songs about photography

Cafe Society
1

So we were talking about Officer Obie’s twenty-seven 8x10 color glossy photographs with the circles and arrows and photograph on the back of each one (to be used as evidence about the Alice’s Restaurant Massacree, in case you don’t remember the song of nearly the same name). Then someone mentioned Paul Simon’s "Kodachrome’. Then we got surprisingly stuck on more songs about photography. this is of interest since one of us may have to give a talk about photographs soon (and audio may be a part of it). Making a CD for a photographer friend is also a possibility.

I decided to attack the problem with thousands of the smartest, hippest people on the planet(plus a few total dipsticks), and ask the Teeming Millions.

So, who’s got some songs about photography, that is about taking pictures, or about how photographs show the world, or (if there is one) about optical engineering?

2

Turning Japanese – The Vapors
Centerfold – The J. Geils Band
Photograph – Camper Van Beethoven (or Ringo Starr)
Photograph – Def Leppard

3

The Who - Pictures of Lily
The Cure - Pictures of You
Def Leppard - Photograph

4

Jim Croce - Photographs and Memories
The Buggles - I am a Camera

5

Jackson Browne – Fountains of Sorrow

“Looking through some photographs I found inside a drawer
I was taken by a photograph of you”

6

Kid Rock and Sheryl Crow - Picture

7

More of a metaphor, but “My Camera Never Lies” Bucks Fizz

8

Peter Hammill - The Polaroid

9

Blondie - Picture this.

10

The Cure - Pictures of You

And an old novelty song I once heard on Doctor Demento,
Billy Connolly- You Take My Photograph (I Break Your Face)

11

Polaroids – Shawn Colvin
Hey Ya – Outkast (“Shake it like a polaroid picture”)
The Picture – Loudon Wainwright III

12

The Kinks: “Picture Book” and “People Take Pictures Of Each Other”
J. Geils Band: “Freeze Frame”
Quarterflash (IIRC): “Take Another Picture”
A Flock of Seagulls: “Wishing (If I Had a Photograph of You)”

13

Duran Duran - “Girls on Film”

14

The Who – Pictures of Lily. :wink:

15

Picture of Helen by The Silos

Photograph by **Ringo Starr ** (Weezer and Nickelback also have a song by that name).

Camera by **R.E.M. **

16

Camera One - Josh Joplin Group (although technically referring to a TV or movie camera)

Take a Picture - Filter

17
  • The Photographers* by Pete Seeger
18

Pictures of Matchstick Men – Status Quo
Easter Parade – “The photographers will snap us…”

19

Still Photo by John Wesley Harding

Another JWH song, Here Comes the Groom, has the lyrics

Right side for the photographs
left side for the kids

and if you listen very carefully, there’s a camera shutter sound after “photographs”.

20

Thompson Twins - Hold Me Now - “I have a picture, pinned to my wall, an image of you and of me and we’re laughing and loving it all.”

I guess I also have a new earworm.