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Great songs with memorable titles

by 84 Comments

I have often been dissapointed when checking out an interesting song title only to find the actual song was crap.
So here are two that did not dissapoint

Pissing in a rriver – Patti Smith
Furniture – Horslips

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Comments

  1. Faces – You Can Make Me Dance, Sing or Anything (Even Take the Dog for a Walk, Mend a Fuse, Fold Away the Ironing Board, or Any Other Domestic Shortcomings)

    When I first heard the full title, I thought the DJ (Mike Read? Johnnie Walker? J*m*y S*v*l*e?) was making it up and adding the brackets for wunnerful Radio 1 giggles

  6. “You Don’t Pull No Punches, but You Don’t Push the River” – Van Morrison. Beat that!

    Alternatively “Maybe the people would be the times or between Clark and Hilldale” – Love

    • Absolutely, the tracklist itself on their albums is as amusing as the average issue of Viz. I mean that as a compliment. I remember a friend of mine picking up one of their early albums and having a fit of laughter. Only when he’d got his breath back could he utter while still giggling that it was “Rod Hull is Alive – Why?”, that had triggered him.

    • Wholly agree, see

      The Light At The End Of The Tunnel (Is The Light Of An Oncoming Train)
      If I Had Possession Over Pancake Day
      Tonight Matthew I’m Going To Be With Jesus
      Tending The Wrong Grave For 23 Years
      Dead Men Don’t Need Season Tickets

      All great titles & all absolute storming tunes

  10. It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing – DUKE ELLINGTON

    From Langley Park to Memphis – PREFAB SPROUT

    Mad dogs and Englishmen – NOEL COWARD

    A pub with no beer – SLIM DUSTY

    Ain’t nobody here but us chickens – LOUIS JORDAN

    Somewhere in America, there’s a street named after my dad – WAS NOT WAS

    Please don’t go topless, mother – TROY HESS

    Annie, I ain’t your daddy – KID CEOLE

    Ghosts of American Astronauts – MEKONS

    Yoshimi battles the pink robots – FLAMING LIPS

    I was dancing in the lesbian bar – JONATHAN RICHMAN

  11. Rainy Day Women Nos. 12 & 35 – Bob Dylan

    Tomorrow Never Knows – The Beatles

    Forty Thousand Headmen – Traffic

    Car Lights On In The Daytime Blues – Love

    Victorian Brickwork – Big Big Train

  15. “To the Workers of the Rock River Valley Region, I Have an Idea Concerning Your Predicament, and It Involves Tube Socks, a Paper Airplane, and Twenty-Two Able-Bodied Men” by Sufjan Stevens

  18. Let’s Make The Water Turn Black – The Mothers of Invention
    I Have Slept With All The Girls in Berlin – The Sisters Of Mercy
    Ballrooms of Mars – T. Rex
    I Thought I Told You To Wait In The Car – Sparks
    Albanian Cousin – Morrissey

  21. Arlo Guthrie’s James Taylor homage ‘Gabriel’s Mother’s Highway Ballad #16 Blues’.

    Who knows what the title is about… but it’s a masterpiece.

  22. Three that immediately come to mind – all great title & are some of my favourite songs:

    Ladies & Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space – Spiritualized
    Urgent, Important, Please Read – DJ Shadow
    What’s With All The Pine? – Houseplants

    The latter also has a great video which adds to the title:

  24. Lawrence from Felt could be very good at this, with both songs and titles (or very precious depending on your pov).

    All the people I like are those that are dead
    Primitive Painters
    Stained glass windows in the sky
    I will die with my head in flames
    My face is on fire
    The final resting of the ark
    Rain of crystal spires
    Hours of darkness have changed my mind

    And so on.

  27. As is true of most questions, the correct answer is the Taj Mahal classic “You Ain’t No Street Walker Mama, Honey But I Do Love The Way You Strut Your Stuff”.
    The live version, especially.

    • Another Taj one is “Big Legged Mamas Are Back In Style”.

      Then there’s Louis Jordan’s “You Run Your Mouth And I’ll Run My Business” and “A Chicken Ain’t Nothin’ But A Bird”.
      And “Boogie Woogie Blue Plate”..

  28. ‘(No More) the sub-mariner’ by Peter Hammill. In fact, almost everything from Hammill has a great title and backed up by equally great lyrics. Sometimes true of Morrissey too. Although arguably a lesser artist on the whole whose titles often go for the gag and the easy controversy. With him I often feel the title comes first and then the lyric is contorted to fit. Sometimes it works. Often doesn’t. But even his failures still make me smile.

    • Hammill is, of course, an extremely good call in this field, both solo and in VdGG. I might suggest a few:

      The Comet, The Course, The Tail;
      Childlike Faith in Childhood’s End;
      and, perhaps inevitably
      A Plague of Lighthouse Keepers.

  29. To help you into The Festering Season.

    Papa Ain’t No Santa Claus (Mama Ain’t No Christmas Tree): Butterbeans and Susie

     There’s No Lights On The Christmas Tree Mother, They’re Burning Big Louie Tonight: The Sensational Alex Harvey Band

    • Your second point carries the day, I think. The random precision of the title is outweighed by the thrown together in the studio, “this’ll do” joke of a track.

      I suppose it was mildly amusing on first hearing…especially if the listener was a Scot.

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