Word(s) that only ever appeared in one (hit) song, ever.

Did anyone (most likely a rapper) beat Bruno Mars to "grenade"?

"Illiterate" in "Big Pimpin'"? Surely not?

Would you call "Fiery Jack" by the Fall a hit?

...is this a trick question?

In honor of today's Don'n'Glenn selection:

"Wayfarers" (as in sunglasses) in "The Boys of Summer"

Thalidomide - Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start the Fire"

Telluride- Glenn Frey's "Smuggler's Blues"

'ambassadress' in Deep & Wide & Tall by Aztec Camera

"fancy" - "fancy", iggy azalea

^^eh? It's not even the first hit called "Fancy"

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

^^Possible entrant from that "Fancy": 'benevolent"

:/

I heard Tempted by Squeeze today and got to wondering if there are any other hits that have the word 'pyjamas'

Hah- I heard Up The Junction by Squeeze the other day and wondered if any other hits had the word "nifty".

"Confidante" on "Thank You For Being A Friend"?

this thread's buzzkill… http://www.lyrics.net/lyrics/CONFIDANTE

but how many of those other songs were hits?

Phew, been racking my brain all day trying to remember what Lovin' Spoonful song has 'confidante' in the lyrics!

Hardly a buzzkill, it doesn't even have "Thank You For Being a Friend" itself! Dismissed as unreliable.

^probably because 'confidante' can also be spelled without the e

http://www.lyrics.net/lyrics/confidant

(results include Paris Hilton's 'Stars Are Blind', lol)

"Confidante" immediately sent me to "Venus and Mars / Rock Show" Macca/Wings

Me too, but I completely forgot it was a single. Hiding in plain sight.

that recent nick jonas song uses the word "hellish." if that's ever been used in a hit before, not nearly as hamhandedly...

"dependencies" in "Orinoco Flow"?

Lady GaGa's "Judas" has "condom" in it. I don't think I've heard it in another Top 10 hit before.

― LeRooLeRoo, Thursday, June 16, 2011 4:35 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

It's on "Gone till November," (#3 UK, #7 US) but I guess it depends which version was being played.

"Aesop" in Mark Lindsay's "Arizona" (US #10, 1969)

That song is so entertaining. Maybe Arizona the hippie chick will stick around for the Aesop's fables. The singer is kind of unhinged throughout ("and all you can do is laugh at her, doesn't anybody know how to pray?") much as the long-haired freaky person singing "sign sign everywhere a sign" and the woman shrieking "go ahead hate your neighbor" are similarly only possible on the top of the pop charts for this brief period.

Essentials of my childhood - a lot of self-righteous grownups, some of whom were the "cool" schoolteachers.

Hahaha, totally! "Go ahead, hate your neighbor" also echoed on Henson Cargill's super preachy country smash "Skip-A-Rope." Listening to "One Tin Soldier" now (the Coven version) for the first time - wow.

"Arizona" has several times made me want to start a thread about songs where the singer/protagonist comes off as a serious dick without meaning to. In the first verse he seems to be identifying with this hippie chick muse, standing against the misunderstanding crowd, but then he spends the whole rest of the thing demanding she ditch her passing bohemian affectations and hang around with him. I guess the idea is that he wishes the crowd would pray for her to make these changes that he's going to wheedle out of her? Love how he belts out the title, though.

Maybe the apex of this kind of thing is "Once You Understand" by the appropriately imperative band Think. The evocation of strife, generational struggle and troubled consciences actually takes over the entire track to where there's basically not even a song there.

Will definitely check that out, thanks, I can't get enough of that stuff. I have one for you too: Albert Hammond "The Free Electric Band".

The one kind of cool thing about Henson Cargill is that he actually got that song high up on country music radio....theoretically, one could hear "Okie From Muskogee" followed by "Skip-A-Rope"

I believe there's a clip on Sonny & Cher of "One Tin Soldier", poorly animated. Also it was the theme to Billy Jack.

