Word(s) that only ever appeared in one (hit) song, ever.

Surely, someone besides Crowded House has used "deluge," but nothing occurs to me at the moment.

'Hubcap'* from "Bang A Gong"

*No, the Sleater-Kinney song of the same name doesn't count

― C. Grisso/McCain, Tuesday, 12 February 2008 23:30 (thirteen years ago) bookmarkflaglink

Family, "Strange Band"

Man and his hubcaps, flashing the highway
Shielding his eyes, from the heat of the sun

Surely, someone besides Crowded House has used "deluge," but nothing occurs to me at the moment.

Jackson Browne, "Before the Deluge"

Jackson Browne, "Before the Deluge"

Well, that was easy LOL

But not, to my surprise, "Here Comes the Flood" by Peter Gabriel. It must be Peter Hammill who used it somewhere.

Have we abandoned the “hit song” criterion?

I was wondering that, Peter Hammill has certainly neve had a hit single!

Looks like that Jackson Browne song is a 6-min. album track (not a single)

another Kate Bush entry

BFPO in Army Dreamers

(also possibly "aerodrome")

Hi, thread originator here..

I did mean it to signify songs that we might have had a reasonable chance of hearing.

And, of course, the bigger the 'hit' the greater the metaphorical score .

^ Praises to you.

"Rolleiflex" in Jobim's "Desafinado". Not sure if that's a hit, but it was covered by a zillion people and everyone knows it.

― Jersey Al (Albert R. Broccoli), Dienstag, 30. Juli 2013 04:28 (eight years ago) bookmarkflaglink

I think this is an outstanding example.
https://idiotic-hat.blogspot.com/2013/12/rolleiflex.html

(i only posted the Kate Bush after hearing it on national radio, so not guilty yr honour)

Rubbish by Carter usm was on totp and sounded like it'd have something relevant here, but they've gone back to using live vocals and it was a bit too muddy to make out

like Domestos and chlorofluorocarbon

Peter Hammill has certainly neve had a hit single!

I was just trying to find the source of the sung "deluge" I hear in my head.

minestrone/ parmesan/ lasagne/ constipated/ Pluto/ Pisa/ crepe suzette ("Life Is a Minestrone')

'minestrone' is also in Weird Al's 'Lasagna'

'Pisa' in also in Cole Porter's 'You're the Top', a song which also contains proper names and cheeses that may not occur in other popular songs.

I wanna say check the Beastie Boys' catalog for the others

"Lasagna" did not chart, afaict.

Bachi in "Lady Eleanor" by Lindisfarne.

"Bachi playing magician sitting lotus on the floor
Belly dancing beauty with a power driven saw"

"bronchi" in "Afternoons & Coffeespoons" by Crash Test Dummies (made it to #2 in the Icelandic charts!)

It was certainly a hit in Canada. Their single "Swimming in Your Ocean" uses the word "aloft" in its chorus, which can't be too common.

guess you forgot about “Aloft-bop-a-loo-mop-a-lop-bam-boom!”, the very foundation of rock-n-roll.

"Coax" in Rod Stewart's "Maggie May".

"Coax Me" is a song by Canadian rock band Sloan. It was released as the lead single of their second album Twice Removed. The song peaked at #30 on the Canadian RPM Singles Chart, spending 12 weeks in the top 100.[1][2]

...but "Coax Me" includes the lyric "Cajole me", which probably hasn't appeared elsewhere.

Is that line in "Maggie Mae" supposed to refer to her, or "his love" as a discreet entity? Does it mean:

- My love (i.e. Maggie), you didn't have to coax (me)
- You didn't have to coax my love

???

I always heard it the second way - inverting a sentence so the object comes first is common in poetry and even in colloquial speech sometimes. Leaving the object out altogether is weirder; besides, it seems unlikely that he would refer to Maggie as "my love" at this point, when he wishes he'd never seen her face, unless it was bitterly ironic.

