Songs about true events

To get things started:

Kiss - Detroit Rock City

Which was about a fatal car crash of a few Kiss fans on the way To be gig.

Edmund Fitzgerald - Gordon Lightfoot

P!nk: Dear Mr. President

was about George W Bush.

"Kilkelly" - This song makes me cry. It tells the story of an emigrant from Ireland, through letters from his family back home. All we hear is the text of the letters he receives (we never hear his response), and it's just... so sad to me. The composer based it on actual letters he found, I believe (I don't remember the full story).

"I Don't Like Mondays" - by the Boomtown Rats.

I really like the melody, it's catchy. But, I didn't realize, until someone online pointed it out, that the song was actually based on an actual event (a shooting in 1979).

It's depressing enough that I'll put the rest in trigger quotes...



I need to listen to happier music!

My first thought was the sinking of the "edmund Fitzgerals" But alas that has been mentioned already

There is in Canada the "Log Driver's Song". Oh gosh, I will now be singing it in my head all day.

...for he goes birling down and down the white water, the log driver's waltz pleases girls completely ..

thanks for the earworm, Wishful

I learned about this song too and the background. Sometimes truth really is stranger than fiction. I think it's interesting that her pathology presented in a more stereotypically male way...she became homicidal when depressed whereas girls and women are more often suicidal. If you look at the school shootings in the U.S. they are typically male perpetrators.

Try Lightfoot's Ballad of Yarmouth Castle...to me it's every bit as haunting. Another ship tragedy...chilling. Here it is on Youtube.

Sunday Bloody Sunday - U2

Thought it was a general thing about The Troubles but there was an Aerial Ireland episode on Smithsonian Channel about the location where the massacre occurred.

Definitely need more cheerful music.

I agree. I loved Sunday Bloody Sunday and I don't like Monday's as a kid. As an adult, knowing more about the realities of life, and being a depressive, I'm all about Fifth Dimension's Up Up and Away, or happy meaningless pop music or a bit of jazzy swing.

We didn't start the fire

Vincent - by Don McLean written as a tribute to Artist Vincent van Gogh.

Love of My Life -written by Freddie Mercury as a tribute to the love of his life Mary Austin.

Cassie- by Flyleaf

was about a victim of the Columbine shooting.

American Pie.

Ty for Kilkelly.