I suppose if you pull back far enough, every song tells a story, don’t it? Except for Rod Stewart songs. Then it’s every picture that tells the story.
Actually, Stewart wrote plenty of great story songs like “Maggie May” and “The Killing of Georgie (Parts I and II).” Those two numbers came from the 1970s, which may have been the heyday for long narrative songs.
For me, what makes a story song stand out from the crowd is an extra dose of literary creativity. The song doesn’t merely tell a very good story. Gordon Lightfoot tells an amazing story in “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitgerald,” (also from the 1970s) but I am not going to include it on this list. It might be on the Mt. Rushmore of story songs but it doesn’t have that extra dimension that I’m looking for.
13 fabulous story songs, 1955-2000
It might be a facility of language – the turn of a particular metaphor that leaps out. It might be a structural element – the way a song may play with chronology and shift point of view like so many great short stories and novels do.
The following list doesn’t purport to be the “best.” It just features great stories that do offer that extra dimension. And with no disrespect intended to modern songwriters, I am choosing my songs from the last century because, well, that when they thrived. Maybe Olivia Rodrigo’s “Driver’s License” or Jason Isbell’s “Speed Trap Town” can show up on an updated version of this list. For now, we’re strictly 20th century.
In chronological order…
“Hot Rod Lincoln” by Charley Ryan and the Livingston Brothers (1955)
Lots of artists have told this story. Commander Cody did the best-known version in 1972, and Ryan himself – using the correct spelling of his first name – rereleased the song in 1960. But this tale of the great hot rod race first appeared in 1955. Classic rockabilly and classic young man obsession with cars and speed, the song also has a perfect three-act structure and is bookended perfectly by…
“My pappy said ‘Son, you’re gonna drive me to drinkin’ if you don’t stop driving the hot rod Lincoln.”
The great literary flourish is how that couplet serves as a teaser at the beginning and fits seamlessly into the narrative at the end. The only lyric change I know of between Ryan and Cody concerns whether or not a truck was “sideswiped” or simply “passed.”
“No Particular Place to Go” by Chuck Berry (1964)
It’s no coincidence that the first two songs on this list are about driving. Boys were the dominant force in early rock & roll and boys are very interested in driving. Berry, who borrowed his own melody previously used on “School Days,” adds the extra element of sex. Or rather, teenage frustration about sex. As a songwriter, he was an expert in using metaphor.
He had done it from the beginning of his recording career with “Brown Eyed Handsome Man” and he continued it here, using the seat belt as a stand in for a chastity belt. He also shows his facility with simile when he turns the car into a jail in the final verse….
“Riding along in my calaboose
Still tryin’ to get her belt aloose”
He never resolves what happens when he does get his date home. Presumably, her dad was waiting there with a key.
“I’m Waiting for the Man” by the Velvet Underground (1967)
On the Velvet’s first album, Lou Reed broke new ground on what was and was not acceptable subject matter for a rock song. “Venus in Furs,” “All Tomorrow’s Parties,” and “Heroin” were impressionistic deep dives into sex, drugs, and partying that were rarely sung about. On “I’m Waiting for the Man,” Reed adopts a more straightforward narrative style, almost documentarian in approach, creating the scene of a young man travelling uptown to score.
“Up to a Brownstone, up three flights of stairs
Everybody’s pinned you, but nobody cares
He’s got the works, gives you sweet taste
Then you got to split because you got no time to waste”
Reed would go on expanding rock & roll’s language and subject matter for the rest of his career.
“Ode to Billie Joe” by Bobbie Gentry (1967)
A sensational slice of southern gothic, “Ode to Billie Joe” was a good enough story turn into a major motion picture a decade later. Gentry paints an intimate picture through fine details and balances the mysterious with the mundane with a deft touch. Most importantly, she allows the mystery to linger. The only hint we get comes just before the final verse…
“He said he saw a girl looked a lot like you up on Choctaw Ridge
And she and Billie Joe were throwing something off the Tallahatchie Bridge”
In the final verse, Gentry employs another device which can be used to powerful effect in a story. She pulls back, jumping ahead in time, shifting the perspective to add a different layer of significance to the tale. This is not the last time we will see such a device.
“Black Diamond Bay” by Bob Dylan (1976)
There has to be a Dylan song on this list. More than anyone, he made it OK for performers to tell long, involved stories through song. At the time of his reemergence as a major artistic force in the mid-1970s, the man who would eventually claim a Nobel Prize for Literature had moved on from much of the poetic symbolism that characterized his classic early work to focus on more specific narratives.
On 1975’s Blood on the Tracks, he had the western epic “Lily, Rosemary, and the Jack of Hearts.” On 1976’s Desire he went much farther with long stories about real-life characters Rubin Carter (“Hurricane”) and Joey Gallo (“Joey”) in addition to the mesmerizing “Isis.” I’ve always thought those songs overshadowed the sprawling panoramic tragedy of “Black Diamond Bay,” a long narrative chronicling the destruction of a resort island after a volcanic eruption.
“I was sittin’ home alone one night in L.A. watchin’ old Cronkite on the seven o’clock news
If seems there an earthquake that left nothin’ but a Panama hat and a pair of old Greek shoes”
In the final verse, Dylan steps away from the detailed narrative to establish a new perspective of someone watching this intense human tragedy from far away – just another story on the news. It is a brilliant device which makes clear how perspective affects interpretation.
