Songs that are puns (and other wordplay)

King Crimson’s “The World’s My Oyster Soup Kitchen Floor Wax Museum”

And of course, Frank Zappa was well known for his puns, i.e. “Sheik Yerbuti”.

Jerry Lee Lewis, “Great Balls of Fire”

When you’re in love with a beautiful woman it’s hard.

This reminds me of a separate thread I was gonna ask. Does anyone remember, must have been in the early 80s, a gimmick song whose title/chorus was:

“If You See Kay” tell her I love her… blah blah something…

Get it? iF yoU see (C) Kay?

I’ve done Google searches with absolutely no results. I’m thinking that it must have been just a local radio station’s joke song. Either that or I dreamt the whole thing…

While we are talking country music, my favorite wordplay, and song, is Shelby Lynne’s What About the Love we Made. The love they made resulted in a child and what is the break-up going to do to her.

As far as puns, damn near everything on the Cramps, Date with Elvis album.

SSG Schwartz

Hail Ants, check out post #37 in this thread

Softly, as I leave you.

Mike Cross wrote words for the old Appalachian fiddle tune Whiskey 'Fore Breakfast.

Hail Ants, the version of “If You See Kay” you heard was most likely the one by April Wine.

Which, for some reason, leads me to Big Ten Inch by Aerosmith. :wink:

Billy Bragg has a song entitled "Wish You Were Her"

There’s the old Benny Bell 78, “Shaving Cream,” which was revived in the mid-'70s thanks to exposure on the Dr. Demento Show. A song with a similar construction is “Polka Dot Undies” by Bowser & Blue.

That was, incidentally, a cover of a 1952 song by Bull Moose Jackson.

Other examples:

Frank Black (formerly Black Francis of the Pixies) has worked a couple acrostics into his lyrics. In the Pixies’ “Ana,” the first letters of each line spell out the word “surfer,” which I assume is a reference to their earlier album Surfer Rosa. (Scroll down this page for the lyrics.)

He’s also apparently worked an acrostic about his pets into one song, “Valley of Our Hope”; see the fourth post on this page for an explanation. And the lyrics of Robert Onion contain the acrostic phrase, “ROBERT THE CASE FOR MARS.” No, I don’t know what that means.

Also, I remember reading about some local band a few years ago who titled one of their songs “Suture Self.”

I don’t know if you are loving somebody.
I only know it isn’t mine.

Stolen directly from James Joyce’s Ulysses

If you see Kay
Tell him he may
See You In Tea
Tell him from me

The third line is prounced C-U-N-T

Cite? It doesn’t sound like an Eagles homage.

Not exactly wordplay, but a subtle choice not to use punctuation: Come on Eileen by Dexy’s Midnight Runners

Lyle Lovette’s “Flyswatter / Icewater Blues” from the amazing album Joshua Judges Ruth

Joshua Judges Ruth also being a pun (of course) along the lines of writing a trio of pieces for small wind instruments and calling it Three for Fife.