A Glass of Chianti

Tuesday, June 27, 2006

There's no I in third person

A Special Way of Being Afraid is right - there is a real dearth of third-person songs out there. Looking at my own iTunes list, besides "Mack the Knife" (does it make it better or worse that I have more versions in German than in English? Probably worse) and "Seven Spanish Angels" (don't hate on my Willie) I have to go further back chronologically to find anything third-person-y. Even promising titles like "She's About a Mover" have the illusion broken by the second verse. I was also surprised, given my fairly obsessive collecting of TV show themes that there weren't more examples in that genre. I think some of this has to do with the fact that the refrain "write what you know" has been interpreted by almost everyone as "write about you" and we're stuck with the navel gazing for a few decades more. Or at least until the educational fashions change.
Any thoughts as to the best song written from that point of view?