Unique Songs

As I've mentioned in previous blog posts, I'm not the biggest music fan in the world. I never had a collection of hundreds of CDs, back when CDs were a thing. I think I had a few dozen at most, and I probably only listened to a few songs from most of them.

I do like music. I get very enthusiastic about particular songs. My taste tends to be pretty middle-of-the-road, for the most part, with now and then a lurch into more niche territory.

As well as the straightforward pleasure of listening to music, I'm quite fascinated by its social and cultural aspects. I mean popular music especially. I like reading about the history of the music charts (especially on this blog), and the place particular songs achieve in the wider culture.

But, in this blog post, I want to write about a particular type of song. I've used the title "unique songs", but that doesn't quite get at it. (After all, every song is unique.) I'm talking about songs with a unique subject matter.

Relative to the totality of songs ever written, I think this is a fairly small subset. Most songs fit into a particular genre, lyrically speaking. (Then there are instrumental songs, which don't apply here at all.) 

Love songs are undoubtedly the biggest category, by a huge margin. And within that category, there are innumerable sub-genres, such as break-up songs.

But even rather quirky themes can give rise to quite a lot of songs. For instance, there are quite a lot of songs that celebrate larger ladies.

There's an interesting list of common song subjects on the ever-entertaining website TV Tropes. Click here, and expand the "Subject Tropes" heading.

To qualify for inclusion in this blog post, songs have to fulfil these three criteria:

1) They have to actually be about something, and not downright cryptic. So songs like "A Whiter Shade of Pale" by Procul Harum don't qualify.

2) The song has to actually be about its ostensible subject matter. That is, it can't simply take an unusual subject, image, or metaphor as a point of departure. So, for instance, "Please Mr. Postman" wouldn't qualify, even though there aren't many songs about postmen. Because it's not really about a postman. It has a much more conventional subject: the narrator pining for his beloved. Which is fine, but not what I'm writing about now. 

The same principle would disqualify a song such as "YMCA" by the Village People. It's not really about all the things you can do at the Young Men Christian's Association. (Although, according to Wikipedia, its co-writer vehemently insists, to this day, that it really is just about that. Well, never mind; you get the point.)

3) Novelty songs don't qualify. "Werewolves of London" by Warren Zevon has a unique subject, but the whole point is that it's zany.

I've only included songs with which I'm fairly familiar, though I don't make that an actual criterion.

So what does qualify? Well, here goes...

1) "Kung Fu Fighting" by Carl Douglas.

I can't think of very many pop or rock songs about martial arts. ("Ninja" by Europe is the only other one that comes to mind.) But this song isn't just about martial arts; it's about a contemporary Kung Fu craze, although it seems from the lyrics to be looking backwards nostalgically. I don't think it counts as a novelty song because it's not ostentatiously silly. True, the Guardian describes it as "the quintessential novelty single", but since when was the Guardian right about anything?

2) "Nothing Ever Happens" by Del Amitri.

I mentioned this song in a recent blog post. Perhaps it gave me the idea for this list.

There must be thousands of songs about being bored, and about particularly boring places (such as "Every Day is Like Sunday" by Morrissey). But are there any other songs which portray our whole way of life as boring and stagnant?

3) "Country House" by Oasis.

The winner of the "Battle of Britpop" between Oasis and Blur in August 1995. I remember it well! It doesn't seem to be especially fondly remembered, but I like it. I think it has clever lyrics.

4) "Paperback Writer" by the Beatles.

This one occurred to me because, rather famously, Paul McCartney actually wrote it in answer to a challenge to write something other than a love song. A challenge from his aunt, as it happens.

5) "What a Wonderful World" by Louis Armstrong

This might seem a surprising inclusion, but I'm thinking of how often it's chosen by TV producers to express the sentiment of its title. Are there many other songs simply celebrating the wonderfulness of the world in general? There must be, but I can't think of them.

6) "San Francisco" by Scott McKenzie

There are a lot of songs about particular times and places, and probably a lot of songs about Flower Power and hippies. But this seems distinctive because it was written at the moment it was happening. As you can guess, I'm not at all nostalgic for that counterculture, but I do like the song. (It was a favourite of my mother's, incidentally.)

7) "In the Year 2525" by Zager and Evans.

A huge hit about the dehumanising effects of technology, and the dystopian future that may be awaiting us in the distant future. Not many of those about.

8) "Going Back" by Dusty Springfield

There are lots of songs about nostalgia and childhood, but are there any other songs about rediscovering, as an adult, the wisdom of childhood play and games? To Irish people of a particular generation (mine), this song will always be associated with a certain ad for the Electricity Supply Board.

9) "Closer to Fine" by the Indigo Girls.

The chorus was already familiar, but I'd never really listened to this song until my wife played it for me a few years ago. She used to be a big fan of the Indigo Girls. I'd never heard of them. I suppose, if I'm to be heavy about it, this song is a hymn to moral and epistemological relativism. But surely we can get off our high horses long enough to enjoy a playful anthem whose moral is summed up in the refrain: "The less I seek my source for some definitive, the closer I am to fine." 

10) "Escape" by Rupert Holmes (the Pina Colada song).

The old, old story. A guy gets tired of his lady, decides to cheat on her, finds a personal ad in the newspaper, makes a date, and then finds out it's his own lady who placed the ad! And they just laugh about it! It probably happens every day, somewhere.

(I really love the line "Though I'm nobody's poet...". Has the phrase "I'm nobody's X or Y" fallen out of use?)

11) "Baker Street" by Gerry Rafferty

One of my favourite songs of all time. Funnily enough, given the whole idea of this list, this one shares a theme with the very next entry: songs about somebody becoming disillusioned with a city they once romanticised. But it's a pretty small sub-genre, right?

12) "The Last Morning" by Dr. Hook

See above. Also one of my favourite songs of all time.

13) "Living Next Door to Alice" by Smokie

OK, this is a love song, but the situation described in it seems pretty distinctive.

14) "Sultans of Swing" by Dire Straits

I include this one a little bit tentatively. Perhaps there is a whole genre of songs about small-time bands, written by big-time bands. I can think of at least one another example: "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band", by a popular Liverpudlian quartet. But I'll throw it in, just in case I'm wrong.

15) "Get a Job" by the Silhouettes.

I'm sure many people have been pestered by their loved ones to go get a job, but I'm not sure there are any other songs about it. Dib-dib-dib-dib-dib-dib! It reminds me that Trading Places (it plays over its closing credits) seemed to be constantly on the TV back in my childhood, along with the rather similarly-themed Brewster's Millions.

16) "The Village Green Preservation Society" by The Kinks

"We are the Village Green Preservation Society, God save Donald Duck, vaudeville and variety, we are the Desperate Dan Appreciation Society, God save strawberry jam and all the different varieties."

This one might, arguably, run foul of my first criterion, since it's somewhat cryptic. What organisation is this, with so many different titles and remits? But it's clearly a hymn to traditional England, not conceived in a high Elgarian way, more the England of the common man. And I can't think of any other song like this.

There are actually a few songs on the album this was taken from, The Kinks are the Village Green Appreciation Society, which could make this list. Especially "People Take Pictures of Each Other", a wistful and melancholy meditation on the fact that...people take pictures of each other. "People take pictures of the summer, just in case someone thought they had missed it..."

17) "Stories for Boys" by U2.

Literally a song about stories (and other entertainments) for boys. One would expect such a subject to receive a nostalgic, mellow treatment. Instead, it's a straightforward hard rock song, which is intriguing.

Well, those are my nominations. Do you have any to add, dear reader? I would love to hear them. Longtime (or short-time) lurkers, here is your invitation to join in!