The Best And Worst Songs About Food

By jameseldred November 25, 2010 1:30 pm Posted in Offbeat, WTF jameseldred g+ page

Thanksgiving is here which means only one thing; it’s time to eat yourself into a coma! While eating is nearly a national pastime in America, there are shockingly few songs that are actually about munching down on food. So while it may be slim pickings (pun…intended) here are some of the best, and worst, songs about food and the eating of said food. Note: all of these songs are actually about food, songs about Robert Plant’s testicles and Kelis’ blowjob talents are not eligible.

The Best

Food Fight! – Be Your Own Pet

Eating your food is lame. Punk rockers fight with it, as Be Your Own Pet proved with this awesome track from their second (and final) album. Not only do they abuse others with their food, but the refrain of “sucks to be the janitor!” suggests that the little snots aren’t even going to clean up after themselves. Damn punks.

Peaches – The Presidents of the United States of America

Get your mind out of the gutter, this track by the weirdest group ever to come out of the greatest Seattle area is actually about moving out to the country and eating a lot peaches. Apparently in 1996 that was all you needed to get a hit single and a Grammy nomination. Ah, simpler times.

30,000 Pounds of Bananas – Harry Chapin

Harry Chapin may be more well-known for “Cats in the Cradle,” the song every son has ready on his iPod for when dad skips out on their baseball game, but he also had a pretty mean sense of humor, as this tale of highway tragedy and potassium-rich vegetables carnage shows. The song is actually based on the true story of Gene Seski, a driver who lost control of his truck hauling, you guessed it, 30,000 pounds of bananas. Poor Gene died in the crash, but he lives on in this brilliantly stupid song.

Coconut – Harry Nilsson

Seriously, let me get this straight; she puts the lime in the coconut and drinks it all up, but then she gets sick. So she calls the doctor, and he tells her to put a lime in a coconut and drink it all up and she’ll feel better. But wouldn’t that just make her sicker? Did she drink the lime in the coconut because he said so in the first place? This song is a mobius strip. The video certainly doesn’t help matters.

Nearly every Cibo Mato song

In the 90s this Japanese girl rock group baffled the indie crowd with tracks like Artichoke, BBQ, Beef Jerky, Birthday Cake, Know Your Chicken, Sci-Fi Wasabi, Sugar Water, The Candy Man, White Pepper Ice Cream, Crumbs. It was fun at the time, but looking back, maybe it was the sign of a serious eating disorder.

I Want Candy – Various Artists

It seems that someone releases a version of this song every few years. It was first released by The Strangeloves back in 1965, and was actually covered later that year by Brian Poole and the Temelos. Since then it’s been remade my Bow Wow Wow, Mel C of the Spice Girls, Good Charlotte, Westlife, and most dubiously, Aaron Carter. Its enduring popularity proves that some people just really want their candy.

Savoy Truffle – The Beatles

This George Harrison composition is actually a warning against over-indulgence, with the line “you’ll have to have them all pulled out after the savoy truffle” referring having your teeth pulled out after eating too much sugar. While it may be a bit hypocritical for a British band to lecture anyone on dental health, there’s no debate that this is one of the greatest, if not the greatest, songs about chocolate snack food ever written.

Satan Gave Me A Taco – Beck

This is probably one of the only songs about food that might actually make you nauseous. This Satanic taco is really nasty, filled with bugs, raw meat and rancid rice that drives Beck to rip off all his clothes and lie in a pool of his own blood before joining a rock band and becoming a junkie. Why taco bell didn’t jump on the obvious marketing tie in remains a mystery.

The Worst

MacArthur’s Park – Richard Harris

Defenders of this track always say “it’s a metaphor, it’s not really about a cake!” Well, fine. But it’s a stupid metaphor, and it just sounds like a dude whining about how he lost his cookbook.

Timothy – The Buoys

Three miners are trapped underground and with food running low two of them overpower poor Timothy and make stew out of him. The only thing more shocking than the subject matter of this grim little pop ditty is that was somehow a surprise hit single when it was released in 1971. While the band that sung it, The Buoys, never scored a follow-up hit, songwriter Rupert Holmes found later success with an even worse song a few years later, “Escape (The Pina Colada Song).” What he really should have done is combined the two, and made the later track about two lovers who meet after answering a personal ad for cannibals.

Chicken Noodle Soup – DJ Webstar

Is this song really about chicken noodle soup? What the hell does the chorus of “let it rain, clear it out” mean? What’s with the siren? Those are questions that we will probably never really know the answers to. What is known though, is that this is one of the most nerve-grating, brain-dead, mind-meltingly bad songs of all time. So bad it’ll make you swear off soup for a month.

Rock and Roll McDonalds – Wesley Willis

More proof that the 90s were really damn weird, Wesley Willis was a paranoid schizophrenic who somehow scored a major label record deal even though his “talent” was little more than shouting obscenities into a microphone and occasionally badmouthing Batman. This bizarre love/hate ode to McDonalds is one of his better tunes, but that’s really not saying much.

Fish Heads – Barnes & Barnes

This song is funny the first time you hear it. By the 800th time you hear it in your head, because it won’t leave, you’ll want to kill yourself. And yes, that is Bill Paxton you see there.