# Music acts whose songs tend to be "quirky" -- not just about love or sex. **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [January 23, 2011, 4:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/music-acts-whose-songs-tend-to-be-quirky-not-just-about-love-or-sex/568624 "2011-01-23T04:25:50Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 17\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Edwardina](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5f8ce5/32.png) [@Edwardina](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Edwardina)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2011, 1:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/music-acts-whose-songs-tend-to-be-quirky-not-just-about-love-or-sex/568624/61 "2011-01-25T01:42:35Z")
Ween were the first to come to mind. I can’t tell you what the hell their songs _are_ about, but I’m pretty sure that 90% of them are not about love. They are the very definition of quirky. Talking Heads cover a lot of different territory; I would say a great deal of their stuff is not love-related. XTC? I admit I am not familiar with their full catalog, but it doesn’t seem rife with love songs. A lot of metal/punk/grunge bands fit this category. Heavy acts like Black Sabbath, Metallica, Clutch, The Melvins, Tool, Nirvana, A Perfect Circle, Mars Volta, Rage Against The Machine, System Of A Down, etc. Not saying they have no songs about love or sex, but I would say _most_ are about other topics. I don’t know if you would call them “quirky,” though. My boyfriend has some little known bands on his playlist that he says suit this category of “quirky,” with few if any love songs: Estradasphere, The Secret Chiefs 3, and Trevor Dunn’s Trio Convulsant (\<— I am not making this up), Infectious Grooves, Fantomas, Mr. Bungle, Tomahawk, all the Les Claypool side projects (i.e., Colonel Claypool’s Fearless Flying Frog Brigade, Bucket of Bernie Brains, etc), and The Deli Creeps. One might also throw Buckethead into the mix. He doesn’t seem to be much for the lurve music. ---
**Author:** ![Crotalus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crotalus/32/41_2.png) [@Crotalus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crotalus)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2011, 1:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/music-acts-whose-songs-tend-to-be-quirky-not-just-about-love-or-sex/568624/62 "2011-01-25T01:48:29Z")
Mark Knopfler has songs about Ray Kroc and Mason and Dixon. ---
**Author:** ![Snowboarder\_Bo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/snowboarder_bo/32/229_2.png) [@Snowboarder\_Bo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snowboarder_Bo)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2011, 2:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/music-acts-whose-songs-tend-to-be-quirky-not-just-about-love-or-sex/568624/63 "2011-01-25T02:32:13Z")
**Slayer** has never written a love song. Or a ballad of any kind. ---
**Author:** ![blondebear](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/blondebear/32/1022_2.png) [@blondebear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/blondebear)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2011, 2:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/music-acts-whose-songs-tend-to-be-quirky-not-just-about-love-or-sex/568624/64 "2011-01-25T02:47:11Z")
Blue Öyster Cult might qualify. They had songs like\* ME262\*, _Transmaniacon MC_,\* I’m on the Lamb But I Ain’t No Sheep\*, _Godzilla_, _Harvester of Eyes_, _7 Screaming Diz-Busters_, _Flaming Telepaths_, and _The Great Sun Jester_. ---
**Author:** ![ShallowEnd](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a4c791/32.png) [@ShallowEnd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ShallowEnd)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2011, 7:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/music-acts-whose-songs-tend-to-be-quirky-not-just-about-love-or-sex/568624/65 "2011-01-26T07:15:30Z")
I thought of the [Rainmakers](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMnnPI5GUps), but then my mind wandered off to sex and love, so that’s all I got. OH wait, there’s [Red Gallagher](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iStM3vKITaM), I love this song and [Haywood Banks](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gq01UYiMyHg) as well. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2011, 10:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/music-acts-whose-songs-tend-to-be-quirky-not-just-about-love-or-sex/568624/66 "2011-01-26T10:33:30Z")
From the Spanish side of the dictionary, several whose long discographies are all over the map subject-wise (and in Alaska’s case, style-wise; she believes in other people’s rules like I believe there are smurfs living inside my laptop): **Alaska** , in her many incarnations. From “the revolt of the household appliances” (_la rebelión de los electrodomésticos_) to “bloody pearls” (_perlas ensangrentadas_, a pulpy murder mystery), via her collaborations with **Loquillo** , namely “I’ve got a rock’n’roll band” (_tengo una banda de rockanrol_) and “I want a truck” (_quiero un camión_). With or without Trogloditas, he’s also given us songs like “_rock’n’roll star_” (about the rise to fame and its price), “elvis’ ghost” (_el fantasma de Elvis_), covers of the Hawaii 5-0 theme or of Jacques Brel songs… and **Mecano** ; now, while a lot of their songs involve love or sex, it is often in quirky or unusual ways. “Woman vs/facing woman” (_mujer contra mujer_, about lesbian love) and “stereosexual” (_estereosexual_, a song sung in the first person about a guy who wakes up in bed with another dude after a night of partying and his mental processes) join “_Hawaii, Bombay_” (where the writer wanted to travel), “NYC is no fun” (_no hay marcha en Nueva York_, about a bad experience there) or “this graveyard isn’t serious” (_no es serio este cementerio_). Thanks for this thread, by the way: I’ve realized that a large amount of my favorite groups could be listed in it - which should be no surprise, given my general lack of interest for the “romance” genres, but still, I hadn’t realized it. ---
