So I’m home sick with the flu today, and I start thinking about death. Then I start thinking about murder. Then I start thinking about songs about murder.
This is where you come in!
Let’s list all the songs about murder that we can think of.
The murder should occur within the timeframe of the song, either in the narration or “off-stage.” No songs about, like, some guy who happened to kill someone in the past (I’m thinking of some Tom Waits songs), unless the murder is an important plot-point in the song. Dig?
I’ll start.
All the songs on Nick Cave’s Murder Ballads album
Tom Waits – “The Fall of Troy,” “Murder in the Red Barn,” “Georgia Lee”
Firewater – “The Circus”
Pedro the Lion – “A Mind of Her Own,” “Never Leave a Job Half Done”
Neko Case – “Furnace Room Lullaby”
Lots of Scratch Acid and Jesus Lizard songs – “Lay Screaming,” “Crazy Dan,” “Horse,” “Mistletoe,” “Skull of a German,” “Puss” (maybe…unclear if the girl dies), etc.
PJ Harvey - “A Perfect Day Elise”
The Cure – “Killing an Arab,” “Like Cockatoos” (maybe)
Bob Dylan – “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll”
Nirvana – “Polly”
The Police – “Murder by Numbers”
Velvet Underground – “Murder Mystery”
Elvis Costello – “Kinder Murder” (maybe…what * is * this song about, anyway?)
Ice-T – “Cop Killer”
Jimi Hendrix – “Hey Joe”
Guns N Roses - “I Used to Love Her”.
Queen - “Bohemian Rhapsody”.
Ice T - “Colors”.
Johnny Cash - That song with the line "I killed a man in Reno just to watch him die.
Warren Zevon: “Excitable Boy” and “Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner”
The Rolling Stones: “Midnight Rambler”
Bob Dylan: “Hurricane”
Rod Stewart: “The Killing of Georgie (Pts 1 & 2)”
Cher: “Dark Lady”
Tom Jones: “Delilah”
Vickie Lawrence: “The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia”
Bruce Springsteen: “Point Blank”
Porter Waggoner: “The Cold Hard Facts of Life”
The Boomtown Rats: “I Don’t Like Mondays”
Sonny Boy Williamson: “Your Funeral, My Trial”
Richard & Linda Thompson: “Shoot Out the Lights” and “Did She Jump or Was She Pushed?”
The Band: “Long Black Veil”
The Doors: “The End”
The Beatles: “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer”
Cypress Hill: “How Could I Just Kill a Man”
Pat Hare: “I’m Gonna Murder My Baby” [Earns bonus points for Hare actually carrying out the threat in real life.]
The Ballad of Tom Joad (Parts I and II) by Woody Guthrie
Also,
“Stagger Lee,” or “Stackalee” or (insert six doxen spellings here) is a really old folk song and although many many people have recorded versions, I don’t believe anyone knows the original artist.
As are various songs about:
Tom Dooley
Jesse James
John Hardy
Cole Younger
Frankie and Albert
Also, “Death Cell 'Rounder Blues” is pretty damn good.
And do you count “John Henry” as murder (by awful corporate technocrats)??
Though I’ve never heard it confirmed, a listening to the lyrics of “Alison” by the Almighty Elvis Costello sure seems to suggest the song is about offing your former squeeze.
“I think somebody better put out the big lights, 'cause I can’t stand to see you this way.” Indeed.
Just chalk it up to `traditional.’ If my memory serves, and it probably doesn’t, tales of Stack-o-Lee (another variant I’ve seen, that I kind of like because it allows me to make spurious comparisons to Tam O’Shanter and the likes) go at least back to 1860, and there is apparently some dispute about where in Missouri the alleged events allegedly took place. gallows fodder wrote:
Not to mention:
Romeo is Bleeding
Potter’s Field
Small Change
A Sweet Little Bullet from a Pretty Blue Gun
Walking Spanish
