songs written in the second-person perspective

I heard "Captain Jack" by Billy Joel on the radio the other day and it occurred to me that it's written in the second-person, i.e. the song's protagonist is "you" with no references to "me" or "I". I'm hard pressed to think of any other songs written from this perspective, but surely ILM can.

Once in a Lifetime.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ansBui-_w80

Lots of Pet Shop Boys songs: West End Girls, Can You Forgive Her, Love Comes Quickly, etc.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6iAykoKLog

carly simon - you're so vain

bob dylan - ballad of a thin man

You're So Vain is written in the first person

you're so right
you prbly think this thread is about you

it seemed like a sure bet from the chorus

Anal Cunt - You live on a Houseboat

I think there are othets

others.

Many of Pulp's songs are all or mostly 2nd person.

but maybe not in the same way as "Captain Jack".

beastie boys - fight for your right

U2 - A Sort of Homecoming

Leonard Cohen - "Suzanne"

Chorus of "How Soon Is Now?"

Black Sabbath-Sweet Leaf, After Forever, lord of this world

That's about half of Master of Reality.

Roxy Music, Casanova

Sweet Leaf and After Forever are both written in the first-person.

Aztec Two-Step - "Cockroach Cacophony"

The Who, "Another Tricky Day"

Elvis Costello - Busy Bodies

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1QRTHHlJ-I

It seems a lot of people in this thread don't understand what second-person narrative is.

Well, do explain.

A song whose chorus includes the line "You ain't never caught a rabbit and you ain't no friend of mine" is pretty obv in the first person.

lots of Hüsker Dü.

It seems a lot of people in this thread don't understand what second-person narrative is.

― emil.y, Tuesday, July 22, 2014 9:37 AM (22 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Look out, we got an English major here.

Chorus of "How Soon Is Now?"

If you mean "You shut your mouth/How can you say/I go about things the wrong way?/I am human and I need to be loved/Just like everybody else does", this is really obviously from the first person.

"in the first person"

That's right, you have to have majored in English to understand the difference between first and second person pronouns, which I learned in the second grade.

Next up, a list of PhD theses which cover the difference between possessives and plurals.

Look out we got an English PhD here.

does the Ph stand for Phil?

Working Class Hero

Bob Dylan - Like a Rolling Stone

feel like this is so much more common in pop music than in any other form of writing

Bob Dylan - Like a Rolling Stone

DENIED

do songs written in the imperative count as 2nd person?

is this thread satire?

Is this satire a thread?

you enter a smoke filled room
you see a clown in the corner
you are so vain at this moment
that you probably think the song playing on the wurlitzer
is about you

- Carly Simon

you are having a happy birthday
you are having a happy birthday
you are having a happy birthday, dear protagonist
you are having a happy birthday

- the Hill sisters

You are, you said

- Neil Diamond

"Arthur's Theme," Christopher Cross

"Word Crimes" Weird Al

beatles 'for no one'

Gold Panda - "You"

Perry Como - All At Once You Love Her

"For No One" is a good one!

yeah i'm trying to think of songs that actually narrate in the 2nd person rather than just yell at or command the 'you' which is more common i think

questioning the 'you' is more common too e.g. 'like a rolling stone'

Melle Mel's "child is born with no state of mind" verse in "The Message".

Willie Nelson - Red Headed Stranger, Time of the Preacher

Seger's "Still The Same" is there for the first 90% of the song, then the I shows up.

It seems a lot of people in this thread don't understand what second-person narrative is.
― emil.y, Tuesday, July 22, 2014 1:37 PM (5 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

That song that goes "You say / I only hear what I want to" to thread

Actual good example, from a band I've just started to get into: Cursive, "Tall Tales, Telltales":

four winds converge upon
a point where your compass
spirals round in useless motions, mocking everything
while bilge collects
your cupped hands attempt
to shovel out the last few inches
and you plead with the gods
but they send you no sign

"Mothership, Mothership, Do You Read Me?" off the same EP could qualify but it's not clear to me whether there is a second voice speaking the titular refrain & "Does anyone hear my song?" bits

recalling mount eerie by the microphones when the mountain (?) sings

You're higher on your hill
So your big black cloud will come
So your big black cloud will come
And press you to the ground
The air will leave your chest
You'll fade from where you're found
When you find you're standing still
And your fingers all go numb
Get higher on your hill
So your big black cloud will come
So your big black cloud will come

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ww9VlmXKYgs

Please take both of my incorrect contributions off the master list, A Sort of Homecoming and Busy Bodies

And replace them with this correct example: Sultans Of Swing

Steely Dan I think have a couple (the one addressing Jack comes to mind)

Kid Charlemagne

I can't believe no one's mentioned this one yet!

