I’m listening to the Flowerpornoes’ “Mikado” (sorry, no available link). Just like another German song, Monopoli by Klaus Lage, it’s a metaphorical song taking a popular game as a motive. Another one is “Games Without Frontiers” by Peter Gabriel, after the European TV games of the seventies. Then there are of course a myriad songs about card games, like every iteration of “Stagger Lee/Stack O’ Lee”. I don’t want to include sports. So what are others?
Centerfield - John Fogerty
The Turn of a Friendly Card - The Alan Parsons Project
Snakes and Ladders - Men At Work
Happy Families - XTC
and everything on the Pac-Man Fever album by Buckner & Garcia.
Pinball Wizard, by The Who.
I Lost at Jeopardy, by Weird Al.
Devil Went Down to Georgia, maybe?
Pᗣᗧ•••MᗣN Fever, natch.
Footballers Have Feelings Too by Christian Fitness (sounds kinda like if John Cooper Clarke had a really powerful funk bass player backing him)
Also:
Still the Same - Bob Seger
Also:
Now You’re a Hero - Reachground
It is Pitch Dark - MC Frontalot
(Your post spurred my memory)
Queen of Hearts by Juice Newton
One verse of Desperado by the Eagles
Dropkick Me, Jesus by Bobby Bare
I guess lots of the songs in Chess (which I haven’t seen) qualify, including the awesome “One Night in Bangkok”.
There was “Vi spelar DotA” if you were in Scandinavia…
Dreadlock Holiday by 10CC. “I don’t like cricket; I love it”
(Can’t link - on my phone at work)
From rock band UFO there’s Chains Chains (Jack of Diamonds is a gambling man…) and famously Motörhead had Ace of Spades.
If fortune telling counts as a game Rainbow had Tarot Woman.
TCMF-2L
Scottish new wave band The Skids (some members went on to become Big Country) had a song called Circus Games. The lyrics referenced cards and gambling. Queen had Play The Game referencing the games lovers play. Swedish band The Cardigans had My Favourite Game which also referenced the game of love.
TCMF-2L
*Dun Ringill *by Jethro Tull (Poker, I think)
Man on the Moon by REM (Game of Life, Monopoly, 21, checkers, chess, Twister, Risk)
Risk! by The Spizzles
All I want For Christmas is a Dukla Prague Away Kit by Half Man Half Biscuit (Scalextric and Subbuteo)
Calistan by Frank Black (pachinko, pachisi)
“Center Field” by John Fogarty.
I thought Stagger Lee was about a gangster in turn-of-the-century St. Louis?
“Double Dutch” by Liz Phair
“Counting Flowers on the Wall” by the Statler Brothers:. “Playing solitaire till dawn/with a deck of 51.”
I believe it’s actually called Whip-smart. It riffs off Malcolm McClaren’s Double Dutch
At that, Poker Face goes on and on about wanting to hold ‘em and fold ‘em (and bluffing and raising and so on and so forth). Plus mention of Russian Roulette!