Music Banter - Songs that tell a story? :)

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Songs that tell a story? :)

Tom's Diner by Suzanne Vega tells a story about the going ons in a Diner and you feel like you are in that Diner yourself. :) I could see the half filled coffee and Suzanne subtly being nosy but pouring her milk innocuously. I could see the Woman coming in with wet hair from the rain even though she used an umbrella. Been there myself. :)

Entire The Wall Album

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tubeileh (Post 2199425)

Entire The Wall Album

Is The Wall album the Pink Floyd Album with Just Another Brick In The Wall Part 1 and 2? :) Just Another Brick In The Wall Part 1 and 2 really do tell a story. :) Although when Pink Floyd sang,"Teachers leave them kids alone," they were referring to the Teachers mentally abusing The Students such as being Dictatorish to the Students. In Modern times, some Teachers molest and even rape their Students! :O

The Wall is of course a concept album, telling the story of one man's slide from isolation into madness. So any concept album tells a story. Most songs should tell some sort of a story I feel; the deeper the lyric most often the better the song. Nick Cave excels at this.

as does Springsteen

But for me the undisputed master is Waits.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Karice (Post 2199414)

Definitely this one for me

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FVgvL-M3Aro

One of my favorites to sing when I'm drunk as a skunk:

Oh ****, I can't forget this gem.

Country is the perfect genre for this kinda thing.

I'll go with Matthew Good's A Single Explosion. The album the song comes from (Hospital Music) is about him coming to grips with all kinds of crap - mental illness, overdosing on antidepressants, and a divorce. He wrote the album while in a psych ward.

That sounds interesting, mc. I should give it a listen.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Trollheart (Post 2199430)

The Wall is of course a concept album, telling the story of one man's slide from isolation into madness. So any concept album tells a story. except Tales Of Topographic Oceans Most songs should tell some sort of a story I feel; the deeper the lyric most often the better the song.

Fixed that for you Trollheart!

Quote:

Originally Posted by Queen Boo (Post 2199465)

Country is the perfect genre for this kinda thing.

Ditto almost all of the folk genre from traditional British through to Bob Dylan, so really "story songs" is a category too big to be useful. Having said that, I feel that "Lily, Rosemary And The Jack of Hearts" deserves a mention as a rhymed narrative that runs for 16 verses without a repeated line anywhere.

They don't get any better than this...

Eddie Noack - Psycho

One can look at a number of acts from New Jersey for good storytelling songs - Springsteen, Bon Jovi, Gaslight Anthem.

Airborne Toxic Event's lyrics are often telling stories. Sometime around midnight is an excellent example. They're most recent album, Hollywood Park, is based on the singer's memoirs of the same name. It's an excellent album.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYPoMjR6-Ao

Haha, my first thought when reading the title of this thread was Eminem's Stan. Great song. Will never get old.

^ I have this song, but tbh, I've never listened to it with enough attention to work out what's going on in Dylan's story. If it comes with the Plankton Seal of Approval, I should remedy that soon.

For me, the story on VU's The Gift gets really irritating really quickly, but with this one, the karaoke version, you can listen to a piece of great music without the distraction of the narrative:-

And here's Paul Simon doing, in my view, a much better job of telling a story in a song:-

Chris de Burgh used to be able to tell a hell of a story in song...

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lisnaholic (Post 2207513)

^ I have this song, but tbh, I've never listened to it with enough attention to work out what's going on in Dylan's story. If it comes with the Plankton Seal of Approval, I should remedy that soon.

It reads a bit like a novella with a decent cadence:

Quote:

Tweeter and the Monkey Man were hard up for cash
They stayed up all night selling cocaine and hash
To an undercover cop who had a sister named Jan
For reasons unexplained she loved the Monkey Man
Tweeter was a Boy Scout 'fore she went to Vietnam
And found out the hard way, nobody gives a damn
They knew that they found freedom just across the Jersey line
So they hopped into a stolen car, took Highway 99

And the walls came down
All the way to hell
Never saw them when they're standing
Never saw them when they fell

The undercover cop never liked the Monkey Man
Even back in childhood he wanted to see him in the can
Jan got married at fourteen to a racketeer named Bill
She made secret calls to the Monkey Man from a mansion on the hill
It was out on Thunder Road, Tweeter at the wheel
They crashed into paradise, they could hear them tires squeal
The undercover cop pulled up and said "Everyone of you is a liar
If you don't surrender now it's gonna go down to the wire"

And the walls came down
All the way to hell
Never saw them when they're standing
Never saw them when they fell

An ambulance rolled up, a state-trooper close behind
Tweeter took his gun away and messed up his mind
The undercover cop was left tied up to a tree
Near the souvenir stand, by the old abandoned factory
Next day the undercover cop was hot in pursuit
He was taking the whole thing personal, he didn't care about the loot
Jan had told him many times, "It was you to me who taught
In Jersey anything's legal as long as you don't get caught"

And the walls came down
All the way to hell
Never saw them when they're standing
Never saw them when they fell

Some place by Rahwey Prison they ran out of gas
The undercover cop had cornered them, said
"Boy, you didn't think this could last?"
Jan jumped out of bed, said, "There's someplace I gotta go"
She took the gun out of the drawer, said, "It's best that you don't know."
The undercover cop was found face down in a field
The Monkey Man was on the river bridge, using Tweeter as a shield
Jan said to the Monkey Man, "I'm not fooled by Tweeter's curl
I knew him long before he became a Jersey Girl"

