Irony / Music

• ABBA:
  • Their 1982 retrospective The Singles: The First Ten Years ended up being the last album they released before they disbanded. The title implies that, while the four members of the group were planning to take a break in order to work on their own projects, they envisaged recording more songs together in the future. They probably didn't realise it wouldn't happen until 2022.
  • Agnetha Faltskog, who sings lead vocal on the stalker-themed song "Under Attack", was later targeted by a stalker in real life.
• The Marc Almond song "The Idol", whose lyrics deal with rock stars being destroyed by Sex Drugs And Rock N Roll, is another example. While working on the song's parent album "Fantastic Star", Marc came close to joining the list of artists whose lives were cut short as a result of the aforementioned trope.
• The Leroy Anderson song "Sleigh Ride" is meant to invoke the image of a snowy winter, yet it was first composed in the middle of the summer during a heat wave.
• Ludwig van Beethoven composed music even when he lost his hearing.
• The first teaser for AOA Black's song "Moya" had the girls dressed in white and standing against a white background◊.
• Nicely employed in "Daddy Never Was the Cadillac Kind" by Confederate Railroad. The narrator sings about his dad, a simple man who teaches him an anti-materialism lesson after he (the narrator) buys a Cadillac. In the third verse, the dad dies and is driven off to his grave in a Cadillac, causing the narrator to laugh despite his mourning.
• The Cranberries took an anti-conformity stance on the music industry in the late 90's. Their debut album (released in 1992) was titled Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can't We.
• The music video to the D12 song "My Band" once ran on some music television presented as "Eminem feat. D12"
• Jakob Dylan of The Wallflowers largely became a Reclusive Artist and stopped giving interviews in later years, claiming he was sick of being compared to his father. His father, Bob Dylan, is known for also being a Reclusive Artist and rarely granting interviews, thus inciting more comparisons
• "American Dream" by Samantha Fish is dripping with irony.
  You're the liberated;
  You are the free.
  Free to cry and die disenfranchised—
  Blessed as a country.
• A Flock of Seagulls' biggest hit was "I Ran (So Far Away)". However, the song's video doesn't feature the other thing the band is known for: lead singer Mike Score's distinctive "waterfall" hairstyle.
• The Genesis song "One for the Vine" is about a man who deserts and flees from a battle led by his tribe's warlord — only to end up as the warlord of another tribe.
• The Gin Blossoms fired guitarist Doug Hopkins when his alcoholism became too severe to work with. The band itself is named after a blemish caused by excessive drinking.
• Norman Greenbaum, writer and performer of "Spirit in the Sky" — a gospel-rock song that explicitly mentions Jesus — is Jewish.
• There's a techno track out there with an unattributed author—at least six people have insisted that they are the creator of the track. What's the track's name? "I Am the Creator".
• The folk song "I Will Not Sing Along" is an audience-participation piece.
• Juniel's song "Cat Day" was written for her dog.
• The Kinks song "Lola" nearly got banned by the BBC, not because of its LGBT lyrics, but because of an explicit reference to... Coca-Cola. They changed that to "cherry cola" and it got played; apparently nobody at the Beeb noticed the sexual content.
• Lifeseeker's "Gone Guru" is about a rock star who grows tired of wealth and fame, so he retires and becomes a hermit. He has visions while living in the wilderness, which end up inspiring a Cult and giving him even more fame, wealth, and power than he had before. For some real life irony, the song is also best known for being featured in Dead Rising, a video game that includes an evil cult, but it does not play in any context associated with the cultists.
• "Sweet Home Alabama", Lynyrd Skynyrd's famous ode to the state, was written as a way of saying Alabama was better than the stereotypes say. It is frequently used in late 2010s meme culture as a musical sting for southern incest jokes.
• Barry Manilow did not write one of his bigger hits, "I Write the Songs".
• The Megas: Situational irony with traces of dramatic. Dr Light's descent from wanting Wily stopped to wanting him dead came about because of Wily's resurrection of the dead Proto Man, who Light believes Wily sent back against him in order to cause maximum pain. Unbeknownst to Light, Wily's resurrection of Proto Man was closer to an olive branch than anything else, with Wily actually not anticipating the scale of the grudge Proto Man held towards Light.
• The Other Wiki's article on Men Without Hats makes sure to point the irony in this photo◊ depicting the band in concert with some of them wearing hats.
• Milli Vanilli's "Girl You Know It's True" peaked at number 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1989 and would ultimately prove to be the song that exposed the singers were lip syncing. The week it peaked at number 2: April 1, 1989.
• The song "Ironic" by Alanis Morissette lists several "examples of irony". The true irony of the song however is that most of the examples she gives are not actually ironic, just unfortunate coincidences, therefore making the whole song a kind of Dramatic Irony. as this page shows. However, at least one of her examples is truly ironic: a man who is afraid to fly suffers a plane crash on his first flight. Thinking "Well, isn't this nice?". Although "rain on your wedding day" would be ironic if one of the people getting married was a meteorologist who had chosen that day because they had forecast fine and sunny weather.
• For national anthems, in this clip, the USSR's Red Army choir sings the anthems of the USA, UK and France in addition to its own. For those of you unfamiliar with the Cold War, these countries hated the USSR and the USSR hated them back on the grounds of ideology and national interests. So it makes it very ironic for an army of Dirty Communists to sing the anthems of their capitalist adversaries.
• The song "Mississippi Queen" is the Signature Song of the band called Mountain, which Mississippi doesn't have much in the way of.^Context Its highest point is only 90 metres Same goes for where they come from, Long Island (highest point is Jayne's Hill at 387 feet/118 m).
