Featuring Billy Joel, Meatloaf, Counting Crows and Green Day.

The Song Wire’s Weekly Playlist features a recurring, themed Spotify list. 

I suppose you could argue that every song is a story song in some way. Music is, after all, an art form, and all art – from writing to painting to cooking, even – serves as a form of storytelling. Even that music which is entirely instrumental can serve to tell vivid stories, all without that hindrance of lyrical poeticisms. 

Some songs, however, go further than most. These are the story songs. These are the songs that paint vivid pictures and environments, these are songs that are full of complex, clear characters; these are songs with arcs that are fit to bursting with emotional nuance.

These kinds of songs fascinate me because, for a song to be full of these characters and storylines and nuanced complexities means that the inception of that song must have been full of careful intention. That subtle combination of words and music must, to accomplish this rare feat, be fully and entirely thought out. This is art that is not created by lucky accident; this is art that comes from the deep places of humanity, and so this is art that is resplendent with the highest forms of beauty. 

This week’s playlist is a collection of those songs. The deep ones. The powerful ones. The ones with a message, the ones whose meaning and inspiration are not always easy to discern. 

This playlist is by no means full and complete. But it does feature many of these selected artists at their absolute best. “Scenes From an Italian Restaurant” might well be Billy Joel’s best-written song. (It’s either that or “The Stranger.”) “Bat Out Of Hell” is certainly Meatloaf’s career highlight (props to Jim Steinman).  

“Jesus Of Suburbia,” though it belongs to an album that many hard-core fans dislike, is so fascinating. This song, and all of American Idiot, really, is one that necessitates close listening. Listen carefully, read the lyrics, and you will be astonished by how thoughtful and compelling the story of American Idiot is. 

And “Walt Grace” is one of John Mayer’s most magical, transcendent tracks, full of this wonderful acoustic drive and deft storytelling. 

This list is full of my favorite songs.

It features a wide variety of artists (and an eclectic mix of genres), from Billy Joel and Meatloaf to Green Day, Set It Off, Mariana’s Trench, Shinedown, The Wallflowers and Train. It is a culling of the best and most powerful story songs from the past several decades, and it is full of fantastic music and startling powerful lyrics. 

‘Now Cinderella don’t you go to sleep

It’s such a bitter form of refuge

Ah, don’t you know the kingdom’s under siege

And everybody needs you’ 

“Dustland” – The Killers