And the walls came down
All the way to hell
Never saw them when they're standing
Never saw them when they fell

Now the town of Jersey City is quieting down again
I'm sitting in a gambling club called the Lion's Den
The TV set was blown up, every bit of it is gone
Ever since the nightly news showed that the Monkey Man was on
I guess I'll go to Florida and get myself some sun
There ain't no more opportunity here, everything's been done
Sometimes I think of Tweeter, sometimes I think of Jan
Sometimes I don't think about nothing but the Monkey Man

And the walls came down
All the way to hell
Never saw them when they're standing
Never saw them when they fell

And the walls came down
All the way to hell
Never saw them when they're standing
Never saw them when they fell

The Wilbury's all played to their strengths in that super group and of course Dylans strength was his story telling.

I'm going to go into the moldy oldies bin for these two, but Marty Robbins was known as a great storyteller, particularly on songs about the old West.

Then there was the rather tragic Old To Billie Joe, a huge smash for Bobbie Gentry in 1967.

Off the top of my head, The Band's King Harvest (Is Surely Come).

"Last year this time, wasn't no joke -
My whole barn went up in smoke.
Our horse Jethro, well, he went mad
And I can't ever remember things bein' that bad.
Then here come a man with a paper and pen
Tellin' us our hard times are about to end
And then, if they don't give us what we like
He said, 'Men, that's when you gotta go on strike!'

Corn in the fields,
Listen to the rice when the wind blows 'cross the water -
King Harvest has surely come."

I also love this performance, in Sammy Davis Jr.'s pool house of all places.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TaKD1Vdarnw

Harper Valley PTA by Jeannie is a song that tells a story. :) In fact, this song is one of the only songs in History that was the cause for a movie. :) Barbara Eden played the Mother who the song is about. Fun fact. Barbara played a character called Jeannie in I Dream Of Jeannie (Genie) and a woman named Jeannie sang Harper Valley PTA. :)

Welcome to MB, Karice! :wave: Yeah, I remember Harper Valley PTA: a great song, as is the classic from the same era that rubbersoul mentions: Ode To Billy Joe. Oddly enough I think that song was also turned into a movie, so they both share what you rightly say is a rare distinction. (That is, if we are not counting concept-albums-to-movies like The Wall and Tommy).

Thanks for posting the Tweeter And The Monkey Man lyrics, Plankton. You made it super-easy for me to actually follow the song, which was full of surprises. No wonder I never figured it out from listening while driving. It's clearly an underrated gem from Bob, and I loved this classic Dylan, unnecessary detail that he squeezed into the narrative:-

Quote:

The undercover cop was left tied up to a tree
Near the souvenir stand, by the old abandoned factory

On the topic of nice details, here's a song in which the details all but overwhelm the narrative, such as it is:-

Spoiler for Lyrics:

Another great story song not yet mentioned: Hotel California by The Eagles.

And where is Ayn Marx ?! ;) You should be telling us about Peter and The Wolf, not leaving it up to me to enthuse about this unique combination of spoken word and music. I enjoyed it as a child, then re-enjoyed it all over again when I introduced it to my son. With the help of toy figures and ham acting we used to act out bits of the story - never with an audience, but just for the fun we had together.

Yes, Lisna, Ode to Billie Joe was made into a movie. Robby Benson played the ill-fated Billy Joe McAllister in the 1976 film (probably one his earliest films as I think he got bigger a little later). Can't say I actually saw the movie, though, but I do remember the trailer.

Robby Benson. Now there's a name I haven't heard in a long time. Never saw Ode To Billie Joe (great song though) but I remember seeing him in Ice Castles.

This one tells a story too, I think. Van Morrison's Madame George.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_pbhVVFTuow

Quote:

Originally Posted by ribbons (Post 2207708)

^ Madam George is one of my absolute favourites of Van Morrison, ribbons! Good choice. :thumb:

I had not heard The Band song, King Harvest, before, but that sad depiction of rural hardship put me in mind of an industrial equivalent set on the other side of the Atlantic; Ewan Maccoll's My Old Man:

I think the words are so clear, I'm not putting the lyrics, but would like to mention that "the cyclops" was the nickname of a blast furnace or some such, with its one burning red eye:

https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/i...USzoA&usqp=CAU

Is "gave him his cards" generally understood? = returned his National Insurance card, with its green stamps showing his weekly payments into the government health&benefits scheme:-

https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/i...Awqhg&usqp=CAU

Charlie Daniels - Uneasy Rider

The Devil Went Down To Georgia by Charlie Daniels (RIP, :( tells a story. :) It not only tells a story, it makes the listener feel like they are in there with Johnny, The Demons, and The Devil watching this epic showdown. :) But in all honesty, I thought the Devil's Music sounded BETTER than Johnny's and that Johnny lost, but YouTube Comments opened my eyes to how The Devil lost. "The Devil is just hawing on his instrument like a madman with no real passion or soul, whereas Johnny actually sings a song and plays his instruments better. And Devil cheated by having The Demons play backup for him. Johnny did his epic parts SOLO. Johnny won. Devil lost.

Tragically Hip - Fifty-mission cap

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-t8W4X8Obo

The song is about a player from the Toronto Maple Leafs. He scored the Stanley Cup winning goal in 1951. Not long after the game, he disappeared. He was found to have died in a float plane crash in 1952.