Please allow me to introduce myself
I’m a man of wealth and taste
I’ve been around for a long, long years
Stole many a man’s soul and faith…
Let’s not forget “I Don’t Like Mondays,” by the Boomtown Rats. Snopes gives us a little background here:
The song itself, if you’ve never heard it, is quite a pleasant little melody with tinkling piano, a soothing vocal line, and references to “Daddy” and “Sweet Sixteen.” If you had it on in the background, you’d probably not notice it. But its beginning innocence and hints at something to come only makes it all the more jarring when the vocal gets edgier and we get to this verse:
All the playing’s stopped in the playground now
She wants to play with her toys a while.
And school’s out early and soon we’ll be learning
And the lesson today is how to die…
A couple by Steve Earle come to mind.
Billy Austin:
“I held up a filling station
Like I’d done a hundred times
The kid done like I told him
He lay face down on the floor
guess I’ll never know what made me
Turn and walk back through that door
The shot rang out like thunder
My ears rang like a bell
No one came runnin’
So I called the cops myself
Took their time to get there
And I guess I could’a run
I knew I should be feeling something
But I never shed tear one”
And Taneytown:
“I ran down Division Street
Some of them boys followed me
Down to the railroad track
Four of them and I can’t fight
But I had my old Randall knife
I cut that boy and I never did look back”
Although, in fairness to the narrator of Taneytown, you could say the killing was in self defense.
Um…I don’t think this is a murder song. And this lyric doesn’t indicate murder.
You did read the OP right? :dubious:
Kim by Eminem
In the other thread I mentioned a lyric from MArty Robbins El Paso
“One night a wild young cowboy came in. Wild as the west Texas wiiiiinnnnddd
Dashing and daring a drink he was sharing with wicked Felina the girl that I loved.
So in anger I chanlleged right for the love of this maiden
Down went his hand for the gun that he wore
My challenge was answered in less than a heartbeat.
The handsome young stranger lay dead on the floor.”
I never quite understood why a gunfight in a salloon was considered murder but sho nuff, later he is killed by a posse while trying to make it to Rose’s back door.
And I thought he loved Felina :eek:
Marty had another called Big Iron in which a Texas ranger kills an outlaw so I guess that’s not really a murder song.
Harry Chapin’s Sniper
OOO here’s a good one.
"Hungry as hell no food to eat
And Joe said that he would sell his soul
For just a piece of meat
Water enough to drink for two
And Joe said to me, I’ll take a swig
And then save some for you
Timothy, Timothy Joe was looking at you
Timothy, Timothy god what did we do"
One song I liked and thought was very out of place in country music.
A man excused from the army in 44 for medical reasons is called a coward by the local towns folk {maybe the whole county}
and one day he extracts revenge. The song is called Turn It On, Turn It On, Turn It On
How about Tickin’ by John and Taupin.
Taupin is a brilliant lyricist.
“I Never Picked Cotton” by Roy Clark.
I could be wrong but isn’t 1 out of 3 rap “songs” about murder??
and then there’s Wierd Als
Thats the night Santa went crazy. Murder for laughs.
or Everybody Run, the HomeComing Queen has a gun.
by Downtown Julie Brown
Pretty Polly by Ralph Stanley.
You reminded me. Harry Chapin’s “Bummer” would also count, I think, since the song’s protagonist dies in a hail of police gunfire at the end of the song.
[interviewed neighbor]Y’know, Harry was always such a quiet and polite singer/songwriter, kind of shy but a nice fellow. How he ever came to write these songs, I have no idea. [/interviewed neighbor] 
As Taneytown continues, the narrator escapes, but the crowd finds another young black man and lynches him for the crime commited by the singer.
Month went by without a word
Somebody down the holler heard
About that boy they hung
He begged those men to spare his life
But I dropped my bloody Randall knife
He picked it up so they thought he was the one
Earle’s Billy and Bonnie, the Devil’s Right Hand, Justice in Ontario and Copperhead Road also feature murders and/or lynchings. It’s probably a good thing old Steve can get all that out by writing songs.
It’s (IMO) one of his weaker songs, but Dylan’s the Lonesome Death of Hattie Caroll is about a murder in Baltimore. The Grateful Dead have done a lot of them as well - the afore-mentioned Stagger Lee, Dupree’s Diamond Blues, Mexicali Blues, El Paso, Jack Straw, Me and My Uncle… They’ve got an awfuly violent catalog for a bunch of hippies.
Feleena, another Marty Robbins song also has her suicide after his death.
Feleena knelt near him, to hold and to hear him
When she felt the warm blood that flowed from the wound in his side
He raised to kiss her and she heard him whisper
“Never forget me - Faleena it’s over, goodbye.”
Quickly she grabbed for, the six-gun that he wore
And screamin’ in anger and placin’ the gun to her breast
Bury us both deep and maybe we’ll find peace
And pullin’ the trigger, she fell 'cross the dead cowboy’s chest.
He had several songs dealing with death from murder, suicide, and accident.
Yes, I did. Please to be reading all of the lyrics here , and especially:
As does the young man in Elton John’s “Ticking.”
Murder was the Case (that they gave me) by Snoop Dogg.
The fascinating thing about this song is that Snoop Dogg was actually tried (and acquitted) for murder in 1993. His bodyguard was represented by Johnnie Cochran.
Downtown Julie Brown is not the woman who sang The Homecoming Queen’s Got a Gun.
Why the quote marks around “songs”?
But, yes since you ask, yes, rap has its fair share of murder songs, just like rock, country, blues, jazz, folk and nearly every other form of music does. Let’s take a look at a couple:
In the first verse, Murs explains he no longer carries a gun:
Now I’m all punked up with a steroid trigger
Cause most of y’all are easy just some paranoid niggaz
Used to walk with a gun but I never did use it
What’s the point of holdin’ heat if you ain’t gon’ shoot it
In the second verse, Murs recounts a late summer night when he and a friend get into an argument with another man:
[LYRICS DELETED BY MODERATOR]
In the third verse, a year later, Murs finds a chance at revenge after visiting his friend’s graveside:
[LYRICS DELETED BY MODERATOR]
In the final chorus, however, Murs explains that though he thought he had the solution, he is "haunted by remorse, " and he “wished he hadn’t done it.”
But let’s not get bogged down in moralism. Just as entertaining is the gleeful thuggish nihilism of Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg’s cop-killing Deep Cover:
Six fo’ five was the time on the clock,
When me and my homey bailed in the parking lot.