# Songs about unusual topics **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [November 5, 2011, 1:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/songs-about-unusual-topics/601952 "2011-11-05T13:27:49Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![SSG\_Schwartz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9a140/32.png) [@SSG\_Schwartz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SSG_Schwartz)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2011, 7:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/songs-about-unusual-topics/601952/41 "2011-11-06T07:07:05Z")
> [@An\_Gadai](#): > > Neil Young’s _Long May You Run_ is about his first vehicle, a hearse. That and _After The Gold Rush_ are the only reason I heard of Neil Young. Love the songs. SFC Schwartz ---
**Author:** ![Cheerleading\_Dropout](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ac8455/32.png) [@Cheerleading\_Dropout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cheerleading_Dropout)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2011, 2:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/songs-about-unusual-topics/601952/42 "2011-11-06T14:35:52Z")
One that automatically springs to mind for me is [King Missile - Detachable Penis - YouTube](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VDss8V2OME4). It’s called Detachable Penis, and is fairly self-explanatory. It’s about a guy who has a detachable penis and loses it. Another is Miss Otis Regrets. [ELLA FITZGERALD ~ Miss Otis Regrets ~.wmv - YouTube](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rX-b1Ksetcc) “Miss Otis regrets that’s she’s unable to lunch today” because she’d been killed. And she’s a murderer. How lovely. ---
**Author:** ![El\_Kabong](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/el_kabong/32/496_2.png) [@El\_Kabong](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/El_Kabong)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2011, 4:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/songs-about-unusual-topics/601952/43 "2011-11-06T16:52:32Z")
Here are a few more: Nick Lowe, “Marie Provost”: based, IIRC, on the tale of a former silent film star who died alone at home and was partially consumed by her dog B-52s, “Quiche Lorraine”: another shaggy dog story, this time a paean to an overdressed poodle XTC, “No Thugs in Our House”: racist skinhead with oblivious parents gets away with grievious bodily harm (actually, on albums such as “Black Sea” and “English Settlement”, XTC may have established themselves as the kings of quirk when it comes to song subjects) Steely Dan, “King of the World” and “Don’t Take Me Alive”: in the former, lonely survivor of a nuclear apocalypse makes a futile effort to re-establish radio contact; in the latter, a deranged character muses on being in an armed standoff with the police. ---
**Author:** ![adhemar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3da27b/32.png) [@adhemar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adhemar)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2011, 5:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/songs-about-unusual-topics/601952/44 "2011-11-06T17:32:00Z")
> [@panache45](#): > > Billie Holiday’s \*Strange Fruit \*was about lynching. So was Irving Berlin’s _Supper Time._ so is Cole Porter’s “Miss Otis Regrets” oops beaten to it ---
**Author:** ![adhemar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3da27b/32.png) [@adhemar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adhemar)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2011, 5:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/songs-about-unusual-topics/601952/45 "2011-11-06T17:37:26Z")
> [@Cheerleading\_Dropout](#): > > One that automatically springs to mind for me is [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VDss8V2OME4](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VDss8V2OME4). It’s called Detachable Penis, and is fairly self-explanatory. It’s about a guy who has a detachable penis and loses it. > > Another is Miss Otis Regrets. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rX-b1Ksetcc](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rX-b1Ksetcc) > > “Miss Otis regrets that’s she’s unable to lunch today” because she’d been killed. And she’s a murderer. How lovely. from Wikipedia: The song is in the blues style, and Porter’s wry take on some common lyrical subject matter of the genre, telling the tale of a woman who comes to a bad end after an encounter with a man. But Porter’s peculiar twist is that Miss Otis is a polite society lady, and the story of her last evening is told by her servant after Miss Otis has met her demise. In a few compact lines, the servant reveals how, after being seduced and then abandoned, Miss Otis hunted down and shot her seducer, was arrested, taken from the jail by a mob, and lynched. The servant conveys Miss Otis’s final, polite, apologetic words to her friends: “Miss Otis regrets she’s unable to lunch today.” I think he had it coming to him ---
**Author:** ![adhemar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3da27b/32.png) [@adhemar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adhemar)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2011, 5:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/songs-about-unusual-topics/601952/46 "2011-11-06T17:59:07Z")
Angie Baby - is kind of odd while it has the traditional boy girl love affair as a base, the neighbor hood boy “with evil on his mind” disappears after paying her a visit and Angie sees him when she plays her radio as he is her secret lover who keeps her satisfied. Cheeseburger in Paradise: :I like mine with lettuce and tomato, Heinz 57 and french fried potato, a bif kosher pickcle and a long neck beer… Curly Shuffle: not sure if this is a song about a dance or a song about the Three Stooges or of both. It was voted was one of the worst songs ever… I of course liked it Dolly Parton’s Coat of Many Colors about a coat made of rags The Ballad of Casey Jones about a train wreck There were several about car crashes, “DOA”, “Dead Mans Curve”, " Leader of the Pack" ---