**Author:** ![WOOKINPANUB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wookinpanub/32/132_2.png) [@WOOKINPANUB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WOOKINPANUB)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2011, 2:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/music-acts-whose-songs-tend-to-be-quirky-not-just-about-love-or-sex/568624/67 "2011-01-26T14:38:31Z")
**Oingo Boingo** is the first that come to my mind. Sure, they have a song about “Violent Love”, and a song about loving"Little Girls" but none of the usual mushy stuff. **Weezer** also seems to be very quirky, though admittedly I only know the stuff one would hear on the radio. ---
**Author:** ![stpauler](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9d8465/32.png) [@stpauler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/stpauler)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2011, 2:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/music-acts-whose-songs-tend-to-be-quirky-not-just-about-love-or-sex/568624/68 "2011-01-26T14:47:47Z")
John Southworth-[Mars, Pennsylvania:](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Southworth_(musician)) > [@](#): > > Southworth’s signature debut album “Mars Pennsylvania”, co-produced with Jono Grant, was released in 1996 on Water Street/AM Records in his native Canada, and later in 1998, on Bar None Records in the U.S and Quattro in Japan. The record received rave critical acclaim. One reviewer said, “If Burt Bacharach and Bobby Vinton had a sexually ambiguous alien love child, John Southworth would be it. Damn odd music. But catchy and wonderful at the same time.” Exclaim Magazine called it “the most original Canadian debut album since Mary Margaret O’Hara’s ‘Miss America’”; the Toronto Star called him a “pop poet”. > [@](#): > > [Song Review by Stewart Mason](http://www.allmusic.com/song/pumpkins-t4166118) > Like most of the songs on John Southworth’s Mars Pennsylvania, “Pumpkins” mixes lush, ornate orchestrations with an oddball lyric balanced between comic invention and melancholy introspection. The song seems to be set in some sort of mythical mountain town, the kind of community where trends and fashions arrive years late if at all, where the town as a whole has been slowly dying since the wellspring of the local economy shut down and the teenagers unfortunate enough to have been born there are simply waiting to get out by any means necessary. Southworth sketches this fairly complex scene with a remarkable economy of words, suggesting more than he describes in lines like “We’ve all got a step-dad or two/But there’s still a Cleaver in me and you” and turning the repeated refrain “Are the pumpkins all right?” into a sort of elegy for the town, its inhabitants and their dashed hopes. In the ironically hopeful-sounding upward-modulating middle eight, Southworth sweetly trills “All I want for Christmas is some fake ID/And some anti-depressants in my stocking,” a dead-on summation of the hemmed-in high schooler’s mindset. Opening with a mournful horn and woodwind section before leading into a banjo and ukulele-based verse with flügelhorn accents, the arrangement sounds directly inspired by Brian Wilson’s more ornate late-'60s work, though Southworth’s unconventional voice more closely resembles that of Wilson’s old partner Van Dyke Parks. One of the highlights of a superb album, “Pumpkins” is a gloriously sad evocation of arrested adolescence. ---
**Author:** ![Cubsfan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f4b2a3/32.png) [@Cubsfan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cubsfan)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2011, 3:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/music-acts-whose-songs-tend-to-be-quirky-not-just-about-love-or-sex/568624/69 "2011-01-26T15:18:26Z")
This is kind of silly question. The majority of music acts don’t sing about love and sex. Maybe the question should have been about pop music or top 40 acts. 99.99% of metal acts dont sing about love and sex for instance and that’s just one genre. ---
**Author:** ![Tom\_Scud](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/f08c70/32.png) [@Tom\_Scud](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tom_Scud)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2011, 3:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/music-acts-whose-songs-tend-to-be-quirky-not-just-about-love-or-sex/568624/70 "2011-01-26T15:18:48Z")
> [@Garfield226](#): > > **Jonathan Coulton** , of course. Sure, some of the songs are about love or sex (“First of May”?), but then you’ve got “Mandlebrot Set” (about the eponymous equation and the guy who found it) and “A Talk With George” (an inspiring recounting of the life of George Plimpton) among many others. A fair number of his standard songs are love songs, of a sort, though; Code Monkey, The Future Soon, Skullcrusher Mountain, I Feel Fantastic (sort of). ---
