I’ve been listening to Bishop Allen’s song “The Monitor ” on repeat for the last few days. Which is about the Civil War battle between The Monitor and The Merrimack.
Which got me to thinking about songs about non-traditional (for popular music) subjects.
A few off the top of my head:
Barenaked Ladies’ “Another Postcard .” About a bunch of postcards the lead singer receives in the mail… all picturing chimpanzees.
Gorgol Bordello’s “Supertheory of Supereverything .” About how science rules and religion drools.
And finally, Mr. T Experience’s “The History of the Concept of the Soul .” Which is about exactly what it says. It includes footnotes.
Before it comes up… some traditional subjects for popular songs: love, breaking up, how life is wonderful, how life sucks.
Well, there’s the Klein Four Group - math grad students singing a capella about love, physics and the calculus. http://www.kleinfour.com/
And Jonathan Coulton is known for writing folk songs about fairly nerdy topics - science, NPR, and our robot overlords: http://www.jonathancoulton.com/
Paul McCartney’s Martha My Dear is about a sheepdog. Actually you could do a whole Beatles sub-list: Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite is about a circus poster, Tax Man and Yellow Submarine and several others are about odd items for hit songs as well.
Gordon Lightfoot’s wrote hit songs about The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald and Don Quixote.
Loreena McKennit’s only mainstream hit to date was The Mummer’s Dance- mummers are pretty non-trad.
Personally, I think Cake could be the champion of non-traditional subject-oriented songs.
My favorite is Comfort Eagle, which from my POV appears to be about commercial interests taking over the world:
*We are building a religion
We are building it bigger
We are widening the corridors
And adding more lanes
*Sheep Go to Heaven * is an argument between an atheist and a religious person, and actually creepily deep if you identify all the allusions (so I’ve read.)
I’m not going to smile today,
I’m not gonna laugh,
You’re out living it up today,
I’ve got dues to pay
The forceps line is supposed to refer to a monologue in *Waiting for Godot
(There was an absolutely brilliant analysis of this song I read online once, but the link is broken now.) Basically, this upbeat, peppy song broaches subject matter worthy of the abyss.
I could easily name you 10 more examples of Cake songs about things outside the mainstream.
My two favorite musicians, Kate Bush and Happy Rhodes, have 19 albums between them, and I’d say you could take the “lyrically traditional” songs out of all of them, put them together, and make a fine EP (ok, maybe a whole albums’ worth). That’s one of the (many) reasons I love them, their lyrics are always interesting and are about things, things other than love, breaking up, how life is wonderful and how life sucks.
My favorite from Kate might be “Pull Out The Pin” which is from the point of view of a Viet Cong soldier during the Vietnam war. To him, the American troops are big and alien and stinky (from hash and tobacco), and make for very easy targets.
My favorite from Happy might be “100 Years” which is about a sentient computer that’s been abandoned on a dying space station. It’s slowly breaking down, it knows it’s slowly breaking down, but it can’t fix itself, and it’s truly puzzled as to why everyone left without giving it some sort of final directive.
Most of Talking Heads’ early work was very non-traditional: psycho killers; lack of compassion (“I’ve heard all I want to and I don’t want to hear any more”); electric guitars going on trial; shopping lists denoting personality; the government personified as a happy suburbanite; dangerous air; love-affair-as-paper; love as something that induces unpleasant side effects, like boating accidents and bad investments … great stuff! Their later music is a little more straightforward, however: angst, love and babies.
There’s Christine Lavin’s “Planet X” about Pluto, and the controversy about whether it is a planet, or not.
I’m also very fond of Boiled in Lead’s “The Microorganism” about STDs, specifically, I think HIV. (for all that it’s never explicitly mentioned in the song.) Of course, how can one not love a song with the line: “God is good, God is great; God’s a big invertebrate.”
Peter Gabriel has several non-traditional subjects in his music, but I think the best example is “Family Snapshot”, written from the point of view of an assassin as he is committing his crime - then flashing back to an event in his childhood and feeling sorry for himself.
The Bonzo Dog Band wrote songs about shirts, trouser presses, wardrobes (like in “The Lion, the Witch, and the”), tiger hunting, tents, and other odd things.
The Who wrote songs about transvestism (“I’m a Boy”), child molesting (“Fiddle About”), bullies ("Cousin Kevin’), a spider (“Boris the Spider”), “Heinz Baked Beans,” visting a prostitute (“Trick of the Light”), a cloned human (“905”), and spousal abuse (“My Wife”). John Entwistle wrote many of these.
And no song by Procol Harum or Flash and the Pan could ever be accused of having a traditional subject.
