Murder Ballads

[CarnalK]

First murder ballad that pops into my head is always El Paso by old time cowboy crooner Marty Robbins.

[MadTheSwine]

Excitable Boy-Warren Zevon

Cocaine Blues

[Tangent]

“You’re All I Need” by Mötley Crüe

You’re all I need make you only mine
I love you so I set you free
I had to take your life
You’re all I need, you’re all I need
And I loved you but you didn’t love me

[Guest-starring_Id]

“Run For Your Life” - Beatles

Ain’t That Love - Scratch Acid

Lay Screaming - SA

Fish Fry - Big Black

Cher’s distinctly execrable Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)

“Brutally Morbid Axe of Satan” - AxCx

[Wheelz]

“Delia’s Gone” by Johnny Cash is a good one.

First time I shot her
I shot her in the side
Hard to watch her suffer
But with the second shot she died
Delia’s gone, one more round
Delia’s gone

[Loach]

Guns and Roses “I Used to Love Her” is a bit on the nose I think.

@Treppenwitz

You know, I really wonder if this is a gun-culture country vs non-gun-country culture thing. I was virtually queuing at 9AM waiting for the record shop to open in order to buy the album, so I’ve known the song well for more than 40 years, and this is the first time that the thought that this might possibly be about murder had crossed my mind. Or been pushed across my mind.

FWIW, my interpretation - the narrator musing on meeting an ex whose subsequent choices of men have gone badly wrong. It’s painful to see her as she is now, to the point that he wonders if she would be better off dead (or perhaps, that it would be easier for him to take if she were dead). The narrator would have been her best choice because of his decency - “My aim is true”.

Now, in light of this discussion, I grant that the line may have a double meaning - artist’s prerogative - but a murder ballad? No, I don’t get that at all - I’m with the writer on that one.

j

Although I never touched a gun until I joined the Army I am from that gun-culture country. It never occurred to me until this thread that some thought it was about murder.

[Son_of_a_Rich]

Bessie Smith, Send me to the Electric Chair.

[Beckdawrek]

@CarnalK

First murder ballad that pops into my head is always El Paso by old time cowboy crooner Marty Robbins.

‘Big Iron’ by Marty Robbins.

[Son_of_a_Rich]

@CarnalK

First murder ballad that pops into my head is always El Paso by old time cowboy crooner Marty Robbins.

I always thought it sounded like self-defence: “Down went his hand for the gun that he wore…”

[EinsteinsHund]

Knoxville Girl:

Louvin Brothers’ version

Lemonhead’s version

[Backwater_Under_Duck]

I met her on the mountain.
There I took her life.
Met her on the mountain.
Stabbed her with my knife.

If you have to ask, Tom Dooley, Kingston Trio version.

[Sam_Stone]

Take the Money and Run - Steve Miller
Tweeter and the Monkey Man - Bob Dylan

[Dale_Sams]

@Kyrie_Eleison

Nick Cave’s got an entire album of 'em: Murder Ballads. I quite like it.

Kristin Hersh too

[GIGObuster]

Because I see examples of murder ballads with no lovers, then I point at I Don’t Like Mondays by The Boomtown Rats. “Written by Bob Geldof and Johnnie Fingers, the piano ballad[5] was the band’s second single to reach number one on the UK chart.”

I Don't Like Mondays

According to Geldof, he wrote the song after reading a telex report[6] at Georgia State University’s campus radio station, WRAS, on the shooting spree of 16-year-old Brenda Ann Spencer, who fired at children in a school playground at Grover Cleveland Elementary School in San Diego, California, on 29 January 1979

[Saintly_Loser]

Buenos Noches From a Lonely Room, Dwight Yoakam

Long Black Veil, Lefty Frizell (and Johnny Cash, and The Chieftans (with Mick Jagger singing, of all people)).

[Tangent]

The Road Goes on Forever - Robert Earl Keen

[Beckdawrek]

Black Jack David.
The Carter Family
Bob Dylan
And some one else.

[MadTheSwine]

@Sam_Stone

Tweeter and the Monkey Man - Bob Dylan

Traveling Wilburys

[EinsteinsHund]

@MadTheSwine

Traveling Wilburys

(Nitpicking the nitpick) But written and sung by Bob Dylan.

[MadTheSwine]

@EinsteinsHund

(Nitpicking the nitpick) But written and sung by Bob Dylan.

So it is A Bob Dylan song? What album was it on?

Tweeter and the Monkey Man" was really [written by] Tom Petty and Bob [Dylan]. Well, Jeff [Lynne] and I were there too, but we were just sitting there around in the kitchen, and he was for some reason talking about all this stuff that didn’t make much sense to me, you know, it was that Americana kinda stuff and we got a tape cassette and put it on and then transcribed everything they were saying.

George Harrison