If I Only Had a Brain
Todd Rundgren: “Hiroshima” - “Harry, Harry, give 'em hell”
Elvis Costello: “Eisenhower Blues” (orig. J.B. Lenoir) - Eisenhower
Dream Academy: “Life in a Northern Town” - John F. Kennedy
Country Joe & the Fish: “Superbird” - LBJ
Curtis Mayfield: “(Don’t Worry) If There’s a Hell Below, We’re All Going to Go” - Nixon
Frank Zappa’s “Titties and Beer” gets bonus VP points for “Why, there was Milhous Nixon, and Agnew too!”
Monotonous by Eartha Kitt namechecks two presidents (and a whole lotta other celebrities):
Traffic has been known to stop for me
Prices even rise and drop for me
Harry S.Truman plays bop for me
and
Chiang Kai-Shek sends me pots of tea
Gaylord Hauser sends me vitamin D
And, furthermore, Ike likes me
Liar by Nazareth is all about G.W. Bush, mentioned in the song only as “Dubya:”
You couldn’t get elected,
Without messing with democracy.
You should have been arrested,
But you’ve got job security.
And weapons in the desert,
Dubya knew it wasn’t true.
Illiterate. And full of shit,
Daddy must be proud of you.
The 1965 version of Simon & Garfunkel’s *A Simple Desultory Philippic * Mentions LBJ
Also, Paul Simon’s Late Great Johnny Ace makes mention of “The year after JFK”
A generic reference to the “White House” in XTC’s Here Comes President Kill Again
While not mentioned in the lyrics, Pearl Jam’s Bu$hleaguer is clearly about GW (He’s not a leader, he’s a Texas leaguer).
Jimmy Carter - Blue Mountain
Phil Ochs had Here’s to the State of Richard Nixon.
Richard Nixon (“Tricky Dick”) in “Gimme Some Truth” by John Lennon.
The Men, The Church of Logic, Sin, and Lovehttp://m.youtube.com/#/watch?v=-0MHnH8oQ9Y&desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3D-0MHnH8oQ9Y
Mentions JFK
I Can’t Get Started, 1936, lyrics by Ira Gershwin, music by Vernon Duke:
I’ve been consulted by Franklin D.
Greta Garbo has asked me to tea
If reference by epithet counts, then Bonzo Goes to Bitburg by The Ramones.
Pato Banton, Don’t Sniff Coke: “Ronald Reagan smoke it just before him go up on television.”
Out of interest, I’d heard that before Paul Simon was asked to write some songs for “The Graduate” he was working on a little nostalgia number call “Mrs. Roosevelt.”
If OLD oldies are allowed, there’s “Off the Record” from the musical ***I’d Rather Be Right ***by Rodgers and Hart.
The song is sung by FDR, and he mentions George Washington and Abraham Lincoln.
http://www.lorenzhart.org/offhterec.htm
George M. Cohan played Roosevelt in the original production, and you can see James Cagney do this number in the movie Yankee Doodle Dandy.
There are also multiple songs in the musical 1776 that are sung by (or that mention) John Adams or Thomas Jefferson (like “Sit Down, John,” “But Mr. Adams”).
Damn, I thought I’d get there first with this one!
Ronnie’s Rap, Ron and the DC Crew.
Don Henley’s The End of the Innocence references “This tired old man that we elected king” as a jab to Ronald Reagan.
Tom Waits has “On The Nickel”:
and if you chew tobacco, and wish upon a star, well you’ll find out where
the scarecrows sit, just like punchlines between the cars, and i know a place
where a royal flush, can never beat a pair, and even thomas jefferson, is on
the nickel over there.
The next verse mentions Roosevelt.
Kanye West’s “Power” contains the lines “They say I was the abomination of Obama’s nation / Well that’s a pretty bad way to start the conversation”
O’Connor and Stapleton hit the Adult Contemporary Top 40 chart, so I’d say it was reasonably popular.