Character sketches in song.

As is perhaps inevitable, one of my particular loves in music is when the songwriter sings about or from the point of view of someone else - a real person past or present, a character from literature or one of their own devising - and now that my own characters have been packed off to introduce themselves properly to the agent, I have a few minutes to post a small selection of my favourite character sketch songs in here.


Queen Adreena - Pretty Polly. This is based on an old folk song.


Emilie Autumn - Marry Me. This character is, I suspect, ultimately one of Miss Autumn's own creation, but I see a lot of Henry VIII's fifth wife Katherine Howard in the basic story. It's also a wickedly funny song.


The Dresden Dolls - Missed Me. A dark one, this, but again a brilliant example of the character sketch. This is the sort of dysfunctional trope-inverting character I can imagine appearing in an Alan Bennett monologue (reading Talking Heads for English A Level was a major influence on my love of strange characters).


REM - Tongue. Incidentally, the reason Michael Stipe sings this in a higher key than he usually sings is because the character this song is about is female.


Nick Cave - The Mercy Seat
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Nick Cave - The Mercy Seat. Cave is very good at these rather extreme Southern Gothic characters, and this condemned criminal in the electric chair is a classic example.


Emilie Autumn - Shalott. It's pretty obvious which character and story this is taken from.


Emilie Autumn - Mad Girl. Ditto!


PJ Harvey - Angelene. My favourite PJ song.


REM - Daysleeper. There's something so mournful and sad about this.


The Curse of Millhaven by Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds

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Nick Cave - The Curse of Millhaven. I think this may be the definitive fucked-up character sketch song! Such a brilliantly accurate picture of a sociopath.