Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Stop using mental illness to avoid talking about armed white supremacy.

If you still can’t see these things even now, maybe politics isn’t your forte and you should stop writing about it.

The revolution will be supervised.

Reality always lies in wait for … Democrats.

If you thought you’d already seen people saying the stupidest things possible on the internet, prepare yourselves.

A democracy can’t function when people can’t distinguish facts from lies.

This blog will pay for itself.

Putting aside our relentless self-interest because the moral imperative is crystal clear.

This country desperately needs a functioning fourth estate.

rich, arrogant assholes who equate luck with genius

Republican obstruction dressed up as bipartisanship. Again.

Motown is Joe-Town!

Not so fun when the rabbit gets the gun, is it?

I really should read my own blog.

Insiders who complain to politico: please report to the white house office of shut the fuck up.

Accused of treason; bitches about the ratings. I am in awe.

Lick the third rail, it tastes like chocolate!

The arc of the moral universe doesn’t bend itself. it’s up to us.

The willow is too close to the house.

Hot air and ill-informed banter

Welcome to day five of every-bit-as-bad-as-you-thought-it-would-be.

It looks like winning debates is a black job!

Of course you can have champagne before noon. That’s why orange juice was invented.

Accountability, motherfuckers.

You are here: Home / Music / Father’s day music thread

Father’s day music thread

by | 151 Comments

This post is in: ,

What’s the best Father’s Day themed song? I can’t take that “Dance With My Father” song, so I have to go with “Cats in the Cradle”.

Please, no contemporary country songs, people, “Butterfly Kisses” is deeply creepy and all the ones about getting cancer and realizing how much you love your family are too treacly. There is at least one famous old country song that would be a good choice here…see if anyone gets it.

Reader Interactions

151Comments

  7. 7.

    Valdivia

    @Donna:

    I was going to say the Fleetwood Mac version.

    ETA though on second thought it may be in the creepy side and a different kind of daddy. ahem.

  23. 23.

    Percysowner

    Not about a father in particular, but Sunrise, Sunset from Fiddler on the roof has always touched me. Yes, I’m a sap.

  24. 24.

    Sargent Pepper's Spray

    Everything I own by Bread isn’t bad, but Cats and the Cradle probably tops it. Cat Steven’s Father and Son is more like an anti-Father’s Day song.

  25. 25.

    Svensker

    @Valdivia:

    Father and Son, for sure.

    Cats in the Cradle is depressing.

    See, now, Sargent Pepper’s Spray and I completely disagree.

  26. 26.

    Amir Khalid

    You could get a song cycle about fathers, and sons, from Springsteen’s album tracks: Adam Raised A Cain, Independence Day, My Father’s House, My Hometown, Walk Like A Man, Living Proof, Souls Of The Departed.

  31. 31.

    MP

    I’m partial to Brown Eyed Woman, and for the prior generation Grandpa was a Carpenter. If it’s complete schmaltz you’re looking for, who could overlook In the Living Years?

  38. 38.

    Amir Khalid

    @kerFuFFler:
    Oddly enough, I’ve been hearing that over the PA at my local supermarket these past few weeks. In Yiddish, I think, rather than German.

  40. 40.

    BGinCHI

    Sunday Morning Coming Down.

    That song pretty much describes my father who died young.

  41. 41.

    cckids

    Well, I know its treacly, contemporary & country & about cancer, but “Live Like You Were Dying” does it for me. It came out just as my dad was diagnosed with leukemia, he loves country music, and it really spoke to him, & so to us.

    He even asked me to make a hanging with a quote from it;

    “If you knew tomorrow was a gift, & you’d have eternity to think about what you did with it, what would you do with it?”.

    Since he’s spending this Father’s Day in the hospital with an infection the hospital gave him last month, I’m going with his choice. Sappy or not.

  42. 42.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @gbear: I was just gonna mention “Real Fine Love“. I guess “Rest of the Dream” is more specifically about fatherhood, but I can’t find a video. So much of Stolen Moments is about settling down and being glad about it. Also, too, Seven Little Indians, about his old man.

  46. 46.

    James Gary

    I’d sort of assumed the “famous old country song” was “That Silver-Haired Daddy Of Mine,” which, in my opinion, is about a zillion times better than Johnny Cash’s horrible novelty hit.

  53. 53.

    mellowjohn

    steve goodman’s “my old man.” and after my music teacher father died, i listened to (and quoted at his memorial service) dan fogelberg’s “leader of the band.”

