The other day, I wanted to hear the seasonally-appropriate Hold Steady song "How a Resurrection Really Feels" ("She crashed into the Easter Mass, with her hair done up in broken glass, She was limping left on broken heels and she said 'Father, can I tell your congregation how a resurrection really feels?'"), so I punched it up on iTunes by sorting the music library alphabetically by song title. Which meant that, after the song finished, I got to hear every song in my collection that starts with the word "How."
It occurred to me that this might be the basis for one of those Internet "meme" things. "How" is, of course, one of the six elements every news story is supposed to have, along with "Who," "What," "Where," "When," and "Why." So, in the usual manner of such things, here are six songs from my library, one starting with each of those question words:
- Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses? by U2. Maybe the best tune from Acthung Baby
- (What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding? by Elvis Costello. If you think using the parenthetical is cheating, then I'll go with "What Else Would You Have Me Be?" by Lucero.
- Where Is My Mind? by the Pixies. The least popular of the six words, but a worthy track.
- When Will You Come Back Home? by Ryan Adams. One of those fragile ballads off Cold Roses.
- Why Should You Come When I Call? by Counting Crows. One of about two good songs off Hard Candy.
- How Can a Poor Man Stand Such Times and Live? by Bruce Springsteen. Amazingly, I have three versions of this, all live from the Seeger Sessions tour.
It was harder than I thought it would be, at least in the strong version where all the titles need to be questions. There are a lot of great songs starting with one of those words, but most of them are statements or descriptions ("Where the Streets Have No Name," "When I Get to the Border," "When I Paint My Masterpiece," the aforementioned Hold Steady track).
I guess I ought to "tag" people to do this, but I suck at that part. So, well, if you've got enough songs at hand to do this, I encourage you to play along, either in the comments, or by posting a list to your own blog/ journal/ whatever. Or don't. It's all good.
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Who's got the crack? -- Moldy Peaches
What is Love? -- Howard Jones [I must not have "What time is now?" by the Smiths at work]
Where's the Girl? -- Voltaire
Why can't I be you? -- The Cure
How long's a tear take to dry? -- The Beautiful South
I didn't have any actual question titles for When on my work computer. Lot's of songs that are statements though: When you're evil, When I was dead, When I was a kid, etc.
Where wasn't that hard for me. I also have Where are the Prawns? by the Softboys, Where do you go when you die? by Robyn Hitchock, Where's Boromir? on the Fellowship of the Rings soundtrack, and Where's my snake? by Bow Wow Wow.
I'm game:
"Who Put the Alphabet in Alphabetical Order?" by They Might Be Giants, from their totally awesome kids album "Here Come the ABCs".
"What is Hip?" by Tower of Power. Four copies of this one.
"Where Did You Sleep Last Night?" by Nirvana. I prefer the version by Pete Seeger, but that version is titled "Black Girl", not "Where did you sleep last night."
"When Will I See You?" by The Pretenders. Out of ~50 tracks that start with "When" this was the only title that was a question.
"Why Do Fools Fall In Love?" by Frankie Lymon & The Teenagers, from the American Graffiti soundtrack album.
"How Can I Keep From Singing?" by Eva Cassidy.
@bob:
I think you mean The Smith's track 'How Soon Is Now?', which is why you couldn't find it under What. :)
"How Can You Live In The Northeast?"--Paul Simon, Surprise
"What's the Frequency, Kenneth?"--R.E.M., Monster
"Where Do the Children Play?"--Cat Stevens, from the Cat Stevens Classics compilation
"Who Said I Would"--Phil Collins, No Jacket Required [implied question mark]
"Why Does the Sun Shine? (The Sun Is a Mass of Incandescent Gas)"--They Might Be Giants, from the User's Guide compilation
I have 8 songs whose titles begin with "When", but none of them are questions. I do, however, have "Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?" by Chicago.
Who's Gonna Build Your Wall? Tom Russell Anthology
Who Are You - The Who
What Goes On? - The Beatles
Where Did It All Go Wrong - Oasis
Why Don't We Do It in the Road? - The Beatles
How Do You Do? - Foo Fighters
When - 11 songs, but all are of the "When noun verb" declarative variety
Bonus:
Would? - Alice In Chains
Could You Be Loved - Bob Marley
Should I Stay or Should I Go? - The Clash
Old Fogie Alert:
How can I be sure? - Young Rascals
What's new Pussycat? - Tom Jones
Where is the love? - Roberta Flack & Donnie Hathaway
Why do Fools fall in Love? - Frankie Lyman
Who are you? - The Who
and a real groaner:
When Irish Eyes are Smilin' (albeit not a question)
Who By Fire - Leonard Cohen
What In The World - David Bowie
When You Sleep - My Bloody Valentine
Where You'll Find Me Now - Neutral Milk Hotel
Why Theory - Gang Of Four
How To Disappear Completely - Radiohead
Oh crap, misread the meme rules. I did the weak version, apparently. Here's attempt 2:
Who Is It? - Talking Heads
What Would The Community Think? - Cat Power
When Will I Ever Learn To Live In God? - Van Morrison
Where Were You? - The Mekons
Why You Wanna Treat Me So Bad? - Prince
How Can I Love You If You Won't Lie Down? - Silver Jews
Who Need the Peace Corps? - Frank Zappa: Zappa was famously unimpressed with the hippy scene and mocks them in this second single from the brilliant We're Only In It For The Money.
Where Did Your Heart Go? - Was (Not Was). Some of the best R & B workouts of the 80's came from these guys. The WHAM! version is a poor cover of the original.
What I Say? - Miles Davis. Sublime, this version is fromt The Cellar Door Sessions.
