can't see her anymore; and (c) he kills himself. At least he had the decency to off himself before he reproduced and passed on his idiot genes.
See also: "Teen Angel," in which the girl is such a moron that (a) she has to be pulled from a stalled car on a railroad track, and (b) she goes back to the car for her boyfriend's class ring, even though the train is about to squash the car like a grape.
It's a shame, really. The girl from "Teen Angel" and the boy from "Patches" should have gotten together; they could have lived happily ever after in mutual idiocy.
-- SAPster Randi