She keeps Moet et Chandon
In her pretty cabinet
‘Let them eat cake’ she says
Just like Marie Antoinette
She was pure, every ounce
I was sure, when her titties bounce
“Mandy is Two”, one of the sweeter Billie Holiday tunes.
She can kill with a smile, she can wound with her eyes, She can ruin your faith with her casual lies, And she only reveals what she wants you to see. She hides like a child but she’s always a woman to me
“My gal is red hot, your gal ain’t doodley squat”
I prefer the chorus:
She’s a Killer Queen
Gunpowder, gelatine
Dynamite with a laser beam
Guaranteed to blow your mind
Anytime
Bobby had Leukemia.
He was 16 years old.
He looked like 65.
When he died.
He was a friend of mine.
Or, another artist possibly talking about the same woman:
She’s an old-time ambassador
Of sweet talking, night walking games
And she’s known in the darkest clubs
For pushing ahead of the dames
If she says she can do it
Then she can do it,
she don’t make false claims
But she’s a Queen,
and such are queens
That your laughter
is sucked in their brains
Big John:
Every mornning at the mine, you could see him arrive.
He stood 6 foot 6, weighed 245.
Kind of broad at the shoulders, narrow at the hip.
And everybody knew you didn’t give no lip to Big John.
Snot running down his nose
Greasy fingers smearing shabby clothes
…Aqualung, Jethro Tull
*Sherry was a waitress at the only joint in town
She had a reputation as a girl who’d been around
Down Main Street after midnight, a brand new pack of cigs
A fresh one hangin’ from her lips, a beer between her legs
*
Robert Earl Keen, “The Road Goes On Forever”
Richard Thompson has so many:
James to Red Molly in 1952 Vincent Black Lightning:
And I’ve seen you at the corners and cafes it seems
Red hair and black leather, my favourite colour scheme
Cooksferry Queen:
Well she’s got every rare perfection
All her looks beyond compare
She’s got dresses that seem to float in the wind
Pre-Raphaelite curls in her hair
When the shrill winds are screaming
And the evening is still
Lady Samantha glides over the hill
In a long satin dress that she wears every day
Her home is the hillside, her bed is the grave
Lady Samantha glides like a tiger
Over the hills with no one beside her
No one comes near
They all live in fear
But Lady Samantha, she sheds only tears
The tales that I told round the fire every night
Are out of proportion and none of them right
She is harmless and empty of anything bad
For she once had something that most of you have
Lady Samantha - lyrics by Elton John, recorded by Three Dog Night
“My name’s Stewart Ransom Miller
And I’m a serial lady killer”
Old 97s, Barrier Reef
Jerry Reed’s Amos Moses
Now the folks around south Louisiana.
Said Amos was a hell of a man.
He could trap the biggest, the meanest alligator,
And just use one hand.
That’s all he got left cuz alligator bit it!
Left arm gone clean up to the elbow!
A mountain is something
You don’t want to fuck with
He hacked up a boulder,
and it totalled my car.
Sugar Magnolia
She comes skimmin’ through rays of violet,
she can wade in a drop of dew
Bloodhound Gangs “why is everybody always picking on me”
*The morn’ that I was born my old man beat up the doctor
He clocked the doctor cause the doctor said I looked like Chewbacca
The doctor said sir you’re misled sir which infers you mistook me
I did not mean your lovely wife was shackin’ up with a wookie
What I mean is Wolverine is less hairy than your son
He’s looks like Chewie Baba Booey Baba Booey and Hong Kong Phooey all in one
To put it mild your new-born child’s completely nutty fu-fu lookin’
I’d shove him back into the oven until he is done cookin’ *
She’s pure as New York snow, she got Bette Davis eyes
(Kim Carnes)
You were sorta punk rock, I grew up on hip hop
But you fit me better than my favorite sweater
(Lana del Rey, Blue Jeans)
Some Townes Van Zandt.
“Pancho was a bandit boys
His horse was fast as polished steel
Wore his gun outside his pants
For all the honest world to feel”
-Pancho & Lefty
“The name she gave was Caroline
Daughter of a miner
Her ways were free
It seemed to me
That sunshine walked beside her”
-Tecumseh Valley.
The latter is incredibly poignant due to the tragedy in the song.
Pete St John has written many great songs, and this one was notably performed by The Dubliners, among many other bands.
“I knew Danny Farrell when his football was a can
With his hand-me-downs and Welliers and his sandwiches of bran
But now that pavement peasant is a full grown bitter man
With all the trials and troubles of his travelling people’s clan”
-Danny Farrell
The same can be said of Phil Coulter.
“I remember the night that he came in
From the wintery cold and damp
A giant of a man in an oilskin coat
and a bundle that told he was a tramp
He stood at the bar and he called a pint
Then turned and gazed at the fire
On a night like this, to be safe and dry
Is my one and only desire”
-Donegal Danny.
There’s many, many folk songs that have great character descriptions. The Irish Rover is basically a series of miniature character studies, for example.