Speaking of John and Taupin:
“All the Girls Love Alice,” from John’s album Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, is about an unhappy upper-class 16-year-old English girl who, though she is heterosexual, becomes a lesbian prostitute, and later dies.
Powerwolf’s Sanctified With Dynamite is about pulling suicide bombings against demonic armies in the name of Christ. Their entire catalogue is a pretty unique mishmash of power metal tropes about battle and glory, with Catholic werewolves mixed in.
I dunno, I never got the vibe that Alice was straight.
I never got that impression. To me, it was a guy who’s trying unsuccessfully to convince an ex that he’s not dwelling on the relationship ending. He’s doing all kinds of things to keep himself occupied: playing solitaire with a card missing (so he has to cheat), smoking cigarettes, counting the flowers on the wallpaper, and watching Captain Kangaroo.
See? He can’t possibly be thinking about her…he’s got too much to do
Oh yes, and I, Robot as well.
David Bromberg can sure tell a story.
ETA: has anyone mentioned Jerry Jeff Walker’s Mister Bojangles, covered by Bromberg, btw?
Cold Missouri Waters, powerfully and poignantly sung by Richard Shindell (with Dar Williams and Lucy Kalpansky; they called themselves Cry Cry Cry)
“The devastation of the Mann Gulch fire of 1949 through the point of view of Dodge, one of the remaining survivors.”
(Lyrics are in the YouTube comments, starts with *
My name is Dodge, but then you know that.
It’s written on the chart there at the foot end of the of the bed…*)
“Young Men and Fire” by Norman Maclean retells the incident in complete detail (but without music) and explains how Wagner Dodge survived the fire. Oh, and I just saw that the Fiddlin’ Foresters tell all about the event before performing this song…
I have a folder of Songs That Tell a Story. This is the first one.
Good Lord, all this way and no Bohemian Rhapsody? Man kills dude, has existential crisis, is judged operatically and later moves through anger, grief and acceptance? All in five minutes, fifty-five seconds.
More prosaically, AC/DC You Shook Me All Night Long: An Australian man learning American thighs ain’t for mocking.
Good lord, all this way and someone who claims his location is on the run from Kilroy and no reference to any songs by, say, Styx??? Something in the Mr. Roboto area? Hmmmm? :p:p
Those were all people he knew in New York.
Speaking of Lou Reed, Street Hassle, about a rich woman, picks up a giggalo, dies during sex. The last section of the song is her ghost lamenting her life.
Listening to Richard Thompson Vincent Black Lightning 52, about a hoodlum and his motorcycle. Spoiler alert - shot by the cops and on his deathbed gives it to his fiance.
Heck, Richard Thompson “Read About Love” - about a young man learning about women. Hilarious song.
Lots of interesting murder songs here. Made me think of Garth Brooks’ “Papa Loved Mama,” wherein a jealous trucker kills his cheating wife (and presumably her lover) by crashing his 18-wheeler into their motel room.
Les Dudak’s Old Judge Jones is a tale about a crooked politician in the old west. Great, great song with a killer riff.
Chuck E Weiss gets mentioned in songs by Tom Waits, Rickie Lee Jones, Johnny Depp, etc.
I’ll bet he’d be a fun guy to hang out with.
Marie Provost by Nick Lowe. True story, and all you need to know is the first line of the refrain: “She was the winner that became a doggie’s dinner.”
Love Arlo Guthrie.
He also sang The Motorcycle Song, about a surreal collision; Gabriel’s Mother’s Hiway Ballad #16 Blues, about generosity (?); City of New Orleans, about a train; Coming into Los Angeles, about smuggling; and many others.
Quite a few of Richard Thompson songs qualify, just off the top of my head:
Shoot Out The Lights - never was entirely sure but a murderer hiding from the law?
The Money Shuffle - taking the 2% to task
Turing of the Tide - sad reflections on an aging sex worker
Cooksferry Queen - gangster praising his true loves charms, bonus points for Pre-Raphaelite reference
You Can’t Win - existential angst with blazing guitar solo
Gethsemane - another lament on the human condition with a biblical flair
I don’t know if it’s odd enough to qualify for the OP, but Watch Baby Fall will tear your heart out.
Buenos Tardes Amigo–Ween
Hmm, as someone posted earlier, lots of songs about pyschos…
I guess we should get the Toadies ‘Possum Kingdom’ and the Talking Heads 'Pyscho Killer’out of the way…
And there are a decent number of nuclear war/post-war songs, for example:
CSNY - ‘Wooden ships’
Pink Floyd - ‘Two Suns in the Sunset’
Nena - ‘99 Luftballoons’
and so on… (Cold war songs too, e.g. Made For TV -‘So Afraid of the Russians’
However, weaponry on a smaller scale weaponry, I propose the Dead Kennedy’s ‘Chemical Warfare’, were the singer relates how he stole some chemical weaponry from a poorly guarded military arsenal, heads to a posh country club where he proceeds to unleash the weapons on the clientele and describes the resulting carnage.
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Well, all right then, not warfare, but King Missile’s 'Detachable Penis’could be considered a somewhat different topic, I’d say.
Cold Missouri Waters was written by James Keelaghan, a Canadian singer-songwriter who has a bunch of songs in his repertoire that fit the premise.
McConnell on the Heights - about a relatively unsung hero in the French-Canadian wars.
Kiri’s Piano - about the sequestration of Japanese-Americans in WWII.
Fires of Calais - about the Dunkirk evacuation.
Captain Torres - a true story about sailors facing sea at sea, but able to radio home and talk to their loved ones.
Glory Bound - about a high school hockey star, bound for the big time, who dies in a blizzard.