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

"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.

'Maccy' (Maccy Ds) - The Streets' Weak Become Heroes

Nick Cave's "Anthrocene" probably fits this? I think at the time it was more of a toss-up between "Anthropocene" and "Anthrocene," though the dictionaries have weighed in.

Was it a hit?

It was not!

I bet Carson Daly liked it

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

Oh yeah, good catch!

Most songs just seem to use Saskatchewan as a synonym for an exotic place that's far away, like Timbuktu.

??? Any example that I can find in a quick search is by a Canadian artist and references Saskatchewan as ... a province? I lived there for two years and can assure you it's not that exotic. What did you have in mind?

I can see connotations of cold, flat, rural, traditional but not "an exotic place that's far away".

It's mentioned in a Lou Reed song too for no reason I can think of other than Lou rhyming it with "man" and "plan". No canal and no Panama though.

In "Movin' Right Along" from the Muppet Movie, Fozzie sings "Send someone to fetch us, we're in Saskatchewan" when they're driving around lost.

read that as "felch us" and got confused why they had to be in Saskatchewan for that

I stumbled on this article here:
https://thestarphoenix.com/news/saskatchewan-in-song

And I was struck by e.g. Charlotte Gainsbourg's "AF607105", with which we are all familiar because we're on Ilxor. And of course Lou Reed's "Stupid Man". On reflection most of the songs describe the place more in a "I long for my faraway homeland" sense. But are they really singing about Saskatchewan? Hmm?

It's a fascinating shape on the map. A rectangle, but with a pushed-in side - my hunch, based on no research whatsoever, is that there was a long war with Manitoba over the town of Flin Flon. It that culminated in a UN-imposed peace treaty - in French - just before Saskatchewan overtook the town. After all these years bygones have become bygones and the people have learned to live with each other.

Flin Flon is named after Josiah Flintabbatey Flonatin, a fictional character from a book. He apparently "piloted a submarine into a bottomless lake where he sailed through a hole lined with gold to enter a strange underground world". Because Saskatchewan's main employers are mining companies it has a place called Uranium City:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_City

And what appeared to be Tumor Lake, but it's actually Turnor Lake and I just misread it. If Google's little yellow figure is to be believed the entire southern half of the province is a dense, regular grid of roads, just hundreds of miles of flat nothing with a grid of roads. And the top half is flat boggy swamp. From Buffy Sainte Marie's song was expecting lush rolling hills, but it looks horrible. And I'm never going to visit because I don't drive. Way to crush my dreams, Google.

Pushing the bounds of relevance here, but Mark Robinson had a band called Flin Flon whose song titles (on their first album, at least) were the names of Canadian towns.

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

― henry s, Monday, October 3, 2022 5:42 PM (two days ago) bookmarkflaglink

Not that I could find, which is disappointing to me as a patchouli fanatic. Makes me appreciate Al Stewart even more though!

Re: "Watusi"

Would you consider The Beatles "Revolution 9" a hit song?

No