Songs Named After Girls

A conversation at work the other day led to an unusual playlist concept - solely incorporating songs named after girls. The 'song named after girls' theme is a well-travelled road, and even on my list of barely 1500 songs on my phone I can put together a reasonable list (which I may be able to pad a little with the songs on my computer that haven't made it onto my phone yet).

There are, however, difficult decisions to be made as to whether you include or exclude certain songs. To that end, Green Day's ¡Viva la Gloria! got left out, but Haushinka made it onto the list (only by virtue of the first line, 'Haushinka is a girl with a peculiar name'). I was left with a list of 18-20 songs depending on how strictly I police it, including girls named Ada, Amy, Ashley, Clara, Jenny, Josie, Louise, Maria, Mae, Tessie and aforementioned Haushinka, plus some others including second names. No bonus points or points of any type if you can match the band to the song above.

I then tried to repeat the trick and to see how this worked out with boy's names. Surprisingly there are more, but it again depends how rigorous you are with the line - does the additional hey render Foo Fighter's Hey, Johnny Park! as an invalid inclusion? Am I allowed The Gaslight Anthem's Miles Davis & The Cool as our titular male is bringing along the cool? Does aforementioned girl's name song Ashley count as a boy's name song as well by virtue of the unisex name even if the song is about a girl? All difficult decisions to make. I was even tempted to try and sneak in Coldplay's Death And All His Friends, as the 'his' in the title and lyrics clearly indicates Death is male, but thought that might be stretching it a little too far.

However, one thing that is clear to me is that - surprisingly - the list named after males, men or boys has by far the best tracks. While songs such as Coldplay's Charlie Brown, The Who's Happy Jack, Green Day's Jesus of Suburbia, The Clash's Jimmy Jazz and Feeder's Buck Rogers make it a clear winner, the inclusion of The Who's Baba O'Riley makes it a runaway victor, leaving the girl's name list far behind in the distance.