John Lennon And The Art Of The Insult Song

John Lennon was as well-known for his caustic wit as his campaigning for peace, so in his honour I have composed a list of some of the finest insult songs ever written. John’s ‘How Do You Sleep’ comes in at Number One of the first ten insult songs I can think of. If any of you can think of any other great songs that would fit into this category, please feel free to add them in the comments section.

1) How Do you Sleep – John Lennon (on Imagine – 1971)

This is famously John’s riposte to some of the digs Paul made at his expense on a couple of the tracks on Ram. In fairness to Paul, however, they were comparatively mild in comparison to this song, which comes across like a blowtorch of vindictiveness. It culminates in this memorable couplet ‘The sound you make is muzak to my ears / You must have learnt something in all those years…/’ In many respects some of the tracks on Imagine might have quite easily have been included on John’s previous album Plastic Ono Band, and this, along with Gimme Some Truth, is one of them. Plastic Ono Band was a very personal album and most of John’s songs often turn out turn out to be primarily about John (he later claimed that as How Do You Sleep was much about himself as it was about Paul). Indeed, this song could just as easily be an expression of how raw John was feeling after the break-up of The Beatles. Paul has gone on the record about how inconsolable he felt after the band split, indeed he was drugged up and bed-ridden for months and it took him a good few years to get over it. Although John was publicly very aggressive about drawing a line under The Beatles it is not inconceivable to consider that he had some mixed feeling about it. The Beatles had after all been his band and for a long time been the focal point of his life. Bear that in mind and the lyrics to this song take on a very different hue:

2) Positively Fourth Street – Bob Dylan (Single, 1965)

Bob Dylan was always really good at writing vicious put-downs and so there are a number of songs in his canon that could just as easily have been chosen in place of this one – Idiot Wind, for example – but this is still my favourite. As is the case of innumerable Dylan songs there are arguments about who this song was targeted at. However for the purposes of this blog, I personally think that it was probably the folk purists who had turned on him for ‘going electric’. Dylan had only reluctantly been accepted into the Greenwich Village folk community and had often felt patronised by them. When he had initially been signed to Columbia they had been openly sniffy about it and complained that others on the folk circuit would have been more deserving of the record contract. To me the lines that are particularly telling are ‘You say you’ve lost your faith / But that’s not where it’s at / You had no faith to lose / And you know it /.’

http://vimeo.com/71634162

3) Say Man – Bo Diddley with Jerome Green (Single – 1959)

Bo Diddley and his legendary maraca player Jerome Green conceived this work of genius while ‘goofing around’ in the Chess Studios (or so Bo claimed about many of his Chess recordings). Whatever the truth is this is regarded as one of the first ever rap records and it was hilariously funny, being a ‘dozens’ style exchange of insults between Bo and Jerome over that famous beat. Apparently the more rude, dirty insults were taken edited out of the recording but it was so professionally done that it wasn’t noticeable and the record became a hit:

4) I Hate You – The Monks (from Black Monk Time – 1966)

The Monks, on the off-chance that you’ve haven’t heard of them, were formed by five American GIs stationed in Germany during the 1960s. They played an extraordinary kind of avant-rock, which was sometimes not well-received by audiences (one member was nearly strangled by a punter at one gig for ‘perceived blasphemy’). They were possibly one of the most original bands in popular music history; their music had nothing to do with the charts at the time and arguably would never have fitted the musical trends of any era. However, The Monks have an irrepressible charm on it own terms and they have been much imitated by alternative bands. I Hate You has to be heard to be believed; it has minimalist lyrics in which the singer exclaims things like, ‘I hate you, oh I hate with a passion, baby, but call me,’ over a stomping militaristic perverted blues beat. The most alarming element and downright bizarre element of The Monks’ sound is the ever present electric banjo which constantly pounds away on the offbeat. I can’t enthuse about this band enough really.

5) Your Feets Too Big – Fats Waller (Single – 1939)

Going even deeper into the midsts of time, I bring you this nugget. Fats was very fond of insult songs and recorded a number of them, but this was the finest of all. Any song that begins with the lines; ‘/ Up in Harlem, table for two / There was four of us, me, your big feet, and you…/’ has my vote anyway. Even The Beatles, who hated jazz, must have loved Fats because they included this song in their early set-lists. This early example of a video is genius too:

6) Short People – Randy Newman (from Little Criminals – 1977)

Like a lot of Randy Newman’s songs, this record was taken far too literally and people took offence. Even now some radio-stations refuse to play it. Not that Newman is perturbed by that, of course, throughout his career he seems to have relished playing some extremely obnoxious characters in his songs. To him this is the most effective way of unmasking the genuine bigots out there in the world and he has always done that most effectively. Short People should have been seen for what it was; an extremely witty song that employs a cartoon-character narrator spouting some nakedly ludicrous ideas about vertically challenged people. It is so much of a caricature how anyone could do anything other than laugh at it is beyond me. The fact that it was taken seriously tells us everything we need to know about real prejudice.

7) You’re The Reason Our Kids Are So Ugly – Loretta Lynn and Conway Twitty (Single – 1978)

My reason for picking this is mainly for the title, which has to be one the best lines of all time. Written by L. E. Dean and Lola Jean Dillon this song became more well-known when Loretta Lynn and Conway Twitty recorded their version. In fact the whole song has some screamingly funny lines in it, such as ‘/ You’re the reason that my figure is gone / That’s the reason I’ve no hair left to comb /’ Country music isn’t just about misery, there’s lots of laughs along the way too.

8) That’s A Lie – LL Cool J (from Radio – 1985)

This isn’t the most well-known of LL Cool J tracks but it’s a very entertaining one. LL Cool J is generally associated with more slick recordings now but back in the day he was as raw a rapper as anybody out there and his flow was superb. His lyrics were sharp as a knife too. This is just one example of some of the powerful wit that the great MCs can deliver in hip hop.

9) Shit List – L7 (from Bricks Are Heavy – 1992)

L7 were an all-female grunge band that rocked hard and Shit List is a good example of how nasty they could be when crossed. Dorita Sparks absolutely snarls out some extremely venomous venomous lyrics; ‘/When I get mad and I get pissed / I grab my pen and I write out a list / Of all the people that won’t be missed / You’ve made my shitlist /’, while the band thrash out white-hot heavy rock. L7 wrote some impeccably spiteful songs and this is just one excellent example of what they were capable of achieving when somebody had made the mistake of pissing them off.

10) One Way Or Another – Blondie (from Parallel Lines – 1978)

This is one of the those songs that seems so upbeat and catchy as hell that the meaning almost becomes obscured. Almost, but not quite. Debbie Harry actually wrote the lyrics about an ex-boyfriend who was stalking her at the time and a quick look at the lyrics reveals that they are very dark. There are lines that refer to being parked outside somebody’s house in cover of darkness, breaking and entering, and others about ‘rat food’. It’s all pretty nasty and spiteful stuff indeed. Certainly not the innocent pop song we imagined it was.