Probably a good 50% of Harry Chapin’s catalog would fit this category, but maybe the most fitting examples are:
30,000 Pounds of Bananas – his epic paean to brake failure.
Sniper – based on the Texas Tower shootings
Mr. Tanner – a song based on a brief musical review in the NY Times
Nitpick: It’s either “photosensitize their venom” or “photosensitize their victims”. The song is actually based on a true story; the sap of thegiant hogweed(Heracleum mantegazzianum) contains a chemical that causes photosensitization of the skin (i.e., hypersensitivity to sunlight) that can last for months.
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I waded in to specifically mention this one, and another Peter Gabriel-era Genesis tune, “Get 'em Out by Friday”, which is a future vision in which the government’s department of genetic engineering gets into real estate speculation and starts breeding shorter humans so that they can fit more of them into the same building site…
A Tribe Called Quest - I Left My Wallet in El Segundo
Just what the title says. They take a long road trip, wind up stopping in some place called El Segundo, and later he realizes he left his wallet there.
Gravy Train!!! - Burger Baby (NSFW)
She loves burgers so much that it’s a romantic and sexual thing. Then the burger gets her pregnant, and initially she wants an abortion, but she changes her mind and decides to keep it.
A_Rival - Cybernetic Mariachi
A mercenary-for-hire in Mexico can’t get any more work, so he gets a job as a musician in a local bar, with his Game Boy.
I have never understood why Dwight Twilley recorded “Max Dog”:
Max dog got no legs
Got some wooden legs for that crippled hound
But he caught fire and it burned him down
Now every time you call his name
He does that rock and rollin’ thing
The thread should not pass without a mention of Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, who not only had the classic “Constipation Blues” (“Every time I try/I can’t be satisfied”) but also “Feast of the Mau Mau”:
Shake your hip, bite your lip, shoot your mother-in-law
Put on your gorilla suit, drink some elbow soup and have a ball
Get it straight, don’t be late, it’s time for mad fun
Feast of the Mau Maus has begun
There’s also “Yoko” by Stuck Mojo, so that brings the total “be my Yoko” songs up to four…
Husker Du’s Books About UFOs.
Many of Elvis Costello’s earlier songs are about impotence, notably Lip Service (is all you’ll ever get from me), and Mystery Dance, whose chorus line is “I can’t do it anymore and I’m not satisfied!”
Johnathan Richman and the Modern Lovers did a lot of weird ones, for example Hey There Little Insect (a plea to an insect not to bite) and I’m a Little Dinosaur (about playing at being a dinosaur).
Morrissey’s got some strange topics.
When November Spawned A Monster- how the disabled are perceived.
Hairdresser on Fire- not being able to get a haircut.
Munich Air Disaster, 1958- plane crash that killed members the Manchester United football team.
Teenage Dad on His Estate- Don’t mock teen parents because your life probably sucks too. Kind of reminds me of Interesting Drug (which is about welfare I believe).
“Father Christmas,” about a department store Santa getting mugged by hooligans (The Kinks).
Barenaked Ladies “The Big Bang Theory”
And, of course, Chicago’s 25 or 6 to 4, about not being able to think of anything to write a song about.
A favorite song on NRBQ’s Wild Weekend album is “Poppin’ Circumstance”, which is entirely about words and phrases that make you feel good - liftoff, touchdown, success, macaroon, a black Corvette, me and the girls in a Tilt-A-Whirl etc.
Styx - Mr. Roboto
It’s really not.
Rap group Dream Warriors had a song about Ludi, which is a Caribbean Pachisi variant. They also had one called Twelve Sided Dice - which is about playing Dungeons and Dragons. And no, they were not nerdcore rappers.
Jethro Tull have a couple - I think, probably the biggest hit would be Heavy Horses, a moving paean to…heavy horses. Or there’s …and the Mouse Police Never Sleeps, about a cat.
The title track of Kate Bush’s new album 50 Words For Snow features Stephen Fry reading, in a stentorian voice, a list of 50 increasingly silly fictional words for snow, while Kate counts them.
Yes it really is, actually. Your link says that it is all an extended metaphor for him getting over his breakup with a still-live girlfriend, which may well be, but the song is apparently about being in bed with a dead woman, as Lust4Life said.
Actually, more than apparently: that is how extended metaphors work. There is a surface meaning and a metaphorical meaning. Both are “real”, and, quite often, with songs and poems, the metaphorical meaning (if there even is one) is quite obscure to anyone except the writer and people who have been explicitly told about it.
No - there’s a difference between “apparently” and “really” - my saying “It’s really not” does not mean I’m saying “No, that’s not apparently what it’s about”. I agree with Lust4Life that that’s what it’s apparently about, I wasn’t saying he was wrong, just adding more info.
Pretty well everything by Tom Lehrer.
As well as his usual favorites about poisioning park animals (“Poisioning Pidgeons in the Park”) and cannibalistic murderers in love (“I hold your hand in mine”) he had some real oddities … my favourites are “The Elements” which is literally the periodic table in song form:
Even stranger is “Lobachevsky”, about a plagerizing Russian mathematician. Can’t get more obscure than that!
Back to dead miners: - Gresford Disaster by The Albion Band.
There are plenty of traditional songs about death and disaster and, like The Wreck Of The Edmund Fitzgerald above, plenty of songs about shipwrecks and other disasters at sea: - Here is a song by Oysterband about financial disaster and subsequent suicide: - The Story
No, it is really about two two things, as I said. The fact that it is about his breakup does not mean that it is not also really about a dead woman. You said “It’s really not”, which is contradicting Lust4Life’s interpretation (or privileging the hidden meaning over the surface meaning). If you were just adding more information, you should have said “It is also about this.”
A lot of the other songs in this thread are probably metaphorical treatments of relationships or other standard song topics. That does not mean that they should not be listed here. (And no, I am not accusing you of saying that Lady D’urbanville should not have been listed.)