Oh yeah, I got into "Free Electric Band" about a year ago, love that one. That's one where I actually do still feel the intensity of the guy's desire to run away and join the free electric band, even as I see the total bubblegummy fakeness and artificiality of the whole story.

Never heard (or heard of) this Arizona song.

"Arizona" has several times made me want to start a thread about songs where the singer/protagonist comes off as a serious dick without meaning to.

Yeah, "Young Girl" Gary Puckett is another one..

Never heard (or heard of) this Arizona song.

― Betel-chewing Equipment of East New Guinea (Tom D.), Tuesday, March 24, 2015 11:41 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I basically recommend it! Depends how much "CUT OFF YOUR INDIAN BRAID!" you can stomach I guess, but it's a pretty good turn-of-the-70s number. I think I got it off this wonderful thread: Trippy Country-tinged Pop with AM radio hooks from the late sixties to mid-seventies

#1 "Rock Me Amadeus" probably has a couple - "Amadeus," of course, but probably also "Freemason."

May be cheating but foreign-language lyrics in general would seem to kill in this category: "Der Kommissar," "99 Luftballons," "Michelle"...

some possible candidates from "Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald":

capsized
freighters
hatchway
seasoned

****

Hey Doctor Casino I thought of another condescension song from 1969, #3, revolting, lame, entertaining: Bobby Sherman "Little Woman"

Dr. C. also re: "a thread about songs where the singer/protagonist comes off as a serious dick without meaning to":

Subset of this: a dude informing a woman that he, the singer/protagonist, is the solution to her romantic problems, and she should therefore be rilly rilly grateful that he exists. Because otherwise she would be a withered cronelike old maid.

This was previously discussed in terms of Tom Petty's "You Got Lucky", but also:

"Let My Love Open the Door" ("you're so lucky I'm around")
James Taylor, "I'm Your Handyman"
Little Feat, "One Clear Moment"
Don Henley, "Last Worthless Evening"

There should be a whole counter-genre of women answering, "No thanks, Tom/James/Don/Pete, I'll actually be fine." Maybe there is! But I am not sure I can think of an example apart from "Without You" from My Fair Lady.

As much as I like the song, they're alot of that going on in the Everly Brothers' "Gone, Gone, Gone" - "If you change your way, baby/you might get me to stay, baby/better hurry up if you don't want to be alone", as if it weren't possible (or likely) she could find someone else.

*there's

I was listening to the "Sound of the sixties" and they were playing "Are You Sure" The Allisons, and at first it's all conciliatory, careful even, "Are you sure you won't be sorry?" until near the end where it's all "It's just your foolish heart" you stupid person, etc...

Definitely a worthy thread topic. I feel it should rightfully be Dr. Casino's, though.

but we alrezdy had an Eagles thread

"Mr. Big Stuff" fits the called-for "no thanks" genre.

y'all should start it! i'm swamped right now and the labor of thread-starting is beyond me.

re: Edmund Fitzgerald: "capsize" is in "Jumper" by Third Eye Blind (#5 on the Hot 100).

Or...wait. He's saying "cut ties with all the lies," not "capsize under the lies." Wow. Never mind.

M's "Pop Muzik" (mentioned upthread for a different phrase, later disproved to be specific to it) also has "infiltrate," "Molotov," "gunslinger," and "hotcake." I bet at least a couple of those have shown up in other hits (though as far as I can tell "Bo Diddley Is a Gunslinger" never pop-charted), but maybe one or two haven't.

Sean Paul's "Infiltrate" certainly wasn't a US hit, but it looms large in his legend and I feel like I've heard it out in the world here and there. The rest are toughies.

It wasn't a huge hit (#28), but Janet Jackson's 'Son of a Gun' had the lyric "Gunslinger shoot em up".

Can't find anything with hotcake or Molotov though.

I keep thinking "I Gotta Feeling" and going "er, no."

"Molotov cocktail, the local drink" starts the second verse of Don Henley's "All She Wants to Do is Dance."

In the not-hits-but-notable department, Carly Simon has a song called "Hot Cakes" and The Fall have a song called "Hot Cake" - the word appears in both!