You can dance, you can jive, having the time of your life
See that girl, watch that scene, digging the Dancing Queen

Friday night and the lights are low
Looking out for the place to go
Where they play the right music, getting in the swing
You come in to look for a king
Anybody could be that guy
Night is young and the music's high
With a bit of rock music, everything is fine
You're in the mood for a dance
And when you get the chance...

You are the dancing queen, young and sweet, only seventeen
Dancing queen, feel the beat from the tambourine
You can dance, you can jive, having the time of your life
See that girl, watch that scene, digging the dancing queen

You're a teaser, you turn 'em on
Leave them burning and then you're gone
Looking out for another, anyone will do
You're in the mood for a dance
And when you get the chance...

You are the dancing queen, young and sweet, only seventeen
Dancing queen, feel the beat from the tambourine
You can dance, you can jive, having the time of your life
See that girl, watch that scene, digging the dancing queen

Not written in the second person Tuomas, that song is "you" referring to another person whereas what we are looking for is songs where "you" is the singer referring to him/herself e.g. "Suzanne takes you down".

How do you know "Dancing Queen" is referring to another person? I thought a common interpretation of the lyrics is that they're about the singer reminiscing the days of her youth?

Also, the initial post was asking about tunes where "you" is the protagonist, no one said the "you" has to refer to the singer. "Captain Jack" has a pretty similar lyrical scheme to "Dancing Queen", with both it's unclear whether the singer is talking about himself/herself or another person.

It's like watching quadriplegics having a pillow fight.

The Dancing Queen is only 17, so the song's lyrical perspective is an omniscient narrator speaking directly to this young nymphet who can dance, jive and have the time of her life. We are not all Dancing Queens.

I guess you can argue that, but the same argument could be made about "Captain Jack" or "Suzanne"... After all, we're not all drug addicts, or in love with someone named Suzanne.

I don't think it's an uncommon storytelling technique to talk of "you" when you really mean "me", usually it's done to add some distance to the narrative. For example, the interpretation of "Dancing Queen" that I've often heard is that the narrator is an older woman talking to her 17-year old self, that's why she's using "you" instead of "me".

I have no quibble with "Dancing Queen" & suspect those who do of male chauvinism

At first I was gonna write something about how exuberant repetition of the "dancing queen" epithet creates the illusion of a character more powerfully than the use of the second person can contain it; but then I realized, Nah, it's just that I'm a manly man & I tune out when the radio calls me a dancing queen, otherwise I'd be getting in a lot of dumb fights with the radio

Dylan owns this one. Positively 4th Street is another

You got a lotta nerve to say you are my friend
When I was down, you just stood there grinning

and so on

I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together.

As mentioned above, "Suzanne" by Leonard Cohen does this, and I find it extremely irritating. I realized that if read in another voice, it could basically pass for one of Garrison Keillor's monologues on Prairie Home Companion. Try it:

Suzanne takes you down to her place near the river, and you can hear the boats go by, and you spend the night beside her, and you know that she's half crazy, but that's why you want to be there... And she feeds you tea and oranges that come all the way from China, and just when you mean to tell her, that you have no love to give her, then she gets you on her wavelength, and she lets the river answer that you've always been her lover... and you want to travel with her, and you want to travel blind, and you know that she will trust you because she's a nice girl, raised in the Lutheran tradition, just like you were

hehehe

Gold Panda - "You"

― nxd, Wednesday, July 23, 2014 1:38 AM (1 week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol

BAKER STREET, yo

Pink Floyd - Pigs (Three Different Kinds), Shine on You Crazy Diamonds
Frank Sinatra - (Love is) The Tender Trap

Billy Joel - Vienna
http://songmeanings.com/songs/view/77983/

Hold Steady - You Can Make Him Like You

Kleenex - "You"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CjQJeE79nDg

Bruce Springsteen - Night

More Dylan songs from the same era as others cited above – “She’s Your Lover Now,” “Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window” (maybe others I’m not immediately thinking of...)

The Magnetic Fields – “You You You You You”

Napalm Death - You Suffer

Later Dylan – “Tight Connection to My Heart”

Mid-period Dylan: “Up to Me”

With all due respect, I'm not sure those two Bob songs qualify.

I noticed that this happens so much in Belle and Sebastian songs.

xpost
Why not – or am I misunderstanding the premise?

Hmm maybe I am

also - a lot of Leonard Cohen (like Suzanne, most prominently).

was gonna mention every single Pet Shop Boys song but I guess that's been covered

lotta Frank Sinatra, including Tell Her You Love Her, Come Blow Your Horn, Love and Marriage, Young at Heart

xp Being Boring a wonderful exception to the rule tho!