I listen to money singing

Given that more people are kept awake at night by lack of money than lack of love, it’s odd that there are far more songs about love than money.  I can only come up with a short list of ten songs on that highly topical subject:-

The first two songs deal with how love is more important than money for happiness:-

Can’t Buy Me Love by The Beatles (1964):-

http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=2LoYM5OWIqI

I'll buy you a diamond ring my friend
If it makes you feel all right
I'll get you anything my friend
If it makes you feel all right
'Cause I don't care too much for money
For money can't buy me love

[Please, someone introduce me to that guy.]

The second is Who Wants to be a Millionaire from High Society by Cole Porter.

http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=5_9QstdWGC4

Who wants to be a millionaire? I don't.
Have flashy flunkeys everywhere? I don't.
Who wants the bother of a country estate?
A country estate is something I'd hate!

The lyrics of Can’t Buy Me Love are simple to the point of idiocy, Millionaire has all the craft of the golden age of American song writing. They are from two different traditions of songs, the first for dancing to, the second for listening to while admiring its amusing sophistication, but they are both up beat.  Can’t Buy Me Love makes me feel happy in a silly, carefree way.

Those are the two most uplifting songs about money - that it doesn’t matter compared to love.  The next two are about how lack of money and love are miserable cohabitees.

On their second album The Beatles covered Money (That's What I Want) which was written by Tamla founder Berry Gordy and Janie Bradford, and would become the first hit record for Gordy's Motown label..  It’s more cynical and sour than anything The Beatles wrote.  Here it is covered by The Flying Lizards:-

http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=insVgcOVVDQ

You're lovin gives me a thrill
but you're lovin don't pay my bills
gimme money
(that's what i want)

It’s a song with a great beat, and when played live gets a lot of hand clapping and floor or table thumping. The second one, again from a musical and far more complex lyrically, is Money (Makes the World Go Round) (from Cabaret – 1966 – John Kander and Fred Ebb) which is about how poverty and love don’t live happily ever after together.

http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=rkRIbUT6u7Q

When you haven't any coal in the stove and you freeze in the winter
And you curse to the wind at your fate.
When you haven't any shoes on your feet and your coat's thin as paper
And you look thirty pounds underweight,
When you go to get a word of advice from the fat little pastor,
he will tell you to love evermore.
But when hunger comes to rap, rat-a-tat, rat-a-tat, at the window
See how love flies out the door.
For money makes the world go around, the world go around,
the world go around.
Money makes the world go around,
the clinking, clanking sound

The next three deal with envy of the rich and a pure desire for money.

Abba’s Money Money Money (1976):-

http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=WCkOmcIl79s

I work all night, I work all day, to pay the bills I have to pay
Aint it sad
And still there never seems to be a single penny left for me
That’s too bad
In my dreams I have a plan
If I got me a wealthy man
I wouldn’t have to work at all, Id fool around and have a ball..

Money, money, money
Must be funny
In the rich mans world

Richard Cory by Simon and Garfunkel.  It is more bitter than the Abba song .  The singer envies the rich man, but the rich man's wealth does not save him :-

http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=euuCiSY0qYs

They say that Richard Cory owns one half of this whole town,
With political connections to spread his wealth around.
Born into society, a banker's only child,
He had everything a man could want: power, grace, and style.

But I work in his factory
And I curse the life I'm living
And I curse my poverty
And I wish that I could be,
 . . .
Richard Cory.

If I were a rich man, from the musical Fiddler on the Roof has a humorous and rueful take on the envying riches theme:-

http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=RBHZFYpQ6nc

Lord who made the lion and the lamb,
You decreed I should be what I am.
Would it spoil some vast eternal plan?
If I were a wealthy man.

In Pink Floyd’s Money (1974) the singer takes on the persona of somebody who is cynical, greedy and self -satisfied.

http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=8_anbEJsr6s

Money, get back.
I’m all right jack keep your hands off of my stack.
Money, its a hit.
Don’t give me that do goody good bullshit.

Its famous cash register opening still sounds like money, though when did you last hear one of those jingly cash registers?  You only get beeps now, and plastic.  Money has lost its look and feel of coins and jingling.

Finally, there are two songs on being poor, the first being Busted by Ray Charles, about real share cropping poverty:-
http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=N7ZjYbP6X8Y

My bills are all due and the baby needs shoes and I'm busted
Cotton is down to a quarter a pound, but I'm busted

The other is the magnificent Brother, Can you Spare a Dime which deserves a post all by itself.

http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=eih67rlGNhU

That’s ten songs about money, the most recent being Abba’s from 1976!  Is there anything more up-to-date?

Comments

[Venichka]

Anything more recent?

Oh, I'm embarassed to refer to both of these, as their artistry or beauty is extremely minimal (but I did have to look up the artist of the latter):

"Money Talks" by the Adventures of Stevie V (1990,
"It's All About The Money" by Meja (1998)

(I'm not sure the lyrics of the latter make very much sense, anyway)

Ah...but...something good musically AND lyrically..and kind of Thatcherite/American Dream in its message.... (depending on how you look at it): "Opportunities (Let's Make Lots Of Money" by the Pet Shop Boys (1987)

and "Love Your Money" by Daisy Chainsaw (1991) - crazy screaming woman who used to hit the blazered guitarist. I saw them third-on-the-bill at a gig in London in '91 when PJ Harvey were second-on-the bill (Courtney Love's Hole were top, they were abysmal: the other two acts were first rate)

and "It's Yer Money I'm After Baby" by the Wonder Stuff (1988) - selfexplanatory title, a not unpleasant jangly thing. B-side of the single, "Astley in the Noose", also has one of those...

I'm sorry to list these: I'd rather make intelligent comment about Evelyn Waugh (and the quite correct distinction you draw between him and Chesterton), but alas lowbrow stuff it is

Go here and type "money" and you might find more that spring to mind...

[Mal Function]

And of course there's Frank Zappa's album "We're only in it for the money" (just the album title, no track with that name), Pretenders with "Brass In Pocket", Alice Cooper's "Billion Dollar Babies", "Money for Nothing" by Dire Straits, "You Never Give me your Money" also by the Beatles and, a bit tenuously, the Dresden Dolls with "Coin Operated Boy".

And what about performers? Johnny Cash, 50 Cent, Dollar, Sixpence none the richer...

[Rosie]

Thanks guys - I see that the subject has grown arms, legs and lungs and I'll have to rewrite my piece.