**Author:** ![Ellen\_Cherry](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ellen_cherry/32/3600_2.png) [@Ellen\_Cherry](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ellen_Cherry)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2011, 6:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/songs-about-unusual-topics/601952/47 "2011-11-06T18:04:01Z")
I came to mention _Nothing But Flowers_. I love the Talking Heads. Their song _Radiohead_ is about something that happened to Stephen Tobolowsky once (which I also mentioned here on the boards not long ago!) On the subject of _Run for the Roses_, we here in Kentucky have been subjected to that song unceasingly every May since its release. It’s a minor annoyance that the opening lines mention the foal was “born in the valley and raised in the trees/of Western Kentucky on wobbly knees.” Most Kentucky-bred horses are raised in wide sweeping pastures of Central Kentucky. Not a lot of horse pastures in forests, or in Western Kentucky. ---
**Author:** ![C.Montgomery\_Burns](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ecd19e/32.png) [@C.Montgomery\_Burns](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/C.Montgomery_Burns)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2011, 6:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/songs-about-unusual-topics/601952/48 "2011-11-06T18:20:29Z")
“Cement Mixer (Puti Puti)”. A song about a cement mixer. “Java Jive” by the Ink Spots. A song about coffee. “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer” by the Beatles. About a hammer murderer. “Glass Onion” by the Beatles. A song by the Beatles that jokes about analyzing Beatles songs. “Paper Doll” by The Mills Brothers. A song about a guy who’s tired of being hurt by real live girls, so he falls in love with a paper doll. “Mack The Knife” - A song about a short tempered psychopathic mob hitman run amok. “Revolution 9” by the Beatles. What the heck was that about, anyway? ---
**Author:** ![Annie-Xmas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecc23a/32.png) [@Annie-Xmas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Annie-Xmas)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2011, 7:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/songs-about-unusual-topics/601952/49 "2011-11-06T19:06:47Z")
One of the oddest topics for a #1 song has to be [One Night in Bangkok](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Night_in_Bangkok) ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2011, 9:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/songs-about-unusual-topics/601952/50 "2011-11-06T21:23:28Z")
Another murder song is the Dixie Chicks’ “Goodbye Earl”. And it strikes me that there are enough songs about blue-collar jobs that it should probably be regarded as a “usual topic”. In addition to several already mentioned, you could also add “Company Store”, “Allentown”, “Nantucket Bound”, “I’ve Been Workin’ on the Railroad”, “Drill, ye Terriers, Drill”, and most cowboy songs to this category. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Strangelove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.strangelove/32/6613_2.png) [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2011, 10:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/songs-about-unusual-topics/601952/51 "2011-11-06T22:43:48Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > Maybe, but suspended animation is more plausible. For it to be time dilation, the ship would have to be pulling 800 gees. Yes, I actually worked it out once. Are you sure it’s that high? I played around with [this](http://www.convertalot.com/relativistic_star_ship_calculator.html) calculator, and with some experimentation came up with 28 gees. Input 50 lY distance, 28 gees acceleration, and you get a smidge over 50 yrs earth time and 0.5 yrs ship time. You might get even less than that if you don’t slow down at the end, and instead swing around in a big circle. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2011, 11:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/songs-about-unusual-topics/601952/52 "2011-11-06T23:23:10Z")
I’ll have to double-check my calculations (as well as those used by that page), but I can’t see how it could be as low as 28. My guess is that they didn’t handle acceleration properly, but I’m not sure. ---
**Author:** ![Rhiannon8404](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rhiannon8404/32/17929_2.png) [@Rhiannon8404](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rhiannon8404)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2011, 12:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/songs-about-unusual-topics/601952/53 "2011-11-07T00:43:45Z")
Led Zepplin’s _Immigrant Song_ is about the Viking conquest of Northern Europe. Not your typical rock song subject. ---
