Two contemporaries: Train’s new song *Mermaid *contains the line: “To an island so remote, only Johnny Depp has ever been to it before.”
Tonight Tonight (Hot Chelle Rae) manages an impressive job of shoe horning “Zach Galifianakis” into a lyric. Doesn’t quite fit the rhyme scheme but really how many words are a true rhyme of “Galifianakis”?
Two from the classic rock era: **Jackson Browne’s **The Load-Out boasts his tour convoy -in addition to “8-track, cassette and stereo”- that they’ve got “Richard Pryor on the video.”
And what I’d have to say is the most famous example is **Simon and Garfunkel’s **Mrs. Robinson which features the eternal line: “Where have you gone Joe Dimaggio? A nation turns its lonely eyes to you.” (woo woo woo)
Don Mclean’s classic * American Pie* mentions James Dean, Lenin, and The Byrds by name, and appears to contain oblique references to multiple other entities.
And Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Sweet Home Alabama mentions Neil Young…who should remember that I still don’t need him around anyhow.
Nominated in our “best songs of the 70’s” thread, Tim Curry’s, “I do the Rock” mentions many famous people. If I listed them, it would probably be 25% of the song’s lyrics.
I suppose “I do the Rock” deserve the nomination. I’m finding it - STIMULATING!
Irving Berlin’s Puttin’ on the Ritz mentions Gary Cooper
Cole Porter’s You’re the Top mentions many famous people of the day – Greta Garbo, Jimmy Durante, Lady Astor, Vincent Youmans, Mahatma Gandhi, Fred Astaire, Eugene O’Neill, and Mae West, as well as other famous figures.
The Bonzo Dog Band’s The Intro and the Outro introduces celebrities of the time like Charles De Gaulle, Eric Clapton, Val Dollican, Garner Ted Armstrong, Liberace, Sir Kenneth Clark, Robert Morley, Roy Rogers and several others. The song is an introduction to band, with the names supposedly band members. They also mention John Wayne in 11 Mustachioed Daughters.
Here’s an oldie from the late '20s: Teasin’ Brown Blues by Louis Lasky:
“She got hair like Gloria Swanson and she walks just like Priscilla Dean,
She’s the prettiest woman ol’ Louie has ever seen…”
Everyone knows about Gloria Swanson of course, but Priscilla Dean faded away after movies became talkies. But Priscilla lived to be 91, dying in 1987, so there’s some consolation for being forgotten.
Getting back to the song, I love an earlier verse in it that goes:
“Don’t have to cook me no chicken 'cause your plain old neckbones will do,
I’m gonna buy you some blackeyed peas mama, and try to get along with you…”
There’s the infamous Billy Joel song *We Didn’t Start the Fire. *These are just the proper names he spits out.
Harry Truman
Doris Day
Johnnie Ray
Walter Winchell
Joe DiMaggio
Joe McCarthy
Richard Nixon
Marilyn Monroe
Rosenbergs
Sugar Ray (Robinson, not Leonard)
Brando
Eisenhower
Marciano
Liberace
Santayana
Joseph Stalin
Malenkov
Nasser
Prokofiev
Rockefeller
Campanella
Roy Cohn
Juan Peron
Toscanini
Einstein
James Dean
Davy Crockett, Peter Pan (these could be people or titles – what the hell, as long as they scanned)
Elvis Presley
Bardot
Krushchev
Princess Grace
Pasternak
Mickey Mantle
Kerouac
Chou En-Lai
Charles de Gaulle
Starkweather
Buddy Holly
Castro
Syngman Rhee
Kennedy
Chubby Checker
Hemingway
Eichmann
John Glenn
Liston beats Patterson
Pope Paul
Malcolm X
JFK ( cheating, since he already mentioned Kennedy)
Ho Chi Minh
Richard Nixon
Begin
Reagan
Sally Ride
Bernie Goetz
