Just in
case the "Vol. 3" in the title wasn't clear enough, this is the third entry in a mini-series of posts featuring songs by bands with
animals in their names. If you haven't seen the first two posts, you can
read them here and here. In the first post, I covered canines, felines, and hooved animals. Last time, it was primates, bears, and rodents. This time I'm going with aquatic animals (including fish) and birds. As before, the songs will cover a wide variety of musical styles, both old and new. You may not like them all, but I'm sure you'll enjoy a few of them. You might even be familiar with several of them. Without further ado, here we go...
Happy Halloween! I know this is a controversial holiday for some, and not everyone chooses to celebrate it. But I'm not one of those people, so here goes a collection of Halloween-themed songs. In most cases, the song isn't intended to be a Halloween-oriented song, it just happens to have a word in its title that could be associated with this most ghoulish of days. Enjoy! (Or don't. It's all the same to me.) ~ JH
1) Ne-Yo ~ "Beautiful Monster"
2) The Cranberries ~ "Zombie"
3) Michael Jackson ~ "Ghost"
4) Eagles ~ "Witchy Woman"
5) Annie Lennox ~ "Love Song For A Vampire"
6) Imagine Dragons ~ "Demons"
7) Matchbook Romance ~ "Monsters"
8) Panic! At The Disco ~ "It's Almost Halloween"
9) Tegan And Sara ~ "Walking With A Ghost"
10) Family Force 5 ~ "Zombie"
11) Donovan ~ "Season Of The Witch"
12) Skillet ~ "Monster"
13) The Citizens Of Halloween ~ "This Is Halloween" (from The Nightmare Before Christmas)
14) Fefe Dobson ~ "Ghost"
15) Red Sky Mary ~ "Red Witch"
16) Paramore ~ "Monster"
17) Jonathan Coulton ~ "Creepy Doll"
18) Queens Of The Stone Age ~ "Burn The Witch"
19) Yeah Yeah Yeahs ~ "Skeletons"
20) Lindsey Stirling ~ "Phantom Of The Opera Medley"
BONUS TRACK – Bobby Pickett ~ "Monster Mash" (What Halloween song collection would be complete without this campy gem?)
Some scientific smartypants said that for every action, there's an equal and opposite reaction. Therefore, for every "Songs With 'Hard' In The Title" blog post, there must be also be a "Songs With 'Easy' In The Title." And here it is... ~ JH
1) Engelbert Humperdinck ~ "Am I That Easy To Forget?"
2) Commodores ~ "Easy"
3) Rascal Flatts & Natasha Bedingfield ~ "Easy"
4) Bobby Sherman ~ "Easy Come, Easy Go"
5) Elvis Presley ~ "Such An Easy Question"
6) Three Dog Night ~ "Easy To Be Hard"
7) Willie Nelson & Johnny Rodriguez ~ "Forgiving You Was Easy"
8) Dierks Bentley ~ "Free And Easy (Down The Road I Go)"
9) Keith Carradine ~ "I'm Easy"
10) Ringo Starr ~ "It Don't Come Easy"
11) Eagles ~ "Take It Easy"
12) ABBA ~ "Love Isn't Easy (But It Sure Is Hard Enough)"
I thought it would be fun to find a song and/or band named after each state in the Union. Since there are 50 of them, and that takes more time than I have in one day, I'm going to do 10 at a time. Going in alphabetical order, today I will cover Alabama through Georgia. Next time, Hawaii through Maryland. The third installment will include Massachusetts through New Jersey. The fourth will cover New Mexico through South Carolina. And the fifth and final installment will go from South Dakota through Wyoming. I've included a video link for each song and/or band whenever possible. Some states have multiple songs to choose from, and I couldn't decide on one, so I picked two of them. Enjoy!
1) ALABAMA: There's a highly successful country band that goes by the name Alabama. You might've heard of them? They've had a lot of hit songs throughout their career, especially in the 1980s. This was one of those hits...
Then, of course, there's the classic song by the Southern rock band Lynyrd Skynyrd that you may have heard a time or two...
2) ALASKA: Songs about Alaska are a little harder to find, but they do exist. Here's one by John Denver...
Here's another Alaska song, this one by Johnny Horton...
3) ARIZONA: This one's pretty straightforward. This Kings Of Leon song is simply called "Arizona"...
4) ARKANSAS: I'm not exactly sure what this song has to do with the state of Arkansas, as there aren't any actual lyrics sung, but both the song ("When Electricity Came To Arkansas") and the name of the band (Black Oak Arkansas) contain the state's name, so there you go.
5) CALIFORNIA: There are dozens of songs I could've picked for this massive state, but I narrowed it down to just two. Forgive me if I omitted your favorite California song. First up, The Eagles' "Hotel California"...
Next up, The Mamas & The Papas' classic song, "California Dreamin'"...
6) COLORADO: Another straightforward song here. "Colorado" by The Flying Burrito Brothers (which, incidentally, is an awesome name for a band!)...
7) CONNECTICUT: Songs about Connecticut are apparently few and far between. This one, called "I Live In Connecticut," by the rock band Aerosmith, is a one-minute-long instrumental. Even Aerosmith couldn't find anything good – or bad – to say about Connecticut, I suppose...
8) DELAWARE: Even more obscure, apparently, are songs about Delaware. The only one I could find was a nonsense song by Perry Como which made very bad puns about the names of all the states, and I couldn't bear to post that here. Instead, here's a Norwegian alternative rock band called Delaware singing a song called "Wish For." Quite a good song, actually....
9) FLORIDA: Okay, so this is the most desperate I've been so far to find a song. There just aren't that many songs written about Florida, and many of the ones I did find were either directed politically (and negatively) toward the state and/or contained explicit lyrics, and I didn't particularly want to post those here. Then I remembered that there's a secular rapper who goes by the name "Flo Rida", and that's pretty close to "Florida", right? Well, most of his songs were also explicit. In searching some more, I saw that Flo Rida had rapped on a song by Lady Gaga called "Starstruck" which (surprisingly) didn't contain any explicit lyrics (unless she's using double entendres that I don't understand), and so that's my "Florida song" here. I know it's reaching, but I was in a pinch. Don't listen to it if you don't want to...
10) GEORGIA: Finally, a state with lots of good songs about it! But, like California, I'll limit it to just two here. And they're both classic soul songs! First up, Gladys Knight & The Pips' "Midnight Train To Georgia"...
And last but not least, Ray Charles singing "Georgia On My Mind"...
