Songs about fictional people

[elfkin477]

Inspired by the thread Songs about famous people - as I went through my MP3s for that thread, I found a few songs about fictional characters too, so how about a list of songs that are about, named after, or mention fictional characters?

Rules:
By "fictional" I mean established ones from books (but let's leave Santa Claus/Christmas and characters from the Bible to another thread for the sake of thread scale), plays, movies,TV shows, comics, or video games rather than characters created for the narritive of the song. And these songs should be about specific characters: Dracula or Casper, yes, vampires or ghosts in general, no.

Here are a few to get started:

Forget Cassettes "Bruce Wayne"
Feeder "Buck Rogers"
Cursive "Driftwood" = Pinocchio
Belly "Gepetto"
Psapp "King Kong"
3 Doors Down "Kryptonite" = Superman
Sam the Sham & The Pharaohs "Lil' Red Riding Hood"
Dishwalla "Miss Emma Peel"
Catatonia "Mulder And Scully"
Marry Me Jane "Superman"
Our Lady Peace "Superman Is Dead"
Emprise (Canada) "The Tin Man (Silk and Sawdust)"
Jefferson Airplane "White Rabbit (Go Ask Alice)" = Alice in Wonderland

[Spoke]

Jimmy Olsen's Blues - Spin Doctors

[Stealth Potato]

Gordon Lightfoot's Don Quixote is a favorite of mine.

[NDP]

Bob Dylan's "Desolation Row" mentions Cinderella, Romeo, the Hunchback of Notre Dame, Ophelia, and the Phantom of the Opera.

The Kink's "Apeman" refers to Tarzan and Jane. There's also their "Want to Fly Like Superman."

REM's "I Am Superman"

[Art Rock]

10 CC - Life is a minestrone (Minnie Mouse)

[Krokodil]

"Sirens of Titan" by Al Stewart (Album: Modern Times), about Malachi Constant

I'd heard that Jessi Colter's "I'm Not Lisa" was based on the book/play/movie David and Lisa, but I have no cite for this.

[Mudshark]

Daria - Cake
Conehead - Frank Zappa
Blue Oyster Cult - Godzilla

[runner pat]

Tom Lehrer-Oedipus Rex

[ftg]

The Kingsmen: The Jolly Green Giant.
The Royal Guardsmen: Snoopy vs. The Red Baron.

(Note the similar meaning of the band names. That's gotta mean something.)

[bluecanary]

The Firm - 'Star Trekkin'' (Captain Kirk, among others)

[Spatial Rift 47]

The Ballad of Bilbo Baggins.

[cochrane]

Nerf Herder - "Mr. Spock"

Jim Croce - "You Don't Mess Around With Jim"

You don't tug on Superman's cape
You don't spit into the wind
You don't pull the mask off that old Lone Ranger...

[RealityChuck]

Crash Test Dummies -- Superman's Song (Superman, Tarzan, and Solomon Grundy).
Donovan -- Sunshine Superman (Superman and Green Lantern).

[Jane Elliot]

Kate Bush -- Wuthering Heights

[jayjay]

America - "Tin Man" (The Tin Woodsman, the Wizard of Oz, Sir Galahad)

[KneadToKnow]

The Saga Begins - Weird Al Yankovic
Yoda - Weird Al Yankovic

others aplenty I'm just not thinking of at the moment

[Oakminster]

Does a huge radioactive lizard count as "people" for the purpose of this thread?

Cool.

I nominate Godzilla by Blue Oyster Cult.

Edit: Bah...I see Mudshark already listed it.

[Lute Skywatcher]

Originally Posted by ftg

(Note the similar meaning of the band names. That's gotta mean something.)

Two American groups, one from Oregon and one from Florida, trying to cash in on the British Invasion. Also, the latter covered "The Jolly Green Giant".

[Telperion]

It seems to me there has to be a lot of these on movie soundtracks. Off the top of my head:

The Cure - Charlotte Sometimes
Alice Cooper - The man behind the mask (Jason Vorhees, Friday the 13th)
Sisters of Mercy - Ozymandias
Simon & Garfunkel - Mrs. Robinson
Gorillaz - Dirty Harry
Queen - Flash (Gordon)
Nightwish - Phantom of the Opera

[Spoke]

Romeo and Juliet - Dire Straits
(Just Like) Romeo and Juliet - The Reflections

[jayjay]

Romeo and Juliet - Indigo Girls

[Hazle Weatherfield]

Romeo and Heathcliff - "No Myth," by Michael Penn
Romeo and Juliet, Sampson and Delilah - "Fire" by The Pointer Sisters (?)

