Some songs are more spoken-word pieces set to music, sometimes but not always with a sung refrain, than actual singing. Here are ten examples from my collection:
1. Lisdoovarna – SixMileBridge (video, though not by SixMileBridge)
2. Everything Is Borrowed – The Streets (video)
3. Long Long Time – Guy Forsythe (video)
4. One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer – George Thorogood & The Destroyers (video)
5. The Bus Story – Asylum Street Spankers (video)
6. Albuquerque – Weird Al Yankovic
7. Alice’s Restaurant Massacree – Arlo Guthrie
8. Lobachevsky – Tom Lehrer (video)
9. One Night In Bangkok – Murray Head
10. #SELFIE – The Chainsmokers (video)
I included a few YouTube links for ones you may not be familiar with. “The Bus Story”, from one of the Spankers’ many live albums, was an actual story, of a time when their tour bus’ brakes failed and the band all though they were going to die. Don’t worry, it has a happy ending, and it is in its way one of the more amazing things they’ve ever done. Listening again to the immortal Lobachevsky got me to wondering: Who would play the part of the Hypoteneuse in a movie made today? That’s going to keep me awake tonight. (You can hear Danny Kaye’s “Stanislavsky” routine here, by the way.) What are your favorite examples of this kind of song?