Little Known Song Titles That Answer Questions Posed In Better-Known Songs

I have a short piece over at McSweeney’s today.

10 Responses to “Little Known Song Titles That Answer Questions Posed In Better-Known Songs”

  1. Nik

    AAAhhh! Can’t work out all the questions they were answering. Can we get some sort of list before I go mad?

  2. blutarski

    i’ve got all but ’58 miles’ and ‘the latter…’. help me clever wan kenobi yr my only hope.

  3. Jacob

    Blutarski, here’s some hints. If you’re really stuck, I’ll tell you the answers.
    “58 miles” is probably easier if you ignore the metric translation.
    “The Latter…” could actually be any one of several dozen songs; the one I happened to have in mind originally is by They Might Be Giants.

  4. Toby

    “Istanbul”. But now that I go over the lyrics in detail, I see that the latter reason given to the question “Why did Constantinople get the works?” is actually “It’s nobody’s business but the Turks”. The former reason given is that they liked it better that way.

  5. Jacob

    Hmm… I’m not sure whether or not to count that as an acceptable response. Note that my answer are responses only to the question part of a song. So, if the lyrics were, “Did people just like it better that way, or is it nobody’s business but the Turks?” then it would work. As it is, it doesn’t quite work, although I can see where you’re coming from.
    In any case, it’s not the song I had in mind…

  6. Craig Mazin

    Huh. I thought the “latter” one was “Should I Stay Or Should I Go?”
    Sorry for the late comment. 🙂