The Mercy Seat - Johnny Cash
Stagger Lee - Nick Cave
The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll - Bob Dylan
Jenny Was a Friend of Mine - The Killers
Jack Killed Mom - Jenny Lewis
John Wayne Gacy - Sufjan Stevens
Switching Off - Elbow
Guns Don't Kill People, Rappers Do - Goldie Lookin' Chain
Nebraska - Bruce Springsteen
Killing in the Name - Rage Against the Machine
Of course, Cave, Cash and Dylan have killing songs coming out of their paws, but I limited myself to one each of them - though the Cash one is Cave too in this case.
I rather wish I'd been able to find more songs about Death Row and the American fetishisation of serial killers, as that is what was on my mind, but whether I didn't look that hard, I didn't find that many suitable songs, although films like that are innumerable.
Apparently, Debbie Harry managed to escape becoming a victim of the serial killer Ted Bundy, when she got in his car, realised there was something funny about it, and managed to break her way out of it. There isn't, funnily enough, a Blondie song which makes explicit reference to this.
Anyway, executions ... really awful. The one in Monster's Ball is what sticks in my mind. It's P. Diddy, for a start, but it captures the shift from banality to the realisation of what the prisoner, the prison guards and the observers are all about to go through.
Shut my eyes and push me over,
I'm bored already of greys and blues.
I'm bad and ready for every last flower
I can't smell, each hour I can't misuse.
Close the sky and open the heavens,
Wrap me up, I hope it's summer.
Don't say a word, now, any misgivings
you feel you owe only make this harder.
Spin it out if that's your pleasure,
I won't respond, all senses deadened.
Switch me off and push me under,
Close my eyes and open the heavens.
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