What are your top two story songs?

[Annie-Xmas]

More Kinky:

His tribute to his old college roommate: The Ballad of Charles “Texas Tower” Whitman

Men’s Room L.A.

While it’s not a story song, Kinky’s Ride Em Jewboy is simply the best song about the Holocaust ever written.

[PinkMarabou]

I only really like one: “Painters” by Jewel. Very sad story.

[Cisco]

@Reeder

The Ballad of Curtis Loew do I have to say who did it?

Well I used to wake the morning, before the rooster crow…

I can’t believe I forgot that one, and I can’t believe I never took you for a fan of that bunch of liberal rednecks :D.

@Reeder

His name was actually Tom Dula. The story took place ritght here in NC.

Not 10 miles from where I grew up.

[Biffy_the_Elephant_Shrew]

Oh, man, there have been so many great ones mentioned in this thread. “Tam Lin,” “Isis,” “Hurricane”…but I just dropped back in to mention Captain Beefheart’s “Orange Claw Hammer.”

[Thudlow_Boink]

@nitroglycerine

On one of his more recent albums, “Snakebite” I think…(I’m to lazy to go look), he does a song called “Talkin’ Wall Of Voodoo Blues” where he tells the the story, good and bad, about his old band. It’s like a four minute “Behind The Music”.

Sounds like a subgenre: autobiographical songs. Which would include “The Ballad of John and Yoko” by the Beatles, “The Road” by the Kinks, “Creeque Alley” by the Mamas and the Papas…

[plnnr]

@pinkfreud

I wonder if anyone outside my neck of the woods has ever heard “Ballad of Spider John,” by the excellent Willis Alan Ramsey. If not, seek it out. Like almost everything Willis Alan has recorded, it’s pure perfection of its kind.

Good Lord, I thought I was the only person in the world who had this album (which also includes the original version of “Muskrat Love” - a song which gets no end of ridicule when done by the Capt. and Tennile, but which is, in fact, completely different when done in the original).

[Motorgirl]

@Reeder

Hang down your head Tom Dooley…
Hang down your head and cry
Hang down your Tom Dooley
Poor boy you’re bound to die…

His name was actually Tom Dula. The story took place ritght here in NC.

This is one of my favorites. I like the version by The Kingston Trio.

Also:

Whiskey in the Jar by just about everybody, but I like the Clancy Brothers best.

And of course the perennial favorite The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald

[Squonk]

Two more I don’t think have been mentioned:

Family Snapshot - Peter Gabriel
Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner - Warren Zevon

[Sternvogel]

Yet another vote for The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, and a second of Scenes From An Italian Restaurant. Also, since it hasn’t been mentioned yet: Johnny Horton’s The Battle of New Orleans.

[scotandrsn]

Too long a thread for me to have time to read through right now, so consider mine to be seconding votes if they’ve been mentioned:

“Lather” by The Jefferson Airplane
“The Gift” by The Velvet Underground

Call me weird, plenty of others have…

[Omniscient]

I’m not going to rank my faves, because there’s about 20 in this thread that would battle for inclusion, but here’s a really good one that hasn’t been mentioned.

*Tonight Is the Night I Fell Asleep at the Wheel * by Bare Naked Ladies