My mom called me on Saturday evening and asked me to make her a zippy drivey thingy (a phrase she uses to troll my brother) of songs that have women’s names in the title. This is an odd observation she made one time when she and my brother were visiting. She noted how many song titles there were with women’s names, so I did what any good son would do (because my brother clearly wasn’t a good enough son to do it) and I showed her the scene from Family Guy.
Family Guy – Songs Named After a Girl
She was so impressed by the fact that someone else had not only had the same observation, but also made an amusing sketch about it, that when I brought it up on the phone she said she didn’t remember me showing it to her. She believed me that I did show it to her, but didn’t remember the sketch. I should probably make an mp3 of the sketch to put on the zippy drivey thingy. I told her I would start the process and send her as many as I could when my brother visits next, and then I would add to it later. In the meantime, I figured that while I go through my CD collection looking for songs that fit this theme, I would make some blog posts of some of the songs with women’s names.
Truck Stop Love – Carolina’s Eyes
I own one CD by Truck Stop Love. They are a band I got into during the decade or so that I would listen to modern rock in the evenings on the local college station KTCU. I don’t know how to define modern rock, but I always wondered if KTCU used that term to distance themselves from alternative since that term as a genre was pretty much nondescript by the mid to late 90s. I got into Truck Stop Love because of a song called “USA Dad,” which led me to buy the CD “How I Spent My Summer Vacation.” The last track on the CD is “Carolina’s Eyes,” a song that is almost an instrumental. It’s over 5 minutes long and there are only vocals in about 50 seconds of the song. Good song, good album, good band. I don’t know if there just aren’t many songs by them on YouTube, or if the band’s name doesn’t agree with YouTube’s search engine, but I couldn’t find “USA Dad.” I’ll just have to put the CD on, I guess. Here’s an article about the band if you’d like more information. Prior to reading the article, I really knew nothing about them.
Tori Amos – Angie
This is a cover of The Rolling Stones song that was likely written about Marianne Faithfull. I’m not sure which version I like better, probably The Rolling Stones’ version but sometimes I really like this cover. I’m going to tell a story in two parts. My CD collection isn’t alphabetized, so it’s a bit odd that two of my Tori Amos CDs were stacked together. But since they both have songs with women’s names, I’m going to tell you about how my friend Loren and I became friends. It’s possible we would have become friends anyway since we worked together and we seemed to get along pretty well. This is how it happened in this timeline though.
We were slow one night, so I asked the assistant manager if I could hijack the CD player and play something he might not like. Being a cool guy he said, “Sure, go ahead.” I put on the “Crucify” EP by Tori Amos. I was pretty obsessed with the song “Winter” at the time. Loren was a driver at that point in his pizza career and he came back from a delivery to find me folding boxes and listening to Tori Amos. He mentioned that his wife was really into Tori Amos. We had talked about other things before, but we started talking music and movies. He told me that he would like me to come over sometime and meet his wife.
Tori Amos – Yes, Anastasia
Let me start by talking about the song, and then I’ll get back to the story. This song is still to this day probably in my Top 5 Tori Amos songs. If not Top 5 it’s in the Top 10. I may have been crushing on “Winter” at the time, and was going through a phase where every song on “Boys for Pele” was my favourite for a while, but every time I revisited “Yes, Anastasia” I couldn’t help but thinking that for me it was an all-time great song. It’s epic. It’s haunting in its own way. It’s both modern and classical. Tori Amos has only gotten better and better as a songwriter over the years, but it’s hard to really top this.
Otherwise, I don’t really have an opinion.
Loren’s wife is a great person. Or I should say ex-wife, as they split a while back and she and I have since drifted apart, but in the time that we were somewhat close, I got to know her well and I miss our old conversations, even if a few got heated. She also introduced me to a lot of great music, literature, and internet trends, so I think of her often. But back to before we knew each other, she was a bit skeptical when Loren told her that I was into Tori Amos. Apparently, she knew some people who tried to claim they were fans who had heard a song or two on MTV, but didn’t really know much beyond that.
When I met her, she said, “Loren tells me you’re into Tori Amos.” I said, “Yeah, I was listening to the ‘Crucify’ EP and he told me about you.” She said something to the effect of, “Oh, that’s good,” or “That’s a good one.” Then she asked me what my favourite Tori song was. I thought for a second and said, “Almost every song on ‘Boys for Pele’ has been my favourite over the last few years, but “Yes, Anastasia” is the one that I always end up going back to.” And from that point on she basically accepted me, even though I hadn’t heard any of the three albums that had come out after “Boys for Pele” yet.
Chris McGinty is a blogger who has a lot of CDs to go through. Apparently, TLC’s “Fanmail” album has no women’s names in the song titles. And really, I doubt my mom would count “Silly Ho” as being on theme. I’ll just have to keep looking.