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.
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.
I thought of the Rainmakers, but then my mind wandered off to sex and love, so that’s all I got. OH wait, there’s Red Gallagher, I love this song and Haywood Banks as well.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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]
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.
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. Courtesy of YouTube Eight Piece Box Just one of SCOTS tributes to fried chicken.