My Top Ten Toaster Songs

So last week, Martin set me a challenge (perhaps jokingly) to see if I could come up with 10 songs featuring toasters. Well, I always like a challenge... here's the best I could pop up. No burnt offerings. Etc. Etc.



10. Streetband - Toast

Let's start with the obvious one to make things harder. Before he started laying his hat in the lap of the common people, Paul Young was in a bunch of different bands (including Kat Kool & the Kool Cats and The Q-Tips). Some still consider this novelty b-side (flipped into a hit by Kenny Everett) to be his greatest moment.

See also Yeah, Toast!, which the internet claims is by Arcade Fire. I'm not sure I believe the internet though...

9.  The Ataris - Lately

Lately I've been thinking bout' stickin' my hand in a toaster...

...sings lead Atari Kris Rose on this track from the band's punky (if not Punky - that's #6) debut album from 1997. Woman problems, obviously. Sadly, the live version on t'internet doesn't do it justice.

8. Squeeze - Woman's World

Great female empowerment tune from the fourth Squeeze album, East Side Story, in which a housewife has enough of housework...

Press the button on the toaster, it's a woman's world
Tuck the sheets in on the bed, it's a woman's world
Take your apron from your holster, it's a woman's world
Shoot the crown off of your head, it's a woman's world

7. Tobin Sprout - Toaster

Sometime member of Robert Pollard's US indie band Guided By Voices, Tobin has also released a loaf of solo records over the years. This was his debut solo single from 1995.

Sadly the toaster in question is someone making a toast, rather than making toast. Still, it was the only song I could find that was actually called Toaster, so it deserved a place.

6. Simon & Garfunkel - Punky's Dilemma

Even when he was writing piffle, Paul Simon still made gold. This was submitted for The Graduate soundtrack but the producers rejected it - perhaps it was a bit too goofy for them, but it still sounds great to me. Somehow far less annoying than when Paul McCartney wrote the same kind of nonsense...

Wish I was an English muffin
‘Bout to make the most out of a toaster
I’d ease myself down
Comin’ up brown
I prefer boysenberry
More than any ordinary jam
I’m a “Citizens for Boysenberry Jam” fan

5. Don Henley - Sunset Grill

I wanted to include Henley's earlier song Long Way Home in which Don moans...

The heat don't work
The toaster don't work
The car don't work
And I guess I know why
This house don't work and this dream don't
Work no more
And lover, neither do you and I

...sadly, it's not available on youtube (not in this country, anyway), so I had to settle for using the grill... which, given the toaster isn't working, seemed like a viable option.

4. Bobby Bare - She's My Ever-Lovin' Machine

A delicious slice of whimsy written by cartoonist and children's author (not to mention the songwriter who gave Johnny Cash A Boy Named Sue and got Dr. Hook to call Sylvia's Mother) Shel Silverstein. When Bobby's girl leaves him for another man, he goes down to the cellar and cobbles together a mechanical replacement. You can guess the rest...

She always did what she was supposed to
Right up to this evening but then
She had an affair with a toaster
And they ran off and left me again.

See also Tim McGraw's What She Left Behind, in which Tim's lady buggers off and takes the toaster with her. Tim's not smart enough to build a replacement.

3. Crash Test Dummies - There Are Many Dangers

Some serious Health & Safety advice from the Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm dudes...

If your toast gets stuck in the toaster
Do not put a fork in the toaster while it is hooked up, or look out
I did and I got caught in the current
Pulled me in and shook me while it held me tight...

2. Carly Simon - Coming Around Again

A song about the frustrations of being a mother, particular if all Daddy does is breeze in every now and then and your toaster is constantly on the blink.

Pay the grocer
You fix the toaster
You kiss the host goodbye
Then you break a window
Burn the soufflé
Scream the lullaby

If you can get past the big hair and 80s power-drums, this is still a classic. If you can't, try this cool cover by Ash.

1. Grandaddy - Broken Household Appliance National Forest

Possibly Grandaddy's finest hour, an epic protest song about people dumping their old electrical appliances in areas of natural beauty. You might think that's not a fitting subject for a rock song, but if you ask me, it's a lot more relevant than anything Sting or U2 ever wrote.

Sit on the toaster like a rock
No need to worry about a shock
All of the microwaves are dead
Just like the salamander said
The refrigerators house the frogs
The conduit is the hollow log...

Which one is your pop tart?

My Top Ten Breakfast Menu Songs

Ten songs you might find on your breakfast menu. Don't worry, Supertramp fans, I'll get on to songs with "breakfast" in the title... some other day.

Special mention, of course, goes to Orange Juice, Marmalade and Martha & The Muffins.

I'll dedicate this one to Kelloggsville!


10. G. Love & Special Sauce - Milk & Cereal

Ah, the 90s. So much to answer for.

Unlike most of the songs in this Top Ten, this is exactly about what it says it is.

9. Adam & The Ants - Omelette From Outer Space

Quite.

New Adam Ant album out this week... and from my first listen, I think it sounds pretty spiffy.

8. Electric Six - French Bacon

And now she's living in a shack on the firing line,
With a fridge filled with French bacon,
Mouthing all the words of a famous mime,
For whom she's commonly mistaken.
I love her, I knew her,
I knew she couldn't hang,
And now she's dying in a ditch on the county line,
From a device of her own making.

7. The Band - Orange Juice Blues

Woke up this morning and all I had was Sunny Delight...

(Not really. I hate Sunny Delight.)

6. James - Coffee & Toast

One of my favourite James songs, frustratingly unreleased except as a bonus download from one of their later albums. They should have made it a single.

Also featured on my Top Ten Coffee Songs, some years ago. Along with Squeeze's Black Coffee In Bed, if you were wondering.  



5. Mystery Jets - Flakes

OK, so it's probably got very little to do with Mr. Kelloggs' greatest invention. But it's a mighty, mighty tune nevertheless. Video's a bit weird though.

4. Tom Waits - Eggs and Sausage (In a Cadillac With Susan Michaelson)

Tom Waits has eaten breakfast at every joint in town. This is his recommendation.

Extra points for rhyming "tipsy hacks" with "insomniacs".

3. Placebo - Special K

Brian Molko's breakfast of choice. He likes to keep his sylphlike figure.

(What do you mean he's not singing about cereal?)

2. Labelle - Lady Marmalade

Voulez vous coucher avec moi?

(But not if you prefer the All Saints version.)

1. Streetband - Toast

When he grew up, he wanted to be Paul Young. Result! (Except it's arguable whether he ever made a better record.)




Which one will you be ordering this morning?