  57. 57.

    moderateindy

    Steve Goodman, My Old Man. I actually like John Prine’s version more than Goodman’s. Prine’s unwed father is a good one but not very Father’s Day-esque.
    Also Peter Himmelman’s This Father Day is a bit sappy but not bad.

  59. 59.

    Mr Stagger Lee

    What Nobody Mentioned “The Living Years”” by Mike and the Mechanics? For Shame!!!

  62. 62.

    Mnemosyne

    “Cat’s in the Cradle” is really fucking depressing, especially when you realize that, at the end, the dad is still deluding himself — no, your boy is not just like you, because his kids are actually important to him, you self-centered jerkwad!

    I can’t think of any good dad-themed songs. There are songs I associate with my dad because he used to sing them to me when I was little (and not-so-little), but it wasn’t any of the ones here.

  63. 63.

    mouse tolliver

    Weezer’s “Say It Ain’t So” for those of us raised by alcoholic absentee deadbeats.

  69. 69.

    Hunter Gathers

    I don’t know nuthin’ ’bout no songs about Daddy, but this is the greatest Father’s Day gift evah.

  79. 79.

    Sullivan Hyde

    Whoever said Working Class Hero nailed.it. i mean, my dad’s a PhD physicist, but having grown up poor in Wales, his politics are as tribal-Labour as they come.

    Brings me some shame that I’ve voted Republican in my life, but I can thank dad for the fact that I’ve always hated Tory scum with a bred-in passion, no matter how stupid my politics.

  80. 80.

    Davis X. Machina

    @mellowjohn: I just watched a couple of the amateur covers on YouTube of “My Old Man” and it just about broke my heart. Every guy of a certain age who’s lost his dad and has a guitar and a webcam…

    It must be wonderful to have touched the hearts of so many people like that.

  81. 81.

    MikeJ

    White Punks on (pipe) Dope has been running through my head this morning. Got Dad a new BBQ grill and have been doing all the natural gas plumbing to hook it up and make it propane tankless. Hence the use of pipe dope, and giving me an earworm.

  82. 82.

    WJS

    Have we gotten all of the way down the thread without “Just Like My Father” by the Violent Femmes?

    Goodness. There is no better song for Father’s Day than that.

  87. 87.

    jon

    Not best:

    Pink Thing, XTC
    Papa Was a Rolling Stone, orig. or Was (Not Was)
    Hello Dad, I’m in Jail, WNW
    anything by Nirvana
    anything by Hank jr.

  89. 89.

    burnspbesq

    Two great Rodney Crowell songs, “Many a Long and Lonesome Highway” and “Things I Wish I’d Said.”

  91. 91.

    Ann Marie

    It’s sentimental, but folk, not country — My Father’s Blue Eyes, by the Burns Sisters.

  93. 93.

    BGinCHI

    @Valdivia: Sorry Val, but just saw your post. Glad you’re buying some wine from them. Good people.

    Having a great father’s day. Xavi is aces. Happy, smiley little lad.

  94. 94.

    PurpleGirl

    Haven’t read the thread yet…

    Don’t have a song to contribute but when when I think of a father-child relationship I think of the movie/story October Sky. It’s the story of a NASA scientist and how he came to science and how he and his father came to relate finally. I found it on video and have watched it several times. The ending makes me tear up. (The subplot with the teacher is also a tear-jerker.)

    Afterthought: Did anyone mention Judy Collins “My Father”?

  97. 97.

    Jamey

    Also, “That’s My Boy,” by Stan Freberg or a different “That’s My Boy,” by Bobby Goldsboro, or “The Band Wore Blue Shirts,” by Joe Jackson.

  99. 99.

    miserybob

    Mark Cohn – Silver Thunderbird. (You’re welcome… y’all will wake up tomorrow with that ear worm firmly embedded!)

    Always makes me wonder where that kind of artist goes… He was a two-hit wonder with a modest talent and modest fame, all over the radio, then *poof*… never heard from again!

  102. 102.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @efgoldman:

    My work here is done!

    Also, too, Hot Rod Lincoln.

    “Took my license and put me in jail, called my pappy to post my bail and he said son you’re going to drive me to drinkin’ if you don’t stop driving that hot…rod…Lincoln”

  109. 109.

    jkr

    T.R. Ritchie, “My Father’s Wildest Dream”

    Greg Greenway, “Don’t Go”

    Kevin Briody, “Walnuts and Rice”

    Bob Franke, “Hard Love”

    Chris Smither, “Father’s Day” <a href=http://youtu.be/PhKjZVdl7FY

    Richard Berman, “A Father’s Lullabye”

    Hugh Blumenfeld, “Welcome to the World”

  110. 110.

