You Know My Name

11 Songs Named After People (Part 1)

If only Living in a Box’s "Living in a Box" (from their album Living in a Box), had called their debut single Keith...

 

Song: Angie

Artist: Rolling Stones

What? Delicate but mournful ballad off’ve 1973 LP Goat’s Head Soup. Jagger’s finest performance, reckons me.

Who? Depends who you believe. According to some, it’s Mick’s cracked paean to pal Bowie’s first missus (it’s rumoured he done some extra-marital kissing on her lady bits with those big ol’ bouncy castle lips of his). However, given Richards’ writing credit, that’s unlikely. Taking a rare moment from shitting his drug clinic bed to pen the tune, he pulled the name quite arbitrarily from his intoxicant-addled brain in this alleged ode to kicking the brown stuff. So, it’s no one. (And yes, he does have a daughter called Angela, but it's not her, SO THERE.)

Song: Jamie Thomas

Artist: Graham Coxon

What? Distortion-drowned thrash punk album opener of the Blur guitarist’s second solo effort, The Golden D.

Who? As Coxon explains in a Melody Maker interview from 2000, “He's this fearless, inspiring skateboard kid - he jumps his skateboard over massive gaps, God knows how fast he's going. He's kind of crazy. He's got a seventies haircut - perhaps it's a wig.” Writing about your skateboard hero Graham? What are you, like twelve or something?

Song: Richard III

Artist: Supergrass

What? Werewolf-esque Britpoppers turn up their amps for a rollicking hard rock groove.

Who? According to legend, hump-backed Plantagenet English King for a bit with a penchant for locking little boys in towers (hey, it was the 1480’s - they all did that back then, I expect). Also, like most people born in Northampton, he was buried in a car park. Sort of. Actually, the song itself has diddle all to do with Dick – it was just a working title that kind of stuck, the mutton-chopped Rick-teasers.

Song: Geno

Artist: Dexy’s Midnight Runners

What? Soulful if dour trumpet-lead stomp by dungaree-clad pop outfit*. Basically, their number one hit that isn’t 'Come On Eileen'.

Who? Soul singer Geno Washington, to whom the song serves as both tribute and pastiche. Black, American, and funkier than your mother, his most notable work is with The Ram Jam Band in the 1960’s. The sort of artist white middle class guys like me feel guilty about not listening to more, which is probably why they regularly mop up Glastonbury festival afternoon schedules.

Song: Goldfinger

Artist: Shirley Bassey

What? Brassy blast of Bondian bombast.

Who? Well, he’s the man, see? You know, the man with the Midas touch. And so forth. Anyway, it’s the first Bond film with an eponymous villain as the theme song. As such, lyricists Briscusse and Newley spun some memorable if slightly baffling lines (“A spider’s touch”? Got eight arms, has he?), set to the dazzling strains of John Barry’s big band jazz. The heavy-set Austrian 22 carat-obsessed megalomaniac was played by two people – German actor Gert Fröbe in person with the uncredited pipes of Michael Collins providing the voice. The villain’s plan? Irradiate Fort Knox’s gold supply in order to boost the value of his own, the ginger meanie. Spoiler: he loses.

Song: Ms Jackson

Artist: Outkast

What? Maddeningly catchy electro-pop rap. The one with the bit that goes, “Forever.
Forever. Forever ever. FOREVER EVER!”

Who? Ms Jackson is a pseudonym for Kolleen Wright, mother of Erykah Badu, with whom Outkast singer Andre 3000 had a child before splitting up (got all that?). The song is an explanation/apology to his former lover’s mother, in that dirty laundry-displaying confessional manner that hip-hop seems to do so well. According to Andre, Mrs Wright, “loved it”. She must have missed Big Boi’s line about his “dick in all her mouth”, the charmer.

Song: Kevin Carter

Artist: Manic Street Preachers

What? Uncharacteristically neat and clipped single release from the rock band’s first post-Richey LP, Everything Must Go.

Who? Pulitzer Prize winning South African photo journalist. Papped a starving girl in famine-torn Sudan as a vulture landed behind her. His award sadly wasn’t only the glitter of a trophy – the subsequent guilt caused him to kill himself mere months later. His suicide note included the cheerful bon mots, “...am haunted by the vivid memories of killings and corpses and anger and pain ... of starving or wounded children, of trigger-happy madmen, often police, of killer executioners”. Cheers Manics! You couldn’t have just sung about Kevin Bacon, could you?

Song: Mr Brownstone

Artist: Guns N’ Roses

What? Surprisingly funky hard-edged glam rock track from wildly successful album, Appetite for Destruction.

Who? A euphemism for heroin, often the band’s drug of choice in their flooringly excessive late 1980’s heyday (as well as, you know, all the other drugs they snorted, injected, smoked, drank and pushed down their urethra during that time). The song/man was referenced in anger by Axl Rose in 1989 during a heated performance. The often fractious lead singer threatened, live on stage, to dissolve the band unless his skag-chugging bandmates didn’t stop, “dancing with Mr Brownstone”. Presumably, Slash and co threw away their needles and dancing clogs the very next day. I don’t know – anthropomorphising drug use for song subjects. At least we won’t see the likes of that again in this list...

Song: Ebeneezer Goode

Artist: The Shamen

What? Naughty naughty very naughty off-its-tits early 90’s dancefloor filler.

Who? Fictional character acting as a vapour-thin concealment for the most blatant advocate of narcotics in pop history until Necro’s I Need Drugs almost twenty years later. Marty Feldman-alike magician Jerry Sadowitz played, presumably, the title role in the song’s video, but they were fooling no one. Vocalist Mr C might as well have sung, “Mmm, yummy, brain-curdling drugs right up in my bloodstream. They are the best and you should munch them.”

Song: Arnold Layne

Artist: Pink Floyd

What? The band’s first ever single release – a slightly skittish haunted prowl of Brit psychedelia.

Who? Chancing knicker-thief. According to popcorn-faced bassist Roger Waters, it’s based on a real person they knew. "Both my mother and Syd's mother had students as lodgers because there was a girls' college up the road so there were constantly great lines of bras and knickers on our washing lines and 'Arnold' or whoever he was, had bits off our washing lines." I don’t know – cross-dressers as song subjects! At least we won’t see the likes of that again in this list...

Song: Lola

Artist: The Kinks

What? Lushly-orchestrated and triumphantly confessional English singalong.

Who? Cock-concealing club-goer with a penchant for cherry c-o-l-a cola. According to lyricist and singer Ray Davies, it’s a fictional re-telling of a nightclub encounter with a transvestite, citing an evening out with Kinks manager Robert Wace in gay Paris. Drummer Mick Avory disputes this, claiming it’s based on his frequenting of West London transvestite bars in the capital during the period, actually putting forward one Michael McGrath as the track’s title character (given the song’s Soho setting, fairly likely). Either way, Lola is one foxy dancing chick with a tight grip. And a penis.

*yes, the dungarees came later. Christ, you're picky.