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Post by Kapitan on Dec 30, 2021 17:02:49 GMT
Most rock songs, and actually most songs across all popular music genres, are about some form of love. The vast majority are about romantic love: desire to get together; happiness or troubles being together; sex; regret over love gone bad; nostalgia for lost love; and so on.
Most of the rest are about some other kinds of love, such as love of family or friends ("Friends"), of country ("God Bless the USA"), of the divine (the entire genre of Christian rock, plenty of George Harrison's songs), and so on.
However, there are also some songs that are about other topics, some of them quite obscure. And that's what this thread is meant to be about. I got the idea listening to some of this year's songs, including one called " The Destruction of the Kola Superdeep Borehole Tower," by the Mountain Goats. Not knowing what that meant, I googled it to find it is based on this decades-long drilling project in northwest Russia, near the Norwegian border.
The Mountain Goats are one of the bands whose songs quite often do veer off into strange territory. I thought it might be fun for people to point out some other (ideally good, or even great) songs that go well beyond I love you, I used to love you, I miss you, I want you, and so on. I'm sure kds will have some ideas, because it seems to me that heavy metal probably has more such songs than most pop genres. But there is plenty out there from all kinds of genres.
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Post by kds on Dec 30, 2021 18:00:20 GMT
Metal is definitely a gold mine for songs about war, literature, death, the supernatural, fantasy, horror, and the genre itself among other things.
You even have some gimmicky metal bands like Alestorm, who exclusively do songs about pirates, or Austrian Death Machine, a band dedicated to the movies of Arnold Schwartzenegger (sp?).
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Post by jk on Dec 30, 2021 20:50:28 GMT
Looking at the thread subject, this may just belong here. (Yes, I've posted this one before.) This is so totally weird. It's Cara Stewart straightfacedly crooning the outrageous "Song Of The Burmese Land", written by one L. Hazelwood; not Lee Hazelwood, who categorically denies authorship -- and who can blame him? "Burmese Land is like monkeyland A bothersome, troublesome place Burmese Land is like monkeyland Listen, I'll tell you so "The AFPFL * government told the people When 10 o'clock strikes night Don't make a noise, don't be a nuisance Let the people sleep "If a permit you should get You can make a noise If anyone asks, you can say A permit we have got "Always at this feast, always at that feast Chinese, Burmese, Indian Doon doon doon dang dang dang Boom boom boom bang bang bang A permit we have got "Burmese Land is like monkeyland A bothersome, troublesome place Burmese Land is like monkeyland To the lunatic asylum I'm going" * Anti-Fascist People's Freedom League
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Post by lonelysummer on Dec 30, 2021 21:11:30 GMT
Hmm...which direction to take this? I can think of many, but a few that come to mind: "30,000 Pounds of Bananas" by Harry Chapin. Nearly any Kinks song after the initial "You Really Got Me"/"All Day and All of the Night" era. Think about songs like "Sunny Afternoon", "Lola", "Apeman", not typical rock band fare.
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Post by Sheriff John Stone on Dec 30, 2021 21:23:55 GMT
And these are all from Sparks!
- Batteries Not Included - Whippings And Apologies - Here In Heaven - Who Don't Like Kids - It Ain't 1918 - I Bought The Mississippi River
- I Married A Martian - A Fun Bunch Of Guys From Outer Space - Mickey Mouse - Moustache - Instant Weight Loss - She Got Me Pregnant - Lighten Up, Morrissey - Let The Monkey Drive - The Ghost Of Liberace
I could go on but I'll stop there. The amazing thing is that all of those songs ARE ABOUT the song titles!
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Post by jk on Dec 31, 2021 9:03:36 GMT
And these are all from Sparks!
- Batteries Not Included - Whippings And Apologies - Here In Heaven - Who Don't Like Kids - It Ain't 1918 - I Bought The Mississippi River
- I Married A Martian - A Fun Bunch Of Guys From Outer Space - Mickey Mouse - Moustache - Instant Weight Loss - She Got Me Pregnant - Lighten Up, Morrissey - Let The Monkey Drive - The Ghost Of Liberace
I could go on but I'll stop there. The amazing thing is that all of those songs ARE ABOUT the song titles!
Sparks are so ridiculously underrated -- on all fronts. This one is less extreme than my previous example (sorry about that!) but still pretty out there for the subject of a pop song: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Making_Plans_for_Nigel
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Post by kds on Dec 31, 2021 16:11:54 GMT
There's also The Royal Guardsmen, whose catalog consists primarily of songs about the Peanuts Gang.
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Post by carllove on Dec 31, 2021 16:51:17 GMT
Well - there is also “Octopus’s Garden” and “ I am the Walrus”, by a little band called The Beatles. Also - they mentioned potholes in “A Day in the Life”. Or it could be about acoustic plastic circles. Then, I’ve also read something about the holes being dug to find unmarked graves of bodies from the Blitzkrieg. Who knows? All would be unusual.
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sockit
The Surfer Moon
Posts: 234
Likes: 181
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Post by sockit on Dec 31, 2021 17:10:41 GMT
There are too many examples to list. Where do I start? Any concept album group such as Yes, Pink Floyd, Moody Blues, etc. dealt with a variety of subjects all over the map. Some of them are a bit bizarre. Even the Beatles (yes, the Beach Boys too) covered unusual subjects. And ya know what? I'd rather listen to any of that over song after song about Taylor Swift's romance failures!
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Post by kds on Dec 31, 2021 17:30:36 GMT
Jimmy Buffett has a slew of songs about different topics. One of his most well known songs is Cheeseburger in Paradise.
No hyperbole here, it's a song about the simple pleasure of a cheeseburger, with fries, a pickle, and cold draft beer.
While some songwriters prefer to write about all the ills of this world, sometimes its nice to hear a song about something as simple, and attainable, as a good burger.
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Post by jk on Jan 2, 2022 11:09:23 GMT
Gary Numan's songs are full of oddball topics. How about "I Dream Of Wires" from his UK chart-topping second solo album Telekon (1980)? "I am the final silence. The last electrician alive. And they called me 'The Sparkle'. I was the best, I worked them all. "New ways, new ways. I dream of wires. "We opened doors by thinking. We went to sleep by dialing 'O'. We drove to work by proxy. I plugged my wife in, just for show. "So I press 'C' for 'comfort'. I dream of wires, the old days." I should add that I'm a huge fan of Mr Webb.
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Post by carllove on Jan 2, 2022 14:50:04 GMT
I love that song, jk! I had forgotten about it! Thanks!
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Post by jk on Jan 2, 2022 15:38:12 GMT
I love that song, jk! I had forgotten about it! Thanks! You're welcome, cl. H'mm -- I thought you didn't approve of Gary Numan.
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Post by carllove on Jan 2, 2022 16:12:26 GMT
I love that song, jk! I had forgotten about it! Thanks! You're welcome, cl. H'mm -- I thought you didn't approve of Gary Numan. Well jk, he’s not a favorite, but I always liked that song. It’s clever and it’s quite beautiful.
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Post by jk on Jan 5, 2022 18:42:06 GMT
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