Remember, it is a firm rule that nobody famous is ever the answer to any question about a superlative (except most sales, obviously). For books, movies, music, plays, anything you can think of, the longest, lengthiest, highest, lowest, shortest, crunchiest, brownest, or most Peruvian is by somebody you have never heard of.
Exapno: I don’t get what you mean by that. Are you saying that it doesn’t count if some people haven’t heard of it?
I think Robot Arm settled it, anyway.
Primitive Radio Gods had a single “Standing Outside a Broken Phone Booth With Money In My Hand”, but that doesn’t even appear to be a starter in this race. OTOH, it charted well and got some radio play, unlike some others in this thread.
Manic Street Preachers’ “If You Tolerate This Then Your Children Will Be Next” is up there, as far as #1 charting singles (in the UK, at least) with long titles go.
Harpo: If memory serves, the longest sentence in a novel can be found in Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables. Couple that with Hoagy Carmichael’s song and it’s beginning to look like the rule of thumb is still being proved. Also, some gain fame simply by doing something superlative (would anybody remember Sir Edmond Hillary had he not climbed Everest?).
samarm: My favorite Shawn Phillips song is Bright White.
Sure it’s obscure, noisy breakbeat, and not half as long as some of the other entrants - but still…
A Penis is Just a Great Big Clitoris with a Piss Hole by Stunt Rock.
Not a country-western song. It was written by Alan Jay Lerner and Burton Lane for the Hollywood musical Royal Wedding (1951), where it was sung by Fred Astaire and Jane Powell.
The title of the song is actually “How could you believe me when I said I love you when you know I’ve been a liar all my life?”
If you are going to pick a Manics song, how about (from the Holy Bible album)
"Ifwhiteamericatoldthetruthforonedayit’sworldwouldfallapart"
“Joan Miro’s Procession Through The Insides Of A Purple Antelope Across A Sea Of Tuna Fish” by Adrian Belew?
Also my favorite title.
Simon & Garfunkel managed A simple desultory philippic (or how I was Robert McNamara’d into submission).
My (much) older brother just saw him in concert last year. Still touring after all these years.
I can’t name a song of his, but I do know the artist!
Not at all. I’m just saying that there have been many threads of the type “Did [famous artist] do the [superlative]?” And someone always chimes in with the revelation that some obscure or experimental artist did it much more so.
And that’s the point. Mainstream artists can get away with much less, because they have market pressures and commericial interests and company bosses. An experimental filmmaker can do a 24-hour-long film just to make a day-long film. Neither Cleopatra nor Napoleon nor any other film you have heard of in theaters can match this.
Pink Floyd or Christine Lavin or Fiona Apple can do very long titles, but somewhere there is a garage band who self-published a CD with an even longer one, just because they thought it would be a laugh.
Victor Hugo may have written the longest sentence in a major novel, but you will find if you search hard enough an entire novel that is a single sentence. Just to be the answer to a trivia question some day, as *octothorpe implies.
Mainstream and experimental are two different worlds, with wildly different rules.
But mostly I was just tickled by the answers because I had the same response to this thread as I do to all those threads whose title is “Why do they never…” and the answer always is “Yes, they do so too sometimes…” Life on the SDMB is always amusing. It’s a great place to pass the time.
Since everybody else seems to be throwing crap out that they know isnt the longest…
NOFX- We Threw Gasoline on the Fire and Now We have Stumps for Arms and no Eyebrows
Not the longest, but the one that came into my head:
“Why I Picked a Lemon in the Garden of Love Where They Say Only Peaches Grow”
:dubious:
What about a more simple explanation; [superlatives] in art are much more likely to achieved by obscure artists than famous artists for the simple fact that there are MANY MORE unknown artists than there are celebrities?
Nope. If you are making a movie or an album or a book or a tv show or any form of creative activity for one of AOL Time Warner’s million subsidiaries, it doesn’t matter how obscure you are, you will never under any circumstances be allowed to get away with what an independent experimental artist can do.
It’s already been beaten, but I’m going to throw it out there anyway just because I like it:
Why Should I Lend You Mine (When You’ve Broken Yours Off Already)…
Followed by:
…Maybe I’ll Lend You Mine After All
-Brand X, from Morroccan Roll
-mdf
This thread is an excellent argument for limiting song titles to 20 words or less.