I love Bobby Gentry’s Ode to Billy Joe, a suicide ballad (a subset of murder ballads) done by a singer/songwriter who had a beautiful voice and played a wicked guitar. The use of a specific date and well-described place anchors it in reality and adds to its power.
What other songs use dates as plot devices?
Note: If there are hijacks regarding what was thrown off the bridge these things happen.
Do you remember the 21st night of September?
The third of September
“Papa Was a Rollin’ Stone”
It was the dark of the moon on the sixth of June…
Convoy.
Tom Paxton’s Born on the Fourth of July
The U2 song, Pride (In the Name of Love), mentions the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr on April 4.
Now the first of December was covered with snow
So was the turnpike from Stockbridge to Boston…
-James Taylor, Sweet Baby James
…On the first of March,
On the holiday…
Sufjan Stevens, “Casimir Pulaski Day”
“December 7th, 1941
Divine Wind silhouette
Against the rising sun”
Aloha, Sayonara - The Honolulu Mountain Daffodils. A very specific time (and place, of course)
“Today is the FIRST of SEPTEMBER
See you at your graveside, baby”
I’ll meet you in Poland, baby by Scraping Foetus Off the Wheel. Another very specific time and place…
The Night Chicago Died.
-Paper Lace
(no actual date is mentioned, and the showdown between Capone and the Chicago PD was fictionalized)
Then it doesn’t count. :o
“Saturday, here in the park, thinkin’ it’s the fourth of July…”
By Chicago Transit Authority/Chicago.
Not a specific date, but pretty close, especially since it also mentions the year: “December, 1963,” by the Four Seasons.
“Oh, what a night
Late December, back in '63”
Fourth of July, Asbury Park (Sandy) by Bruce Springsteen
“Remember” by John Lennon (“Remember, Remember the Fifth of November.”)
“New Year’s Day” by U2.
Any song that mentions Christmas.
Similarly, Peter Gabriel’s Biko has:
September, '77
Port Elizabeth, weather fine
Yesterday–Beatles
Not always. The Bee Gee’s “First of May” mentions Christmas trees.
Ironically, on that same day in June that Billie Joe McAllister committed suicide, Neil Diamond was deflowered by an older woman (in the song “Desiree”):
“It was the third of June
On that summer’s day
When I became a man
At the hands of a girl almost twice my age”
There’s a song celebrating my birthday?