Lyle Lovett’s L.A. County. The singer travels to L.A. County with his old friend by his side. Only the old friend is a .44 and he shoots his ex in church as she’s marrying someone else.
In one concert, Lovett took requests live. A woman asked for the song, saying they played it at their wedding. Lovett was nonplussed. “Don’t you even know what that song is about?” “We changed the lyrics a little.”
Lovett also wrote “Nobody Knows Me,” where the singer praises how much his wife loves him, then ends up cheating on her.
I just listened to a Patreon bonus episode of the History of Rock in 500 Songs podcast
about Randy Newman. The narrator in about 90% of all the songs Newman ever wrote qualify for this thread.
Same for me. I listened to that song over and over again as a teen, and never once thought he burned the house down. It never even crossed my mind as a possibility. I thought he lit a fire in the fireplace to warm up the place: i.e. the actions of a normal person, not those of a psychopath.
That is quite seriously fucked up. Maybe we should be discussing jerkish songwriters.
McCartney has always had a pathetic desire to be seen as a bad-ass, and not be seen as the nice-guy Beatle. His revisionist views of everything Beatle-ey (including who wrote what) are getting sad and tiresome.