That is NOT an unusual topic for a Canadian artist…
So many from the Dead Kennedys. I will offer Stealing People’s Mail.
Hell, there’s a whole (revival) punk EP by the Boilsjust on the Philadelphia Flyers. (And rather good, IMO.)
Kayak: Royal Bed Bouncer. About being the guy who has to check the king’s bed for booby traps every night.
Or even “I kill children”
Oysterband’s The Story is about the suicide of a fisherman facing financial ruin.
The Watersons’ Scarecrow is about human sacrifice
Iron Man by Black Sabbath, a guy goes back in time to stop an apocalypse but turns into the very thing that caused it.
In The Year 2525 by uh… whoever it was by… was about… well I’m not sure, the future and stuff, but in a very unusual sort of way
Atlantis by Donovan, about some hippie dippy new age utopia version of Atlantis with a really bizzare long winded opening spoken word part before the singing starts. Never heard it until I got XM radio and now I’ve heard it twice in a few weeks, very unusual song.
I’d say Making Love to a Vampire With a Monkey on my Knee qualifies, although the topic can’t really be pinned down all that readily. True, vampiric, simian and patellar references abound, but they only scratch the surface.
This is easier. This is about standing on the corner with Yoko Ono waiting for Jeremy.
TV Party by Black Flag. A group gathers to watch TV and drink beer, while shouting names of 70s and 80s TV shows, until the TV breaks and the beer runs low, at which point everyone becomes distraught and continues to shout names of TV shows.
These are all pretty self-explanatory:
Detachable Penis by King Missile
Sailing the Seas of Cheese by Primus
John the Fisherman by Primus
Filet of Sole by Dead Milkmen
Big Lizard In My Back Yard by Dead Milkmen
The Jam performed songs with subjects that seemed strange to me upon the first listen, like what you should wear when going to art school or what to wear when fighting with kids from Eton. They just seemed a lot more fashion conscious and, subtly, more socially conscious than what I was used to.
Spacy or fantastic lyrics-- like Dungeons and Dragons fantastic, not merely implausible-- are common in metal, but Sleep has some favorites, like Dragonaut, about riding a dragon on Mars, or Dopesmoker, which relates the trek of the Weedian people through a riff filled land, which is in Israel.
Veruca Salt’s first album included songs about mass murder (All Hail Me), a invented language based on images (Forsythia), and, of course, rage addiction (Seether).
Ween and the Flaming Lips probably fall at least partly into the Weird Al camp, but one had a minor hit about (maybe) falling in love with a dead person and the other got one with a song about eating petroleum jelly, blowing your nose on magazines, and citrus fruit hair treatments. The appropriately named Crash Test Dummies had a hit in the same period about some kids they knew at school who were slightly odd, like they had birthmarks or went to church. It’s weird how bizarre the song sounds (and it had a title with no vowel in it) yet it’s so banal.
Dr Octagonecologist. An entire hip hop album about an extraterrestrial time-travelling gynecologist and it is flawless.
Dirty Frank is Pearl Jam imagining that their bus driver is a cannibal.
My usual go-to on a topic like this is He Hit Me (It Felt Like a Kiss), which seems to argue FOR domestic abuse.
From its wiki:
Well between that song and MacArthur Park which is either about leaving a cake out in the rain, a yellow cotton dress, or who the fuck knows; this thread is over.