Pop Songs with Narrative: Pretty Much Pop (#69) Discusses Tunes Ranging from Bob Dylan’s “Hurricane” to “The Pina Colada Song” with Songwriter/Author Rod Picott

Plen­ty of songs pur­port to tell sto­ries, and the nar­ra­tive bal­lad of course has a long enough his­to­ry that the two forms cer­tain­ly aren’t alien. But how do our lis­ten­ing prac­tices con­di­tioned by pop music jibe with rec­og­niz­ing and under­stand­ing nar­ra­tive?

Singer/songwriter and short sto­ry author Rod Picott joins your hosts Mark Lin­sen­may­er, Eri­ca Spyres, and Bri­an Hirt to talk about clas­sics by writ­ers like Bob Dylan and John­ny Cash, for­ma­tive night­mares like “Leader of the Pack” and “Escape (The Pina Cola­da Song), bor­der­line cas­es like “Bohemi­an Rhap­sody,” and more. We also con­sid­er how this form relates to musi­cal the­ater, music videos, sound­tracks, and com­mer­cials.

We tried to stick to pop­u­lar songs, but most of us are pret­ty old. You can lis­ten and read the lyrics if you’re not fol­low­ing:

• “Mack the Knife” by Bob­by Darin
• “The Long Black Veil” by John­ny Cash
• “Cow­ard of the Coun­try” by Ken­ny Rogers
• “Leader of the Pack” by The Shangri-Las
• “Bohemi­an Rhap­sody” by Queen
• “Hur­ri­cane” by Bob Dylan
• “Scenes from an Ital­ian Restau­rant” by Bil­ly Joel
• “Escape (The Pina Cola­da Song)” by Rupert Holmes (Watch him on Burt Sug­ar­man’s Mid­night Spe­cial. Yes, there was a Taco Bell com­mer­cial that used this song.)
• “Par­adise by the Dash­board Light” by Meat Loaf (writ­ten by Jim Stein­man). Read Tim Quirk’s exten­sive analy­sis of this dis­turb­ing song.
• “Famous Blue Rain­coat” by Leonard Cohen
• “Jack and Diane” by John Cougar Mel­len­camp
• “Glo­ry Days” by Bruce Spring­steen
• “For­tu­nate Son” by Cree­dence Clear­wa­ter Revival
• “Tiger Tom Dixon’s Blues” by Rod Picott

Why these songs? Well, we found a few lists online:

• “Inven­to­ry: 26 Songs That are Just as Good as Short Sto­ries” from the AV Club
• “15 Songs That Tell Bet­ter Sto­ries Than Your Favorite Nov­el” by Josue Broc­ca
• “168 Favorite Pop, Rock, and Coun­try Songs That Tell a Sto­ry” from Flour­is­hAny­way

Hear Mark inter­view Rod on Naked­ly Exam­ined Music. Learn more at rodpicott.com.

Hear more of this pod­cast at prettymuchpop.com. This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion you can access by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. This time, an update on Rod’s music plus polit­i­cal dis­cus­sion and more.

This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts.