Top 5 Songs With Animal References in the Title

In continuation with our ongoing theme of musical titles... songs with references to animals in the title. Must actually be the name of a general animal, and not a proper name (e.g. if someone were to write a song called "Free Willy," it would not be accepted. Thank god no one has, though.)

Dan's Top 5:

1. The Beatles - Blackbird - Probably one of the best acoustic ditties ever.

2. Duran Duran - Hungry Like the Wolf - The best pop song I've ever heard, hands down.

3. Peter Gabriel - Shock the Monkey - One of my other favorite pop songs ever, it gets more and more points because Peter says "monkey" so many times.

4. The Pixies - Monkey Gone To Heaven - I don't know why, but I really like this one. It also pays to show you like something by the Pixies besides "Where is My Mind?"

5. Cake - Sheep Go To Heaven, Goats Go To Hell - I like the metaphor in this one, as it's effective, yet straightforward enough that any idiot can work it out.

Ryan's Top Five

Some prefacing is in order. You really could do a Top 5 with only Beatles songs and be pretty fine. That said, that would be a bit boring, and there's loads of other worthy songs. Once again, the "honorable mentions" for this list are aptly named.

1. Badly Drawn Boy - Year of the Rat - I don't want to oversell Badly Drawn Boy, but I'll do so anyway: he is a musical genius. This is one of his best; he re-energizes a definitively tired theme--this is, basically, a peace-is-the-answer song that even features a children's chorus. And yet, this song still kicks ass, and manages to sound completely original. His instrumentation is amazing.

2. The Beatles - I Am The Walrus - Even in a list that avoids a lot of Beatles classics, this one deserves special mention. One of those "epic" songs that The Beatles excelled at (A Day In The Life comes to mind). Earns bonus points because Lennon wrote some lyrics intentionally to mess with the minds of English teachers, which is the musical equivalent of Edgerrin James telling a reporter, "You know, I had to score that last touchdown, for the fantasy players."

3. Harry Nilsson - The Puppy Song - A lovely pop song that not everyone has heard. Comes with standard feel-good lyrics, but not too-feel-good--basically, the lyrical attitude that characterized most of Nilsson's masterful career. "I'd take my puppy anywhere / La la la la, I wouldn't care / And we would stay away from crowds / And signs that said 'No Dogs Allowed.'" He repeats this first verse in the second and subs 'friend' for 'puppy.' Did I mention I love Harry Nilsson?

4. The Who - Boris the Spider - One of my favorite The Who songs. Try listening to it and not having "Creeepy, craaawly, creepy, crawly, creepy-creepy crawly-crawly creepy-creepy crawly-crawly..." in your head for the rest of the week.

5. Cake - Sheep Go To Heaven - "Goats go to hell." What can I say, I love Cake, and this is one of their best, maybe their best.

Honorable mentions: The Beatles - Hey Bulldog, Octopus's Garden, Blackbird, Rocky Raccoon, Blue Jay Way, And Your Bird Can Sing (almost made it), Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown), Duran Duran - Hungry Like The Wolf (also almost made it), John Lennon - Cold Turkey (the guitar in this is awesome), Led Zeppelin - Black Dog, Rage Against The Machine - Bulls on Parade.

Tim's Top 5:
A very underrepresented animal tops my list...

1. Cobra Starship - Snakes on a Plane (Bring It) - When I hear this song, I remember the sheer mania that surrounded SoaP in my own mind and apparently in the minds of only a handful of other people when it came to actually seeing the movie. It's the ideal soundtrack song, it's memorable enough to be played on the radio, but it also is so ridiculously transparent that you can't help but think of the movie it's associated with. The rest of Cobra Starship's work is pretty middling to poor, but for one brief moment they got it right...and it'll never be August 18, 2006 anywhere else but in my heart.

2. I Am a Walrus - The Beatles - For many years, this was my favorite song. Now, it's at best my third favorite Beatles song (Rain and It's All Too Much are both superior to me now), but it's still a great one. I've still yet to see Magical Mystery Tour, and I'm not sure how I ever reached such a fate.

3. Three Little Birds - Bob Marley - Don't get me wrong, my reggae phase began and ended in the era of Big Mountain (real reggae band) and Inner Circle (not a real reggae band), but Bob Marley is an intriguing musician if you can get into him for reasons other than your frat brother's poster/your interest in smoking pot and needing to find a kindred spirit in this oh-so-rare desire and are unable to meet any living human beings.

4. Blackbird - The Beatles - For some reason, I keep buying Paul McCartney live albums, as if he was in some way getting better as a musician. Most of the songs sound mediocre at best, but Blackbird is still a masterpiece. It is extremely simple, but it's flawless.

5. Bulldog Skin - Guided by Voices - This spot was handed to Norwegian Wood, but I think the Beatles need to be displaced here. Bulldog Skin was one of the closest things Guided by Voices ever had to a hit, since it had a video that was played on MTV during 120 minutes -- the one time I saw it, it was immediately followed by Paranoid Android. But it was from their greatest album, one that's instantly overlooked because it bridged a period between the lo-fi they're really known for and the move to TVT records with Do the Collapse that offered the world Teenage FBI and little else.

Honorable mention: Hey Bulldog, And Your Bird Can Sing, Everybody’s Got Something to Hide But Me and My Monkey - The Beatles; Bird in a Cage – Old 97’s
Slow Cheetah – Red Hot Chili Peppers; Red Dragon Tattoo – Fountains of Wayne; Eagle Eye – Heatmiser; Red Mosquito – Pearl Jam; Sheep Go to Heaven - Cake

Tory's Top Five

1. Beatles - Rocky Raccoon - This makes the number one as it is by the beatles so it is deserved, as well as being my overall favorite song by the beatles. Yet it is one song that we do not have on our iTunes.

2. Elvis - Hound Dog - I don't know why this wasn't even honorably mentioned by anyone. It is definitely a trademark song of Elvis' and may be his most famous. It's at least also in the top 5 Elvis songs in addition to this list.

3. Flight of the Conchords - Albi the Racist Dragon - A dragon is an animal, let's not forget.

4. Pink Floyd - Sheep - This song is so bad ass. It goes through so many tempo changes and singing styles. When it hits "Did you hear, the dogs are dead" it is so utterly sweet.

5. Culture Club - Karma Chameleon - How did you guys miss this awesome eighties staple.

Honorable Mentions: Once again there are a lot of these. Ben Folds - Rock this Bitch (not necissarily a reference to the animal;) Bright Eyes - Down in a Rabbit Hole and Stray Dog Freedom, they didn't make it as they are not my favorite of Bright Eyes, despite his spot as favorite artist; Primus - Tommy the Cat and Fish On, Sailing the Seas of Cheese was an incredibly album; Damien Rice - Elephant, as with Bright Eyes its not one of my favorite songs by Rice; Pink Floyd - When The Tigers Broke Free, this also isn't a reference to the animal, but to tanks, but the name of the tanks are a reference to the animal, so it could've worked; Samuel L. Jackson - Black Snake Moan, amazing but not his original song and its from a movie and so on; Blink 182 - Mutt (see Ryan's upcoming guilty pleasure list.)