Ministry: Jesus Built My Hotrod
The entire Operation Mindcrime album, every song, from Queensryche.
2 from Crash Test Dummies: God Shuffled His Feet (Sure the story’s a little sparse, but it’s there) and Two Knights and Maidens (Not a single, but good.)
(And Sir Rhosis - I think you missed gex gex’s point which was that the Top 40 listeners of today don’t have shorter attention spans than those of 30…wait…40 years ago when the Beatles were putting out I Wanna Hold Your Hand.)
(And, as a final aside, really, honestly…
Thus Spake Darwin’s Finch:
Sure, but it AIN’T songwriting… He stretched a LOOONG way to put the story to the tune sometimes.)
I’m surprised no one mentioned the Barenaked Ladies. A lot of their songs are ballads (in the storytelling aspect) and they have had success in the charts.
“Jeremy” and their cover of “Last Kiss” have already been mentioned, but I think that there are quite a few other Pearl Jam songs that could qualify as story songs. The songs “Alive”, “Once”, and “Footsteps” were written together as a “mini rock opera” about (I kid you not) a serial killer who preys on prostitutes.
Better Than Ezra’s “Under You” and “Beautiful Mistake” are somewhat-story songs. One’s about a bittersweet love affair; the other’s about a father leaving his children and returning 20 years later.
Ben Folds Five’s “Steven’s Last Night in Town” seems to be one, but maybe not.
“The Boxer” by Simon and Garfunkel maybe?
Time may factor into it, too.
Some of Harry Chapin’s (now there was a balladeer!) best songs never became hits simply because they were too long to get much airplay – too tough for the programmer to get the necessary spots that had to go in the hour. (Stinks, but someone’s gotta pay the light bill.)
My guess would be that something very similar kicks in as far as videos go. Very few recording artists, whatever their genre, don’t end up making videos of their songs anymore. The typical video for a non-ballad song can pretty much anything, but I’d imagine it would be considerably difficult (not to mention make the video a lot longer) to make a video of a true ballad. I mean, think of what it would take to adequately get across the story of “Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” or “Sequel” in a video. Not only that, but think about trying to make a video that was no longer than the song that got the story across. Could definitely be difficult.
On the other hand, it would sure make for better music videos than most I’ve seen…
Only because I’m suprised no one’s brought it up yet is Tracey Chapman’s Fast Cars.
My other immediate choice is Cracker’s Eurotrash Girl which may not have hit the charts, but is played by the local college radio station here quite a bit and is a rather amusing little story.
How about Bob Carlise’s “Butterfly Kisses” and NewSong’s “Christmas Shoes”?
The Ultimate story song has been mentioned, in the form of Alice’s Restaurant. I’ll just plug the penultimate story song, then, Warren Zevon’s Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner
THAT’S what that song’s about? Jesus, I need to listen to it again. And I hate the English version. Billy Joel has had a few story songs, including:
Scenes from an Italian Restaurant
I Don’t Want to be Alone
James
Laura (great song, plus Billy says the word fuck)
Sleeping With the Television On
Stop In Nevada
Zanzibar
Half a Mile Away
Bon Jovi had Livin’ On a Prayer
HOLY SHT!!!*
Someone ELSE knows Cowboy Mouth?!?!?!?!
Elfkin, you’re my new hero…
And I was just singing Delta Dawn in the shower this morning.
OK, I see a handful more from the 90’s (though not all are true story songs). Here are a bunch more from the 70’s (again, not all are good):[ul][li]Night Moves[]Main Street[]Piano Man[]Space Oddity[]Mr. Bojangles[]Midnight Train to Georgia[]Bad, Bad Leroy Brown[]Billy Don’t Be a Hero (ouch, my brain!)[]Cold Kentucky Rain[]In the Ghetto[]Wildfire[]Crocodile Rock[]Don’t Mess Around with Jim[]Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves[]Hollywood Nights[]Vincent[]Chuck E.‘s in Love[](Hey Baby, I’m the)Telephone Man[]Blinded by the Light (at least I think there’s a story in there)[]Squeeze Box[]Keep on Smilin’[]Play that Funky Music[]Walk This Way[/ul][/li]
(Should I keep going? I could, you know…)
Point is that there used to be a lot of story songs on the radio. Now there are only a few. Granted (as Biggirl pointed out), a lot of the story songs of the 70’s were crap (I couldn’t even bring myself to add “Muskrat Love” to the list, for fear of highlighting this fact). On the other hand, many were real gems. They were pop songs, after all, so you can only expect so much quality. On the whole, I think I’d rather hear a crappy story song than a “good” Brittney Spears song. Maybe that’s just me.
(Sir Rhosis- Good catch on the Pink Houses/Jack and Diane thing. Those songs run together in my head for some reason.)
No one here mentions Turtle Power… I wonder why?
[insert chirping crickets here]
More-
Billy Joel: Downeaster Alexa
Genisis: Driving the Last Spike (excellent song, IMO)
Allan Sherman: Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh (A Letter From Camp)
Ice-T: Six on the Morning
BareNaked Ladies: Hello City
Def Leppard: Billy’s Got a Gun (also Too Late For Love)
OAR: That Was a Crazy Game of Poker
Bryan Bowers: The Scotsman
You just had to work that in, didn’t ya? Dork. 
Not sure if anybody’s mentioned these yet, but I’ll throw them out for consideration anyway:
Werewolf, by the Five Man Electrical Band. Yep, they did more than just “Signs.”
I’d also include Operator, by Jim Croce. Compared to some of the others in this thread, it seems to be a bit of an oddity–a story within a story, if you will: the story of the singer and his lost love, as told to the telephone operator while he waffles about having the operator put the call through. Interesting take on it!
Country can be a good place to find story songs. Here’s a few that immediately come to mind:
The Devil Went Down to Georgia, by the Charlie Daniels Band.
Della and the Dealer, by Hoyt Axton.
Love, Me, by Collin Raye
He Would Be Sixteen, by Michelle Wright
Where’ve You Been?, by Kathy Mattea
Somebody earlier mentioned Harry Chapin, and I’ll second that one. Too bad most of his songs were too long to get any airplay, because they deserve hearing. Anyway, among my favourite Harry Chapin stories are Better Place to Be, Bummer, 30,000 Pounds of Bananas, and of course Taxi and Sequel.
Me and Bobby McGee
Drive South
The Night They Drove Dixie Down
Richard Thompson has written many story songs/ballads as well. My favorite is “Vincent Black Lightning 1952”, which I believe was fairly successful.
Oops, Bobby McGee was already mentioned.
More:
Snoopy vs. the Red Baron
Return of the Red Baron
Snoopy for President
Memphis, Tennessee
Oh, and
Space Oddity