**Author:** ![PookahMacPhellimey](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pookahmacphellimey/32/3175_2.png) [@PookahMacPhellimey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PookahMacPhellimey)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2011, 4:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/music-acts-whose-songs-tend-to-be-quirky-not-just-about-love-or-sex/568624/71 "2011-01-26T16:05:04Z")
> [@gaffa](#): > > In a thread like this, just stating a name is a bit pointless without examples. Not so sure. Saw the thread title and though: “Great, an opportunity to talk about Kate Bush”. But I didn’t have time. So I just posted her name. And you did the rest, so that I could read about it. Not very pointless, but hey, suspend me if you wish to. Now that I am here anyway, how about Fever Ray, whose wonderful album was said to be inspired by lack of sleep after the birth of her child. ---
**Author:** ![Quercus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/7ab992/32.png) [@Quercus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quercus)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2011, 6:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/music-acts-whose-songs-tend-to-be-quirky-not-just-about-love-or-sex/568624/72 "2011-01-26T18:50:57Z")
70 threads without the grandfather of quirk-rock /quirk-folk, Jonathan Richman? Songs about (for instance): Dancing in lesbian bars (much more cutting edge in 1990 than right now, thankfully), why riding the bus is better than flying, how Pablo Picasso picked up girls, how much time his wife spends riding horses, and having nice neighbors. [Not an exhaustive list: anyone feel free to add your own favorite] ---
**Author:** ![Tixenfleaz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e9a140/32.png) [@Tixenfleaz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tixenfleaz)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2011, 7:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/music-acts-whose-songs-tend-to-be-quirky-not-just-about-love-or-sex/568624/73 "2011-01-26T19:25:28Z")
Certainly not as quirky as some of the bands noted, but I’ll throw in **Iron Maiden** I was a knuckle dragging doped-up teenage metalhead. But I knew more about Coleridge poems, the Crimean War, and the Battle Of Britain than most of my teachers, thanks to Maiden and the local library. Considering how slavishly I followed them, I wish they did have a few songs about love and sex. I might’ve scored more. Or at all, to be honest. (“Charlotte The Harlot” doesn’t count.) ---
**Author:** ![The\_Conqueror\_Worm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@The\_Conqueror\_Worm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Conqueror_Worm)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2011, 6:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/music-acts-whose-songs-tend-to-be-quirky-not-just-about-love-or-sex/568624/74 "2011-01-27T18:49:12Z")
While they do have songs about sex and love, you’d be hard pressed to find more awesome quirkiness than [Southern Culture on the Skids](http://www.scots.com/#). Courtesy of YouTube [Eight Piece Box](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WbqDgTNwRA&feature=related) Just one of SCOTS tributes to fried chicken. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2011, 7:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/music-acts-whose-songs-tend-to-be-quirky-not-just-about-love-or-sex/568624/75 "2011-01-27T19:18:49Z")
**Rick Wakeman** Just look at the album titles (and track names), let alone the lyrics. \*Six Wives of Henry VIII A Journey to the Center of the Earth Myths and Legends of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table The Seven Wonders of the World Return to the Center of the Earth\* ---
**Author:** ![HeadNinja](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b4bc9f/32.png) [@HeadNinja](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HeadNinja)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2011, 9:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/music-acts-whose-songs-tend-to-be-quirky-not-just-about-love-or-sex/568624/76 "2011-01-27T21:00:23Z")
Too Much Joy, addressing such important issues as Making Fun of Bums (Bad Karma thing to do) Connecticut And hats. They do occasionally sing about love, but when they do it is awesomely odd. (Donna Everywhere, Crush Story) ---
**Author:** ![Malthus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/85f322/32.png) [@Malthus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malthus)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2011, 10:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/music-acts-whose-songs-tend-to-be-quirky-not-just-about-love-or-sex/568624/77 "2011-01-27T22:01:44Z")
> [@bup](#): > > No, it was (if I recall correctly) about a real guy who got caught after a serial string of underwear snatching. Is this a reference to the Pink Floyd song _Arnold Layne_, or another song? > **[Arnold Layne](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arnold_Layne)** > > "Arnold Layne" is a song by English rock band Pink Floyd. Released on 10 March 1967, it was the band's first single and was written by Syd Barrett. > The song is about a man whose strange hobby is stealing women's lingerie from washing lines. According to Roger Waters, "Arnold Layne" was actually based on a real person: "Both my mother and Syd's mother had students as lodgers because there was a girls' college up the road so there were constantly great lines of bras and knickers on our washing... [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/music-acts-whose-songs-tend-to-be-quirky-not-just-about-love-or-sex/568624.md?page=3)