    FridayNext

    Bobby Bare and Bobby Bare, Jr. “Daddy What If?”

    Written by Shel Silverstein. (also wrote A Boy Named Sue mentioned above. Also lots of songs about drugs and sex) It should be the official Father’s Day Anthem.

  112. 112.

    stinger

    @gbear: #10 Always loved that song; haven’t heard it in decades. Wish I’d sung it to mine. Thanks for the link.

  113. 113.

    kuvasz

    Independence Day; Bruce Springsteen

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKf8Bi0ggi4

    Whenever I hear it it reminds me of being four years old and walking hand in hand with my father down the street to the factory he worked in down at the corner. He always waved to me before he walked through the doors to the auto plant. 53 years later it is still burned in my mind.

  115. 115.

    Coco Laboy

    @wenchacha: Old Man was actually about the man who looked after his ranch in California. But his “I am a Child” would certainly work

  116. 116.

    Schlemizel

    @Steeplejack:
    let me try this
    Today, father is father’s day. And we’re giving you a tie.
    It is not much we know, it is just our way of showing you…
    We think you’re a regular guy.
    You say that it was nice of us to bother…
    But it really was a pleasure to fuss.
    For according to our mother, you’re our father….
    And that’s good enough for us!
    Yes, that’s good enough for us!!

  117. 117.

    Schlemizel

    This is so odd – those are the lyrics I have tried to post several times & WP said were spam.

    The only thing I added to those first attempts (although they were formatted better) was that the song was written by Harry Ruby & probably for Groucho Marx

  119. 119.

    kth

    All I got is “California Cottonfields”, by Merle Haggard.

    My own pop likes Pennsylvania-6-5000 and the like.

    Also: acts with fathers and children:

    The Staples Singers
    The Kendalls
    Doc and Merle Travis
    ???

  120. 120.

    bg

    I can’t believe y’all are talking about country songs about fathers and haven’t mentioned Reba McEntire’s The Greatest Man I Never Knew

  121. 121.

    Gustopher

    “Somewhere in America there’s a street named after my dad” by Was (Not Was).

    “Father and Son” by Cat Stevens is also good, but for those who didn’t have an absentee father. I like the Johnny Cash version.

  123. 123.

    Suzie

    Daddy’s Hands — my daddy is missing four fingers from his left hand from an accident that happened before I was born. Yet he can still play the banjo, and draw beautifully — with his left hand!

  124. 124.

    WhyKnot241

    The Circle Game – Joni Mitchell

    Because…

    It made me cry when I was twenty

    It made me cry when they were yard apes

    It made me cry when it was time for driving lessons

  128. 128.

    TG Chicago

    “Can I Keep Him, Daddy” by Red Sovine. Might be too cutesy for some, but I like it.

  129. 129.

    catatonia

    @kd bart:

    Factory by Warren Zevon. Nice riff on Bruce’s version, complete with frenetic harmonica. The only rock song ever that mentions polymethylchloride.

  135. 135.

    Cacti

    The Everclear song “Father of Mine” makes me think of my paternal grandfather, who was truly a third rate human being.

  136. 136.

    Ron

    I dunno if I’d call “Cat’s in the Cradle” a great father’s day song unless you don’t like your father very much.

  139. 139.

    honus

    Mama Hated Diesels.
    I thought it was the country song you were talking about until I saw somebody nailed Boy Named Sue on the first post.

  142. 142.

    YellowJournalism

    Danced to Father and Daughter at my wedding. Won’t ever forget it. One of my favorite moments with my dad ever.

  143. 143.

    Mark van Roojen

    DougJ, your normal good taste has forsaken you . . .

    If you’re going to put ‘Cats’ in there you might as well put “Daddy please don’t” or whatever the godawfull thing from the middle 70s was called that always allows me to win in worst song ever contests . . .

  144. 144.

    Elliecat

    @Mark van Roojen: At first I thought you meant “Daddy Don’t You Walk So Fast,” Wayne Newton’s big 70s hit. (My sister had the 45 and loved it. Agony.)

    But then I realized you meant “Run Joey Run”:
    Daddy please don’t
    It wasn’t his fault
    He means so much to me
    Daddy please don’t
    We’re….gonna….get….mar…ried

    Gun-wielding dad accidentally kills his pregnant daughter instead of her no-good boyfriend. Family values!

    Put me down as rather fond of “Patches.”

  150. 150.

    SFAW

    “Oedipus Rex” by Tom Lehrer?

    Although, I guess it’s really more of a Mother’s Day song, but Dad does fit in there, somewhere.

    If only for a moment.

Comments are closed.