SONGS WHERE/SONGS THAT/SONGS WITH/SONGS IN WHICH

Lou Reed & John Cale - A Dream (Cale narrating as Warhol)

Bongwater - Nick Cave Doll

Songs where the singer talks to inanimate objects which do not hear them: Clint Eastwood (and others) - I Talk to the Trees; King Crimson - I Talk to the Wind

I've got two. Doris Day (and others including George Michael, Connie Francis, and Sinéad O'Connor) "Secret Love."

Once I had a secret love...
So I told a friendly star
The way that dreamers often do
Just how wonderful you are
And why I'm so in love with you
Now I shout it from the highest hills
Even told the golden daffodils

And the Pogues, "A Pair of Brown Eyes," which I think we were just discussing in ye Pogues thread.

So drunk to hell I left the place
Sometimes crawling sometimes walking
A hungry sound came across the breeze
So I gave the walls a talking

Neil Diamond, "I Am I Said".

The Doris Day one reminds me of Linda Scott's 'I've Told Every Little Star', of Mulholland Dr. fame, which moves from addressing stars to addressing ripples in a brook

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifgpiGs_4Js

Also Bruno Mars - 'Talking to the Moon'

I suppose "Synchronicity II" doesn't count: "Another suburban family morning / Grandmother's screaming at the wall"

(Interestingly I had the lyrics of "Secret Love" reversed in my head; I thought it was "once I only told the daffodils, now I shout it from the highest hills," which I was pretty sure was from a show tune. On looking it up I saw I was partly right and partly wrong. FWIW my misremembered lyric is better.)

any others where the trees/wind/moon/etc explicitly don't listen?

was gonna say bruno mars' "talking to the moon," but i think he says specifically that voices call back

Clint Eastwood (and others) - I Talk to the Trees

Clint also famously talked to a chair, iirc

Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head

I think Patty Griffin's "Mother of God" would count.

When I was little I'd stare at her picture
And talk to the mother of God
I swear sometimes I'd see her lips move
Like she was trying to say something to me

When I was eighteen I moved to Florida,
Like everyone sick of the cold does,
And I waited on old people waiting to die
I waited on them until I was

kate bush “deeper understanding”

The inanimate object clearly does hear the singer!

We'll talk to the trees and worship the wind in Rod's McKuen's translation of Jacques Brel's Ne me quitte pas

xp

checked the lyrics and there is no explicit confirmation that the computer is actually listening and not just saying what it’s programmed to say

Fred Lane - I Talk to My Haircut

Songs which have accidental sound in the background (that the artist decided to keep in the recording)
?

There’s some Olivia Tremor Control song that clearly has a old landline ringing in the next room…

Grouper's "Labyrinth", recorded on a portable recorder during a blackout in Portugal, has the beep! of a microwave turning back on when the power was restored.

and the frogs on "Lighthouse" but they're essential to the record

"Black Country Woman" by Led Zeppelin - plane flying overhead while recording outdoors
"Tin Scarecrow" by Game Theory - vacuum cleaner turned on while recording at home

There's a plane flying overhead during one of the tracks on the Lambert/Ingram/Randall album (which feels like part & parcel of "outdoor recording")

Phone ringing in one of those songs on the Moldy Peaches album

Songs about escaping small towns

Broadcast - Ominous Cloud
Bronski Beat - Smalltown Boy
Kingmaker - Hey Birdman (no really, this is good)

Sure there must be many more

Nowhere Fast - The Smiths

Maybe not much escaping there. London by the Smiths instead?

Twist on it in Pavement’s Box Elder, MO. He’s escaping one town for another, maybe even smaller, one.

Smalltown, Lou Reed & John Cale

And another twist in the Jam’s Strange Town (get to the city and it’s horrible)

Some more candidates on this Steve Hoffman thread including one of my favourite ever songs, Lonely Days by Future Bible Heroes, though again there's not much sign of escape.

Continental edition - this stuff goes back centuries!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhJCFBY6UmA
Vicky Leandros • Theo, wir fahr’n nach Lodz

Sundays - leave this city

Steve Earle, "Someday."

There ain't a lot that you can do in this town
You drive down to the lake and then you turn back around
You go to school and you learn to read and write
So you can walk into the county bank and sign away your life
I work at the fillin' station on the interstate
Pumpin' gasoline and countin' out of state plates
They ask me how far into Memphis son, and where's the nearest beer
And they don't even know that there's a town around here
Someday I'm finally gonna let go
'Cause I know there's a better way
And I wanna know what's over that rainbow
I'm gonna get out of here someday
Now my brother went to college cause he played football
I'm still hangin' round cause I'm a little bit small
I got me a 67 Chevy, she's low and sleek and black
Someday I'll put her on that interstate and never look back

"Backwards Town" by the Grapes of Wrath
"Hometown" by Joe Jackson

The Kinks have a trilogy of songs about girls who come to grief in the city, but only "Big Black Smoke" explicitly mentions the "country life" that she is leaving. They also have "Village Green", where the singer "sought fame", then misses the small town.

"Get to the city and it's horrible" also = Gram Parsons, "Streets of Baltimore."

Eilen Jewell, "Blow it All Away"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfpoKzpQ4_E

Let's just keep driving you and me
I like your soft voice and your pleasant company
We can pull each other out of this dusty little town
Make a new start somewhere maybe settle down

btw that is a pretty good song. I played it in a bar recently

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8l_od0G488

Richard Marx - Hazard

My favorite take on this theme is Gerty - Lower Moreland. Such a great (autobiographical) name for a town one would feel the need to escape from.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNBE7IqXg8k

songs which are ruined by a singer singing in a faux-accent that's annoying as fuck

think that was just sold as "Sting's Greatest Hits" in other countries.

Green Day to thread

songs where the chorus seems endlessly stitched together

example - Shania Twain - Man, I Feel Like a Woman

“cut to the feeling” has a similar feel

Not sure if "stitched together" implies a negative judgment, but I'd say ABBA's "The Name of the Game" does this very well. The chorus has four parts (one, two or three of which could arguably be called bridges, but they appear after both of the full choruses).

"Take a Chance on Me," as well? (I didn't read it negatively, btw – I love that Shania song)

That's an odd one because the verse is the main hook, but the "other part" does have three sections.

Live & Let Die