• The Pearl Jam song "Jeremy" was inspired by Jeremy Delle, a high school student who was bullied until he committed suicide. The message the band wanted to convey was that if you kill yourself, your enemies go on with their lives while you only get an article in the newspaper. Today, the song is the main reason anyone knows who Jeremy Delle was. You've probably never heard of the classmates who bullied him.
• During "Another Brick in the Wall Pt. 3" from Pink Floyd's The Wall, Pink talks about how he can see the "writing on the wall", a reference to Belshazzar, the king of Babylon in The Bible who saw the writing on the wall which signified that God had judged him and his kingdom to be "found wanting" and would be destroyed. The irony of this passage is that Pink is using this as his justification to close himself off from the world by completing his Wall and Never Be Hurt Again, when in reality, he is unknowingly casting himself as the doomed Belshazzar by completing the Wall, since the complete isolation that he suffers as a direct result wastes no time in driving him insane.
• Mike Posner's "I Took a Pill in Ibiza" is about him bitterly reflecting on how he's a One-Hit Wonder who has faded into obscurity and how empty and meaningless his life has become as a result. "I Took a Pill in Ibiza" became his biggest hit and far eclipsed any of his other songs, though unfortunately not enough to fully resurrect his career.
• "We're Not Going To Make It" by The Presidents of the United States of America lists several reasons why they don't think they'll be successful. One of those is "We don't know how to rhyme." This comes two lines after "We don't have the time."
• Queen's "Thank God It's Christmas" was sung by Freddie Mercury, a Zoroastrian. One has to wonder which God he was thanking.
• While Helen Reddy did write the lyrics to the women's liberation anthem "I Am Woman," a man wrote the music.
• R.E.M.'s 2003 Greatest Hits Album In Time was apparently named in reference to their 1991 album Out of Time. In Time only features one song from Out of Time ("Losing My Religion").
• Gioachino Rossini's Petite Messe Solenelle, literally "Little Solemn Mass", has been described as "Neither little, nor solemn, nor particularly liturgical."
• Blake Shelton's "God's Country." The term "God's country" is usually intended at least a little positively, but Shelton's song is pretty negative about its rural Southern setting. At one point he wonders if the term came about because they pray for rain, get a little money for the crop, and then put it right into the collection plate at church. The music video isn't much more positive; it's full of drought imagery and shows Shelton setting fire to a tractor.
• Country Music singer Doug Stone underwent heart surgery in 1992. The title of his album at the time? From the Heart.
• Although the band T.Rex had numerous songs about cars, lead singer Marc Bolan never learned to drive. In a more tragic irony, Bolan didn't learn to drive because he was afraid of dying prematurely in a car accident. He was killed instantly when the car he was a passenger in struck a tree. He was just two weeks away from turning thirty.
• U2:
  • In 2023, the band released Songs Of Surrender, a collection of rerecorded versions of their earlier songs. However, "Surrender" (from War (U2 Album)) wasn't one of them.
  • The band has been rather vocal about the conflict in Northern Ireland (better known as The Troubles) and has recorded several songs about it ^note  "Sunday Bloody Sunday", "Bad", and "Peace On Earth" for example However, "The Troubles" (from Songs of Innocence) has nothing to do with the conflict. (It's actually about the singer's difficulties dealing with the person being sung to.)
• Luther Vandross is known for singing some of the most well-known R&B love songs of the 1980s and 1990s. He himself, however, never married, never had children, and never even had any known romantic relationships with women (it's possible he could have been gay).
• The lyrical content of "Stay" by Maurice Williams and the Zodiacs entreats the listener to "stay... just a little bit longer". At a duration of 1:37^note that is, one minute and thirty-seven seconds, it is the shortest song ever to hit #1 on the Billboard charts.
• Right before her career began, Country Music singer Lee Ann Womack divorced her husband, Jason Sellers. Her 2005 hit "I May Hate Myself in the Morning" is about having a one-night stand with an ex-lover... featuring Jason Sellers on background vocals.
• "Weird Al" Yankovic:
  • His song "Don't Download This Song" was explicitly made free to download by Weird Al himself. What's the song about? Digital piracy.
  • Another example: In 1983, he recorded "I Lost on Jeopardy!". 18 years later, he competed on Rock & Roll Jeopardy!… and lost. The producers showed part of the video over the credits.
  • Furthering the irony: on April 27, 2012, the actual Jeopardy! used the song's lyric "My hope of winning sank, 'cause I got the Daily Double now, and then my mind went blank" in a Daily Double clue. The contestant who hit it couldn't come up with the answer, and lost.
  • Al graduated from high school two years early as the valedictorian. What was the title of his third album? Dare To Be Stupid.
  • When Al asked Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits for permission to parody "Money For Nothing", it was granted on the condition that Knopfler himself would perform the guitar part on the song. The irony is that the guitar track that was originally on the song (recorded by Al's guitarist Jim West) was closer to the guitar track on the original song than the part Knopfler recorded in the finished product. In the DVD Commentary for UHF, Al says it was because Jim was trying to get his track as close to the original as possible while Knopfler had been performing the song on tour and improving the sound as he went.
  • Discussed in "Word Crimes" with the line "Irony is not coincidence". The music video depicts an example of irony with a fire truck on fire and compares that to a wedding ruined by rain, tagged weather. This is a knock against Alanis Morissette's song "Ironic" which has the line "It's like rain on your wedding day".
• "Yesterday's Hero", a song written by George Young of the 60s Australian group the Easybeats about his band's struggle with fame, was the song that created a new star, John Paul Young, in the 70s.
• ZZ Top had two bearded guys and a clean-shaven guy (until 2013, when he decided to grow a - much shorter - one). The latter's name? Frank Beard.