“Scenes from an Italian Restaurant” by Billy Joel (1977)
Billy Joel writes a perfectly-telescoped chapter story in one of his most ambitious and best-loved songs. Beginning with the comfortable meeting of two old friends in the prologue, they first catch up with what is happening in their lives before diving into nostalgia and relaying the story of Brenda and Eddie, rulers of the roost back in high school.
“Nobody looked any finer, or was more of a hit at the Parkway Diner
We never knew we could want more than that out of life”
In a couple of brief, pointed verses, Joel then tells their entire tale, “from the high to the low to the end of the show.” It is a remarkable example of economy in storytelling.
“Children’s Story” by Slick Rick (1988)
Hip hop artists began telling their own stories in the late 1970s and within a decade, the crime that infected urban life became the central subject matter. Slick Rick delivered it in a supremely innovative manner, telling a harsh tale as though it were a typical bedtime story. In doing so, he helped establishe that hip hop would be creating new fairy tales for generations to come.
“He robbed another and another, and a sister and her brother
Tried to rob a man who was D.T. undercover”
It is a cautionary tale about how easily a young man can succumb to a life of crime delivered in a matter-of-fact singsong that contain not one ounce of preachiness. That’s what made it stick.
“The Road Goes On Forever” by Robert Earl Keen (1989)
Take “Children’s Story” and move it from its urban hip hop roots to a small country town and you have Robert Earl Keen’s story about the mundane nature of crime. Keen quickly establishes his characters and moves the story toward its climax, but as with several other songs, it is the coda viewed from a different perspective, that makes the song so memorable.
“It’s Main Street after midnight just like it was before
Twenty-one months later at the local grocery store
Sherry buys a paper and a cold six-pack of beer
The headlines read that Sonny is goin’ to the chair”
Also as in the Slick Rick song, the non-judgmental nature of the story indicated a more nuanced take on some complex subject matter.
“It Was a Good Day” by Ice Cube (1993)
Each of these songs was informed by the time in which it was created, but that link was never as direct than in this remarkable outlier on Cube’s Predator album. The song itself is a clever, sunny depiction of a day in which nothing goes wrong, which the narrator reminds us time and time again, is a rarity in a certain strata of SoCal. Cube played ball, got laid, and to top it off…
“Nobody I knew got killed in South Central L.A.”
But context is vital here. This is the alternate reality of life in L.A. in the the wake of the Rodney King verdict. The way life might have gone, as Cube once described, had justice truly been served. That is why he abruptly ends the song in disgust and launches into “We Had to Tear This M*******a” Up.”
“Lake Marie” by John Prine (1995)
Prine’s favorite song – the one he often closed his shows with – blends the historic with the present, the mythic with the intimate – to create a beguiling story of seemingly random interaction. He begins “many years ago” when native Americans found two white orphans abandoned in the woods.
In the blink of an eye and the length of a chorus, we are transported to the same location as the narrator is meeting his future wife. Then we move in time and place again to the end of that marriage and seemingly random murder which may or may not be spiritually linked to the orphans we began with.
“The dogs were barking as the cars were parking
The loan sharks were sharking, the narcs were narcing
Practically everyone was there in the parking lot by the forest reserve
The police had found two bodies
Prine employs a range of literary device from time shifts to onomatopoeia to draw mysterious parallels between seemingly unrelated events.
“Taneytown” by Steve Earle (1997)
Earle’s harrowing tale is told from the point of view of a young black man who enters an unfamiliar world and has to kill in order to survive the racism he encounters. It is equal parts haunting and matter-of-fact, but it always brings a chill to the ear.
“Some of them boys followed me
Down to the railroad track
Well, there’s four of them and I can’t fight
But I got my old Randall knife
I cut that boy and I never did look back”
With the tragic twist of the final verse, Earle uses classic literary reversal to create an enduring classic story.
“Hotel Monte Vista” by Patty Larkin (2000)
Larkin is known for her guitar virtuosity – one of the most creative and eclectic folk players of her era. But she is no slouch when it come to songwriting, as she proved on this evocative ghost story of love and betrayal set in the mountains, 1952.
“Go tell mama, go tell papa I am not feeling well
I am running to meet my maker And I have a tale to tell”
That comes toward the end of the song, and the intrigue and beauty of its imagery opens up one final mystery in what has already been a haunting story.
“Stan” by Eminem (2000)
“Stan” is one of the songs you play for people who assume rap music is entirely given over to mindless violence and misogyny. Without blinking, it acknowledges that those charges are often true, but it provides a different perspective on how they come into existence and what they ultimately signify.
“Dear Mr. I’m-too-good-to-call-or-write-my-fans
This’ll be the last package I ever send your ass
It’s been six months and still no word
I don’t deserve it?”
Eminem adopts the old-school epistolary format to tell the story of fan obsession that ends with crushing despair.
As I reach the end of this, I’m thinking of so many beloved stories that I omitted, from Ray Davies “Lola” to Richard Thompson’s “1952 Vincent Black Lightning.” Can’t include them all, I suppose. But this is a nice start.