there's a song for that

 By Jess Santacroce
Music Writer, Phoenix Radio

There are countless songs out there about finding someone attractive, falling in love, romantic relationships ending, and looking for romantic relationships of various types. Though not as plentiful, there are still several songs about feeling confident, working, reaching goals, travel, money, partying, facing tragedy, going to school, and spirituality. What if your situation falls into one of those categories, but is a bit more nuanced? What if it isn’t about any of those things at all? No matter how strange, alienating, unique, or just plain unacknowledged your situation may feel, there’s a song for that.

Dealing with a bedbug infestation: Mean Old Bedbug Blues (Furry Lewis, 1927)

While not physically dangerous beyond the pain of their bites, bedbugs wreck havoc on finances and on mental health. Picking up a bedbug from a hotel or other place that has become infested typically results in an infestation of your own home or business. You may spend weeks, months, or even years finding the tiny insects in your bedding, couch, towels, soft chairs, even in your curtains. Getting rid of them requires repeated pricey treatments, ten times as much cleaning and laundering as you typically do, even making large purchases to replace hopelessly infested items. Couple this with the knowledge that there may be something crawling around your house looking to bite you and feed on your blood, and you have more stress than many people can handle.
Finish dragging that mattress to the trash collection site, order a new one, clean your house one more time, then take a break and listen to “Mean Old Bedbug Blues.” The song was originally recorded by Furry Lewis, but there are several covers that are much more popular, including versions by Lonnie Johnson and Bessie Smith.

Cheating with your ex while in a relationship with someone else: Lips of an Angel (Hinder, 2006)

Romantic infidelity is a common theme in popular music. Searches for “songs about cheating” bring up multiple lists of more than forty songs each. Hinder’s “Lips of an Angel” appears to be the only one to make it clear from the lyrics that the narrator is in a romantic entanglement with someone he used to be in a relationship with while officially in a relationship with someone else. In the song, the main character and narrator answers a phone call from his ex late at night by addressing her as “Honey,” and proceeds to confess that while his current partner is in the next room, he wishes he were still with the girl on the phone, noting they “never really moved on.” It gets worse from there, with admissions that the current girlfriend doesn’t even know the two of them still talk, the girl on the phone also has someone new, and there are no plans to discontinue the illicit conversations.
Anyone who relates to the narrator in this one doesn’t deserve to be comforted. Use it as a reminder that many songs express fantasy not reality, the person you’re cheating on probably actually does “have a clue” and you need to be a much better person. Everyone else just needs to remember that this is not an appropriate song for new relationships, engagements, and weddings, even if the title does make it sound like it should be.

Feeling the urge to lie to your friends about why your romantic relationship ended: 50 Ways to Say Goodbye (Train, 2012)

We all deal with unhappy times differently. Some need to lean on friends, going over the situation in detail until we learn something or at least feel better. Others would rather not rehash it repeatedly. Still others don’t want to talk about it because it’s embarrassing. If your unhappy times revolve around a recent breakup, and your situation falls firmly in the “embarrassing” category, there is a song out there for you. Plenty of songs about lying exist, but nearly all of them are either about lying to someone you’re in a romantic relationship with, or suspecting or finding out you’re with someone who has been lying to you. In “50 Ways to Say Goodbye,” the narrator describes a situation in which no deception existed in the relationship, he just doesn’t feel like reporting all the “it’s not you, it’s me” lines his now ex gave him as she broke his heart. He decides to instead tell his friends that his girlfriend isn’t around anymore because she perished tragically, in a series of increasingly far fetched ways.

Unlike the deception in “Lips of an Angel,” the urge to lie presented in this song is understandable. While the situation is pretty specific, we have all had those embarrassing times we wish we could just cover up, even if most of us wouldn’t think to tell some people are ex was eaten by a lion and others that they fried themselves while tanning.

Finding creative ways to get what you want at a great price: One Piece at a Time
(Johnny Cash, 1976)

Money songs tend to be about celebrating it in excess, praising all the indulgences it can bring. There are also songs about saving money, and about living in poverty. Some of these songs are sad. Some are angry. Many are hopeful, full of plans about what the narrators are going to do once they find a way out of poverty.

“One Piece at a Time” takes that a leap further by providing a You-Tube video worthy step by step narrative of a character’s process for building his own unique luxury vehicle after seeing luxury cars he could never afford while working at a factory for low pay. The car described in the lyrics of this song would not only be hideous to look at, it is not something anyone could ever drive. The narrator’s process of collecting the pieces for his project, stealing them and sneaking them out of his workplace, makes the whole idea even worse. But as the song points out, nobody else would ever have car like this, and it wouldn’t cost a dime.

While the song is of course satire, listening to it will probably remind you of that person in your life who would go almost this far to get something they want without paying full price for it.


Always look for some music. No matter what you’re going through or why, there is music to accompany you. Even if you think your situation is something nobody else would understand, or you’re afraid this is something nobody would ever have written a song about, you just might be surprised to learn there is in fact a song out there to comfort, convict, or encourage you.