[Spoke]

Frankenstein - Edgar Winter Group
Werewolves of London - Warren Zevon
The Vampire Lestat - Moon over Bourbon Street - Sting

[Lute Skywatcher]

Originally Posted by spoke-

Werewolves of London - Warren Zevon

Isn't this about werewolves in general?

[Ethilrist]

I am Iron Man.

[Telperion]

Originally Posted by Ethilrist

I am Iron Man.

I thought about that too, but apparently that's a different iron man for copyright reasons...

[Drain Bead]

"Carlotta Valdez" -- Harvey Danger (based on Vertigo)
Good tune, too.

[SiXSwordS]

Charlie Brown — the Coasters

Superstar (Jesus)— Andrew Lloyd Webber
d&r

[Lute Skywatcher]

Originally Posted by SiXSwordS

Charlie Brown — the Coasters

Not the same as the comic strip character.

[SiXSwordS]

You're a good man Charlie Brown — Clark Gesner

[Jenaroph]

Ramble On by Led Zepplin has a verse that mentions Gollum.

[Spoke]

Originally Posted by Lute Skywatcher

Isn't this about werewolves in general?

You know any non-fictional werewolves?

[SiXSwordS]

I'm not sure if this counts, but the Cure song, Killing an Arab is based on the Albert Camus novel, the Stranger and is sung from the persepctive of Meursault.

[Spoke]

Don't Stand So Close to Me - The Police

It's no use
He sees her
He starts to shake and cough
just like the
old man in
that book by Nabakov

"old man in that book by Nabakov" = Humbert Humbert, thr protagonist of Lolita

[Jimmy Joe Meager]

"Quinn the Eskimo"? -- Bob Dylan

[Lute Skywatcher]

Originally Posted by spoke-

You know any non-fictional werewolves?

Originally Posted by elfkin477

these songs should be about specific characters: Dracula or Casper, yes, vampires or ghosts in general, no.

[Spoke]

The song title is a reference to the movie Werewolf of London, ergo, it refernces a specific character.

Ta da!

[descamisado]

Uhm,

Superman (It's Not Easy), by . . . . I can't think of the band right now.

[descamisado]

Cat's In The Cradle -- Harry Chapin (Silver Spoon, Little Boy Blue, Man in the Moon)

[Bob Ducca]

Originally Posted by Mudshark

Daria - Cake

Who does the song Daria refer to?

If you're alluding to the animated show "Daria," I believe the CAKE song predates the show by a year or two.

I'll add:

Barenaked Ladies - "One Week" - Mentions Aquaman and Sailor Moon.

[Drain Bead]

Originally Posted by 5-4-Fighting

Uhm,

Superman (It's Not Easy), by . . . . I can't think of the band right now.

*snort*

[TheVioletCreep]

Superman (It's not easy) is Five For Fighting.

Tom Sawyer - Rush

[KneadToKnow]

Originally Posted by TheVioletCreep

Superman (It's not easy) is Five For Fighting.

Welcome to the joke.

[Projammer]

The Hollywood Argyles: Alley-Oop. Also performed by the Beach Boys.

[batsto]

Iron Maiden's 'To Tame a Land' is about Dune, and mentions some of the characters by name.
Anthrax's "I Am the Law" is about Judge Dredd.
Metallica's "one" is sung from the perspective of the character in "Johnny Got His Gun"


Does Johnny B. Goode count as a fictional character?

[gigi]

Originally Posted by Hazle Weatherfield

Romeo and Juliet, Sampson and Delilah - "Fire" by The Pointer Sisters (?)

Yep, and written by Bruce Springsteen.

Does The Ballad of Lucy Jordan count if it's a sung version of a Shel Silverstein poem?

[Spoke]

The Devil Went Down to Georgia - Charlie Daniels Band

[elfkin477]

"Daria" by Cake is not older than the TV show character (though "Daria" didn't start airing until 1997, the character had existed on "Bevis and Butthead" for years at that point). It's pretty decidedly not about the character, though, either.

[Projammer]

May be too generic, but Queen did several songs for/about Highlander.

Princes of the Universe
Who Wants to Live Forever.
Gimme the Prize
Don't Lose Your Head

[ExTank]

Maxwell's Silver Hammer, by the Beatles.