You're probably right, it puts a chill on the song for me though.

Yep, the second way.

Naiveté in Find the River?

^Looks like it was only a hit in Iceland (#3); but if we’re counting it, I would go for “coriander,” “bergamot” or “vetiver”!

'telephoto' - The Divine Comedy, Generation Sex
'NHS' - The Divine Comedy, Becoming More Like Alfie

I just sort of picked two of his at random because it was him that got me thinking of it again but for instance Absent Friends has 'inky', 'woodbine' and 'Laika'

"ciggies" in "Looking For Linda" by Hue & Cry.

maybe 'Fulham' (Ian Dury, What a Waste)

"Wishbone" - Eve Boswell, "Pickin' a Chicken" (UK #9, 1955)
"Dewlap" - Georgie Fame, "The Ballad of Bonnie and Clyde" (UK #1, 1968)
"Bagsy" - Gilbert O'Sullivan, "We Will" (UK #16, 1971). Andy Williams rang Gilbert asking to change that line when he covered the song as he didn't know the word.
"Larceny" - Kid Creole and the Coconuts, "Stool Pigeon" (UK #7, 1982)

"Larceny" appears in "Star 69" by R.E.M., which, if not an unqualified hit, did okay on a couple of US airplay charts.

"Wishbone" appears in "Short End of a Wishbone" by Haywire which went to #56 in Canada in 1990.

'B&Q' and 'UB40' in Goldie Lookin Chain's 'Guns Don't Kill People, Rappers Do', but not 'BBC Two' (which if you want to be anachronistic can be 'BBC'2), because of Franz Ferdinand's 'Matinee' a few months earlier in 04.

'BBC2' ahem

'watusi' and 'playmates' - John Cooper Clarke's 'Gimmix' (UK #39 in 1979)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8v5aGwjWIQs

Idk about that one but my mind was blanking a blatant one, although I've never heard it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTmYm8eWlPI

"Bagsy" is an amazing one btw

wtf (wasn't meant to happen)

was meant to link to this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wah-Watusi

A surprising number of songs mention Saskatchewan in the lyrics but Buffy Sainte Marie's "Saskatchewan" is the only one I can find that specifically mentions Qu'appelle Valley. Red Box released a cover just before "Lean on Me" that wasn't a hit, but they tried. Most songs just seem to use Saskatchewan as a synonym for an exotic place that's far away, like Timbuktu.

It's cheating, but Red Box's "Lean on Me (Ah-Li-Ayo)" is the only song I can find that has "ah-li-ayo" in it. But it's not a word, it's a vocalisation. Ditto "Chenko". I just wanted Red Box to be in this thread.

And Haysi Fantayzee, although I imagine lots of songs have the word "leggy" in them. I'm disappointed that their vocabulary was surprisingly normal.

Every fibre of my being wants there to be a Transvision Vamp song with "latitudinous" in it, but dammit there aren't any. Surprisingly Michael Nyman's "Bird List Song" is not the only song with "lammergeier" in the lyrics.

"abacinate", from Top 40 Casey Kasem countdown hit, "Angel of Death" by Slayer

xp For America is also very possibly the only hit single to go "huwulahuwlahuwulahuwalahuwlawayaaay, huwulahuwulahuwluahhhuwalahuwalaUSA"

Has "patchouli" appeared in a hit single outside of "Year of the Cat" by Al Stewart?

'vegemite' (upthread somewhere) has appeared not only in Down Under but Bomb the Bass's Bug Power Dust - I got a vegemite sandwich from men at WORK

'de-condition', 'monotheism', 'shamanism', 'Wittgenstein' - The Shamen's Re:evolution

'Cities in Dust' by Siouxsie & the Banshees is the only top 40 hit I can think of containing the word 'nostrils' but surely there are others.

I regret to inform you that Beyonce's "Formation" is a top 10 hit with nostrils.