Elvis Costello
A dead entertainer-priest narrates his own arrival in the afterlife, only to find God as an unimpressed, bored figure lounging…
religious satire performance and hypocrisy mortality
Randy Newman
This is the instrumental main title cue for Pixar's Monsters, Inc., a bouncy, brass-and-piano-driven theme meant to set the…
playfulness childhood wonder comic mischief
Black Sabbath
This closing track from Paranoid pairs a lurching instrumental jam with a half-comic, half-paranoid account of drug-induced…
drug paranoia unreliable perception self-deception
Mos Def
A breezy account of a teenage joyride that stalls on an absurd, deflating detail: a jammed seatbelt that thwarts the narrator's…
adolescent desire freedom and mobility comic frustration
Muddy Waters
A slow, grinding blues in which Muddy Waters uses a strange, oversized cat as a comic stand-in for suspicion and sexual…
jealousy and suspicion infidelity domestic surveillance
Waylon Jennings
A loose, novelty-style country blues number about a laid-back dog named Clyde who supposedly plays bass and sings the blues on a…
rural leisure comic anthropomorphism stubbornness/inertia
Richard Thompson
A jaunty, almost comic account of a wrecked relationship, where the narrator recounts being physically and emotionally battered…
toxic romance emotional exhaustion comic violence
Bessie Smith
Bessie Smith delivers an ultimatum blues to a freeloading lover, dressing up a blunt economic demand in barnyard comedy and…
economic independence sexual and domestic reciprocity female autonomy
The Smiths
A deadpan lament about the misery of ordinary employed adult life, delivered with such theatrical self-pity that it becomes…
alienation the tedium of work self-pity as performance
Mos Def's take on the Chuck Berry classic turns a simple chase-through-the-city into a breathless comic monologue about pursuit…
romantic pursuit urban mobility desire and elusiveness
Queen
A hard-rock stomper about sneaking past disapproving parents to get to a girl, played entirely for comic, cartoonish swagger.…
teenage rebellion forbidden romance comic machismo
A comic blues built on a pun: the singer boasts she has 'what it takes' — desirability, sex appeal, and money — but refuses to…
financial independence female self-sufficiency sexual innuendo
Tom Petty
Tom Petty turns a chorus of romantic devotion into a punchline by surrounding it with a comic gallery of failed relationships.…
romantic complacency divorce and dysfunction irony as affection
Carole King
This is Carole King's musical setting of Maurice Sendak's alphabetized catalogue of alligator antics, originally written for the…
childhood chaos domestic mischief alphabet as form
Kacey Musgraves
This is a cover of the 1953 novelty Christmas standard, performed straight rather than reinvented, letting a child's absurd,…
childhood wish-fulfillment comic absurdity holiday tradition
Beastie Boys
A comic-book origin story for a vigilante who fights not crime but conformity, using eggs as his weapon of choice against anyone…
mock heroism vigilante justice as absurdity urban mischief
George Jones
A comic prison narrative told in George Jones's late-career storyteller voice, in which a convicted murderer talks his way into…
cunning versus authority folk-hero outlawry trust and betrayal
My Morning Jacket
This is a cover of Erykah Badu's 1997 kiss-off anthem, in which a woman lays out the receipts on a freeloading,…
financial exploitation in relationships entourage/freeloading friends self-respect and boundary-setting
A comic, unapologetically horny country song about a woman counting off the days since her last sexual encounter, using rural…
sexual frustration female desire and agency rural/country signifiers as innuendo
Frank Sinatra
A comic protest song in which the singer refuses to dance not out of reluctance but because dancing with this particular woman…
comic denial as flirtation physical desire disguised as reluctance control versus surrender
Ethan Whitney
A straightforward pop declaration of romantic devotion dressed up in comic-book imagery. The narrator pledges protective,…
devoted love self-sufficiency vs. support escapism
The Who
A restless, half-comic confession of spiritual searching that name-drops the counterculture's gurus only to find them useless.…
spiritual seeking disillusionment with counterculture idols self-knowledge as impossible task
Little Feat
A wry breakup narrative that keeps undercutting its own heartbreak with comic self-interest. The narrator confronts a cheating…
infidelity and betrayal performed heartbreak vs. real indifference serial romance
Buzzcocks
A jittery catalogue of mundane waiting -- supermarket queues, phone calls, cigarettes -- becomes a comic study in erotic…
impatience and waiting sexual frustration consumer banality
John Prine
John Prine builds a comic song out of the format of a newspaper advice column, staging a series of absurd reader complaints that…
absurdity of everyday complaint futility of advice-seeking identity and self-acceptance
A jaunty novelty jump-blues number in which a narrator affectionately but insistently mocks his partner's terrible dancing,…
comic frustration in love physical imperfection as running gag performance and public embarrassment
Hank Williams
This is a live radio performance of Hank Williams' comic novelty song, framed by an announcer's folksy introduction before…
privacy versus gossip marital independence rural community friction
An early Def Jam posse cut in which the three Beastie Boys trade boastful verses over a stripped-down break, each rapper…
braggadocio borrowed hip-hop tradition urban identity/borough pride
This is Bessie Smith's rendition of W.C. Handy's classic, a comic-tragic tale of a woman named Susie Johnson pining after a…
romantic abandonment itinerant lovers and railroad culture communication and waiting
MF DOOM
Hoe Cakes is DOOM's mock-manual on relationship management, built entirely around a running pun that turns pancakes into a…
misogynist bravado as persona commodification of relationships comic wordplay and double entendre
Ella Fitzgerald
A love song built almost entirely out of teasing insults, this Rodgers and Hart standard argues that real affection survives —…
imperfect love affection through teasing authenticity versus conventional beauty
Howlin’ Wolf
A big man's boastful self-defense turns into an easy, unhurried seduction. Howlin' Wolf takes what could be an insult about his…
self-acceptance masculine boasting sexuality and endurance
A serial motormouth apologizes for cruel things he's said, then dramatically inflates his guilt by comparing himself to a martyr…
guilt and self-loathing comic martyrdom the damage of words
A cartoonishly juvenile chant dressed up as a party anthem, built on a nursery-rhyme hook and a rambling anecdote about a…
adolescent bravado misogyny as performance comic self-deprecation
A dense, boastful showcase track in which DOOM treats rap itself as street-level commerce, comparing his rhymes to cheap…
rap-as-commerce braggadocio and craft irreverent wordplay
Steve Earle
A wry character sketch of an unrepentant romantic drifter told from the outside, by a narrator warning a woman about the man's…
romantic recidivism performance vs. sincerity the myth of the outlaw lover
Leonard Cohen
A wry, half-comic meditation on aging and memory dressed up as a road song. The narrator sets out to reclaim some lost person or…
memory and forgetting aging exodus/departure
A honky-tonk confessional in which the narrator describes his own drinking as an inevitability rather than a choice, framing…
compulsive drinking fatalism disguised as humor social ritual of the bar
Big Star
A woozy, half-collapsed love song built from disconnected snapshots rather than a story, drifting through washes of noise and…
fractured attention desire as disorientation voyeurism and observation
A restless plea to be driven anywhere but home turns into a swooning fantasy about dying alongside the person behind the wheel.…
homelessness and unbelonging romantic devotion as self-annihilation loneliness disguised as humor