Music Blogs

(Play Playlist)

For a guy who loves putting lists together this was an inevitable experiment. This playlist features 31 songs, and each one of them contains a list somewhere in the lyrics. For example, the playlist kicks off with “50 Ways To Leave Your Lover” by Paul Simon. If we were to write it out in list form it would look like this:

50 Ways To Leave Your Lover

1. Slip out the back
2. Make a new plan
3. Hop on the bus
4. Drop off the Key
5. Set yourself free

I think you get the idea. Well done lists within songs have created some of Rock and Roll’s most memorable lyrics, and this playlist has them.

The Violent Femmes “Add It Up”, Jim Carroll counts off the “People Who Died”, Hank Snow gives us a geography lesson in “I’ve Been Everywhere”, Wilson Pickett gives us the “Land of 1000 Dances” and Steve Miller describes himself as a picker, a grinner, a lover, a sinner, a Joker, a smoker and a midnight toker.

There's something about a list of connected things that's appealing and pure. If you find solace in structure as I do, take this playlist to bed with you. It’s just shy of two hours, and it’s way more fun than counting sheep.

List of Songs With Lists in The Lyrics Playlist

   1. 50 Ways To Leave Your Lover - Paul Simon   

   2. Kiss Off - Violent Femmes   

   3. People Who Died - Jim Carroll   

   4. 88 Lines about 44 Women - the Nails   

   5. Living In America - James Brown   

   6. Forever Young - Bob Dylan   

   7. Land Of 1000 Dances - Wilson Pickett   

   8. All My Ex's Live In Texas - George Strait   

   9. I've Been Everywhere - Hank Snow   

   10. The Joker - Steve Miller Band   

   11. What I Like About You - The Romantics   

   12. Pepper - Butthole Surfers   

   13. The Have Nots - X   

   14. My Favorite Things - Rodgers and Hammerstein   

   15. We Didn't Start The Fire - Billy Joel   

   16. Bad - Big Audio Dynamite   

   17. 99 Problems - Trick Daddy   

   18. California Girls - The Beach Boys   

   19. Hardware Store - "Weird Al" Yankovic   

   20. Dancing in the Street - Martha and the Vandellas   

   21. Turn - Travis   

   22. Close To Home - Concrete Blonde   

   23. Sh*tlist - L7   

   24. As Some Day It May Happen (Mikado) - The D'Oyly Carte Opera Company   

   25. Girls, Girls, Girls - Jay-Z   

   26. Comin' To Your City - Big & Rich   

   27. Car Bomb - Negativland   

   28. 20 Questions - Amy Rigby   

   29. 21 Things I Want In A Lover - Alanis Morissette   

   30. Gay/Not Gay - King Missile   

   31. Please Come To Boston - David Allan Coe