**Author:** ![VOW](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/vow/32/3043_2.png) [@VOW](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/VOW)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2011, 1:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/songs-about-unusual-topics/601952/54 "2011-11-07T01:53:50Z")
There are a lot of folk songs, and even quasi-folk songs that are somewhat strange. Usually about dead people, or dying people. “Partners” – two miners who join up to mine gold, and get trapped by winter. One kills the other, and eventually freezes to death. “Blizzard”–a rancher trying to get home to his wife, MaryAnn. His horse is lame, but he won’t leave him. He freezes to death, right next to his horse. “Scarlet Ribbons”–a father hears his daughter’s prayer for hair ribbons. He can’t find any, yet she has them the next morning. (I personally hate this song) And there are nonsense songs: “Does The Chewing Gum Lose its Flavor?”–a kid who keeps his gum on the bedpost when he goes to sleep at night. “Itsy-Bitsy Teeny Weeny” A song to the new sensation, the Bikini swimsuit. “Biplane Evermore”–a little outdated plane jealous of the big jets. All of the Snoopy vs the Red Baron songs! My favorite? “My Ding-a-Ling” by Chuck Berry. SUPPOSEDLY about a youngster’s toy, but the song is much more suggestive. ~VOW ---
**Author:** ![SecretaryofEvil](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e95f7d/32.png) [@SecretaryofEvil](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SecretaryofEvil)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2011, 2:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/songs-about-unusual-topics/601952/55 "2011-11-07T02:21:50Z")
_Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots_ by The Flaming Lips has a fairly unusual subject matter for a song. [![]( " - YouTube") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hq-W-4Izjwc) ---
**Author:** ![fruitbat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/58f4c7/32.png) [@fruitbat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/fruitbat)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2011, 2:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/songs-about-unusual-topics/601952/56 "2011-11-07T02:49:26Z")
My favorite Robyn Hitchcock built a decades long career with song on unusual topics. “My Wife and My Dead Wife” is a sweetly romantic song about a man with two wonderful women (one living one dead). Songs about insects are especially prominent (Madonna of the Wasps - Insect Mother). As he once explained he started his career thinking he was writing accessible Beatlesesque pop songs. He just stumbled a bit on the subject matter. ---
**Author:** ![Superdude](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/superdude/32/13450_2.png) [@Superdude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Superdude)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2011, 4:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/songs-about-unusual-topics/601952/57 "2011-11-07T04:50:13Z")
> [@Annie-Xmas](#): > > One of the oddest topics for a #1 song has to be [One Night in Bangkok](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Night_in_Bangkok) That is from the musical _Chess_, which added to its quirk. **Queensryche** is pretty good at this: 1. _Best I Can_, first-person account of someone paralyzed after playing with a gun as a child, now determined not to let his handicap derail his dreams. 2. _Bridge_, about a man trying to reestablish his relationship with his son, who doesn’t want to. 3. _Della Brown_, a former model whose looks deserted her and, with no skills to fall back on, becomes homeless. 4. _I Am I_, though I’ve never figured out exactly what it IS about. 5. _Promised Land_, about how life never really turns out the way we plan. I could do more from them, but that’s enough. I purposely left out their concept albums. **Ben Folds** is good at this, too: 1. _Boxing_, told from the perspective of Muhammad Ali, talking to Howard Cosell. 2. _Late_, which eulogizes [Elliott Smith](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eliot_Smith), singer for The Eels. 3. _Rockin’ the Suburbs_, which is about how unhip he is. 4. _Alice Childress_, which is based on an incident where someone threw water on Ben’s then-wife. The reference to the playwright is unintentional. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2011, 5:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/songs-about-unusual-topics/601952/58 "2011-11-07T05:04:12Z")
> [@](#): > > “Scarlet Ribbons”–a father hears his daughter’s prayer for hair ribbons. He can’t find any, yet she has them the next morning. (I personally hate this song) Yeah, that song always creeps me out. Dude, it’s not a Christmas miracle. Someone is secretly buying your little kid hair ribbons. You need to find out who it is, pronto, and get a restraining order at least. ---
**Author:** ![An\_Gadai](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/d6d6ee/32.png) [@An\_Gadai](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/An_Gadai)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2011, 5:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/songs-about-unusual-topics/601952/59 "2011-11-07T05:29:21Z")
> [@Superdude](#): > > 1. _Late_, which eulogizes [Elliott Smith](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eliot_Smith), singer for The Eels. [Mark Everett](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Oliver_Everett), the actual singer for Eels is alive and well. Elliot Smith, although he had been in at least one bad hitherto, was famous as as solo artist. ---
**Author:** ![Trick\_Rider](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/d6d6ee/32.png) [@Trick\_Rider](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trick_Rider)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2011, 5:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/songs-about-unusual-topics/601952/60 "2011-11-07T05:38:39Z")
> [@VOW](#): > > “Does The Chewing Gum Lose its Flavor?”–a kid who keeps his gum on the bedpost when he goes to sleep at night. > ~VOW This reminded me of “Mule Skinner Blues” and “Surfin’ Bird”. A couple of my favourites. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/songs-about-unusual-topics/601952.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/songs-about-unusual-topics/601952.md?page=4)