What is your favorite Story song?
 

You know the type, a song that tells a story. It could be about drugs, I mean dragons (as in Puff, the magic Dragon) or it could be about patriotism and support of the military/industrial complex (The Green Beret), but it has toi have a story, a character(s), a plot, even though it may be a very thin plot, and it has to go somewhere. From my POV, the more manipulative the better, but the best is all up to you.

My favorite story song is Taxi by Harry Chapin.

It has some great lines like (this is from memory, but I am pretty sure its close):

And she said "We must get together",
But I knew it'd never be arranged.
Then she handed me twenty dollars,
For a two-fifty fare, she said:

"Harry, keep the change."

Well another man might have been angry,
And another man might have been hurt,
But another man never would have let her go...
I stashed the bill in my shirt.



Close behind Chapin's opus (one of the few story songs to ever lead to a sequel which, like most movie sequels, was nowhere near as good as the original) are these other great stories:

Ode to Billie Joe (by Bobbie Gentry)

"The day Billie Joe McAllister jumped off the Tallahachee Bridge."

Say no more, say no more.

El Paso By Marty Robbins

"Something is dreadfully wrong for I feel
A deep burning pain in my side."

What are your favorites?

Harry Chapin is a great song story teller. WOLD, 30,000 lbs of Bananas, and Dreams Go By are all favorites I grew up listening to.

Ben Fold's Five "Brick" is another good one that takes me back to High School.

Story songs are great, although I think the best of all-time may be Ice Cube's "It Was a Good Day".

Richard Cory, by Simon and Garfunkel. Admittedly, probably not obscure enough to be cool, lyrics came from a poem, but I still think it's a cool song.

American Pie by Don Maclean

The night the lights went out in georgia (because of resevoir dogs)

A great song, but I wouldn't really consider it much of a "story".

I was with you on CHapin (you left out Cat's in the Cradle) but Brick is a of a downer and as to Ice Cube, too crude and no style, IMO, but I think you were chain yanking?

Good song. This fits rather nicely with Water's urging doctors to act collectively in the other thread.

Was Cats in the Cradle a Chapin original? That would be his #1 if it was... I always assumed it was a Cat Stevens song.

Brick is a downer, but it is a manipulative downer. I thought your criteria was the more manipulative, the better.

As far as Ice Cube, you cannot deny a song with the line:

"Get me on the court and I'm trouble... messed around last week and got a triple-double".

Yes, that is the edited version, but still. Maybe it is just my generation.

Two I forgot

Paul Revere by the beastie boys

boyz n da hood... NWA or Dynamite Hack

Cat's in the Cradle is a Chapin original. He and his wife Sandy wrote it together. I didn't pick it becaseu I thought Taxi is more of a story.

I'll give you Brick. It works well at what it is doing.

That's a good line from Ice, but the unedited version is far too much for my old man taste, I guess.