The Lana Del Ray song Video Games references video games (No! Really?) and also mentions playing pool and darts.
TCMF-2L
The OP rules out songs about sport which eliminates a vast amount of UK songs about football. Usually by football teams often in partnership with established musical acts.
However how about snooker? There have been a few snooker songs and perhaps the most famous is Snooker Loopy featuring most of the (then) top players and pub rock legends Chas and Dave. In the UK in 1986 it got as high as Number 6 in the singles chart.
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What an opportunity to post a link to Tumbling Dice by the Stones.
Never going to turn that one down.
j
Yes, but in most versions, it’s about a poker game leading to murder.
Actually two verses if you count the Reprise on the original album
The queen of diamonds let you down,
She was just an empty fable
The queen of hearts you say you never met
Your twisted fate has found you out
And it’s fin’lly turned the tables
Stole your dreams and paid you with regret.
Jack of Diamonds by Blind Lemon Jefferson and a whole lot of other singers.
The song’s title came from the television series (and the line “it’s a knockout” came from the British version of the show), but the song itself is not about those kinds of games; it’s about war and diplomacy.
How about Solitaire, written by Neil Sedaka and covered by Andy Williams and the Carpenters, among others. It uses the game as an allegory for a man who lost his love “through his indifference”.
And solitaire’s the only game in town
And every road that takes him, takes him down
And by himself, it’s easy to pretend
He’ll never love again
And keeping to himself he plays the game
Without her love it always ends the same
While life goes on around him everywhere
He’s playing solitaire
I know, but Gabriel took the TV games as a metaphor for politics and diplomacy, and that counts for me for this thread.
How about Jim Croce singing about how a pool-shootin’ boy, name of Willie McCoy, got warned that You Don’t Mess Around With Jim?
(One way or another, there’s a valuable lesson to be had about not hustlin’ people strange to you — even if you do got a two-piece custom-made pool cue.)
Speaking of which, there is also “Jack o’ Diamonds” aka “Rye Whiskey”, a traditional song which seems to have a million different variations. The one my parents were familiar with seems to be Jules Allen’s version.
I’ve Seen All Good People by Yes, at least the Your Move part, has lots of chess references
Firelink is a couple of guys who write progressive black metal songs about the Dark Souls video game. They’re really good (if you’re into black metal, that is; if you’re not you prolly won’t wanna listen to much of this).
Wicked Game by Chris Isaac
To go literal, in 1981 a recording group named Buckner & Garcia recorded the album https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pac-Man_Fever_(album) in which every song was about one of the top 10 arcade games at the time. It went gold.
That’s really cool. I was a 13 year old connoisseur of arcade games in 1981 and would have loved the album, but somehow Pac Man Fever never crossed over to Germany (the single and the album, that is, the game certainly did).
Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts by Bob Dylan.
Leroy looked like a jigsaw puzzle with a couple of pieces gone.
“Desperado”:
Don’t you draw the Queen of Diamonds, boy
She’ll beat you if she’s able
You know the Queen of Hearts is always your best bet
Good one! Also his Rambling Gambling Willie. I love both songs.
Straight Down the Middle, Bing Crosby re: the game of golf.
This song isn’t just ***about ***a game… it ***is ***a game!
While it’s not about games, REM’s somewhat enigmatic “Man on the Moon” references The Game of Life, Monopoly, Twenty-one, Checkers, Chess, Twister, and Risk. The point being that Andy was just playing games with all of us, perhaps?