How U Feelin? - Peeping Tom. One of Mike Patton's current bands. He described this album as his take on what he thinks popular music should sound like.
Why Do You Bother? - Faith No More. From the Chuck Mosley era, he was really a strong lyricist but lacked the consistency of Patton both in writing and performance.
When Will We B Paid? - Prince. Good gospel influenced lament on the history of African Americans.
When was the one I had the least amount of choice on, as Chad notes most of them are declarative titles rather than questions.
Also posted here: http://revmatt.com/2009/apr/16/music-life/
It's funny how many Prince tracks are questions. Discuss.
Who Left the Lights on Baby by the Guillemots. It doesn't have the proper punctuation, but it's still interrogative.
What Is Happening? Sometimes, I just need overemotional pop. And oddly enough, despite the proper punctuation, I'm not sure the song asks the title question, just uses it as a dependent clause.
When Will You Come Home by Galaxie 500. Yeah there's no question mark either, but it's phrased like a question, and there's good guitar playing.
Where Have All the Rude Boys Gone? by Ted Leo. Though if you haven't heard Emmy the Great's cover of Where Is My Mind, I'd give it a try. Very different.
Why Do You Let Me Stay Here? by She & Him. It may have been overhyped, but I liked the song just fine.
How Long Do I Have to Wait for You by Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings. Nice to have a little soul in there. I'm also amused by the number of How... songs that aren't questions; apparently my music collection wants me to know: How to Disappear Completely, How to Embrace a Swamp Creature, How to Fight Loneliness, and How to Nurse a Bruised Ego (Back to Health). Scary, that.
Trying to stick to actual questions... there were some I liked better but were declarative...
"Who Wants to Live Forever?" Queen
"What's Next to the Moon?" AC/DC
"Where's My Thing?" (Pt.4:Gangster Of Boats Trilogy) Rush
"When Will You Come Back Home?" Ryan Adams
"Why Did You Wander?" Bill Monroe and his Bluegrass Boys
"How Many More Times?" Led Zeppelin
(Wow... classic rock + country... that looks BAD)
Here's my pick:
"Who are you?" by Tom Waits.
"What has happend?" by Pale.
"Where did it all go wrong?" by Oasis.
"Why does it always rain on me?" by Travis.
"How come you donât call me anymore?" by Alicia Keys.
I have no question-song for "when" but I'm gonna get one, as some of you offered suggestions. ;-)
The lists are inspiring: I find myself imagining a bunch of little stories or news connecting the songtitles...
OK, so here's one from my rather esoteric collection:
"Who Killed Marilyn?" The Misfits
"What Shall We Do Without Us?" Sleepytime Gorilla Museum
"Where Do You Think You're Going?" Dire Straits
"When" Opeth (closest I could get to a question)
"Why?" Helloween
"How To Measure A Planet?" The Gathering
The only one I can find in my collection - and it's an instrumental rather than a song, but I doubt you're picky about that - is "Where Did You Hide That Train, Joe" by Kila, from the album "Lemonade and Buns".
It's not one of my favourite tracks, but you can hear a low quality excerpt here: http://www.kila.ie/discography/lemonade_buns.asp (track six).
Ooh, I can get this in one:
What How When Where (Why Who) - Ani DiFranco
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Limiting titles to one question word per title:
How Can I Sing Like A Girl? - TMBG
What If No One's Watching? - Ani D.
When - N/A in my collection, apparently
Where Is My Mind? - Pixies
Who Knew? - Eminem
Why Don'tcha Do Me Right? - Frank Zappa & TMoI
My iTunes collection doesn't seem to be terribly interrogative.
"Who Named the Days?" - Arab Strap
"What You Gonna Be" - BSS Presents Kevin Drew
"When Will You Come Back Home?" - Ryan Adams
"Where Is Everybody?" - Nine Inch Nails
"Why Do They Leave?" - Whiskeytown
"How Do You Know You?" - Days of the New
Who do You Love? George Thorogood.
What Keeps Mankind Alive? Tom Waits
When Will Happiness Find Me Again? Frank Black and the Catholics
Where will I be? Crosby Stills and Nash
Why don't we do it in the road? Beatles
How Do you Sleep? The Magnificent Basterds
Looking for questions really limited it. One odd thing, I noticed I kept skipping over women singers and groups. For some reason they didn't use question titles. Just an odd thing.
Whose Chariot? -- O.A.R. (other choices are movements in a classical/minimalist piece; not really "of the spirit")
What Would Brando Do? -- Dick Siegel
21 songs begin with "When," and not ONE is a question!
Where U at Rock -- Kid Rock (if you can't spell "you," then missing punctuation is kinda a non-issue . . . )
Why Do You Love Me? -- Dave Brubeck Quartet
How Would I Know -- Melissa Etheridge (question is implicit in the lyrics)
I found 4 Prince sounds with "question" titles; next highest was 2 (Nikka Costa and Dave Brubeck).
Special mention: Hey! You Going My Way??? -- Jim White (No Such Place is on my "island" list.)
Who's making love? - from the Blues Brothers' Made in America
What do you want from me? - Pink Floyd's Division Bell
Where have all the flowers gone? performed by the Kingston Trio
Why don't we get drunk...
When ?? no interogative "when" songs (at least in English)
How many stars? from the musical Bombay Dreams
I thought I might be able to do an all soundtrack list but no such luck.
I got nothing for "How", and they aren't all questions. Hm. Nevertheless:
What Do Pretty Girls Do?, Kirsty MacColl
When the Weight Comes Down, the Tragically Hip
Where You Want to Be, Emma-Lee
Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, the Thompson Twins (from Red Hot & Blue)
Why D'Ya Do It, Marianne Faithfull
Clearly I need to get back to loading my iPod!