Mundo 5: Five Great "Foodie" Songs

Summertime in North America and Europe means two things – the availability of fresh, local food and music festivals, and plenty of both. So for our list this week, we decided to bring together two of our favourite things, focusing on songs with food in their titles.

“PEACHES” by the PRESIDENTS OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

No list about food and music can be without this classic tune from 1996. It remains a staple on alternative radio stations across the continent. While the song’s lyrics are about devouring peaches in mass quantities for free, lead singer Chris Ballew told VHI that the song was about a girl he had a crush on.

“MILK AND HONEY” by MARTA PACEK

This love ballad from Rebel Baby, the second album from Australian singer-songwriter Marta Pacek, uses the analogy of milk and honey to describe a couple’s love – simple yet perfect together. And like milk and honey, love doesn’t (well shouldn’t) require exorbitant amounts of money to acquire. Now, some people may use milk and honey for romantic purposes, but that’s the subject of another song.

“LEMON” by U2

And to close things out, we revisit U2’s Zooropa, a high-wire act of an album that examined the growing mass-media, computer obsession of the 1990s. One of the songs that divided fans and critics was “Lemon”, the electronica-based song that explored and questioned humanity’s quest to create a better reality. The song remains as relevant today as it did 21 years ago, as our world continues to find ways to fabricate our lives in hopes of finding something better – or maybe all we’ll get is a lemon.

“WISHBONE” by CLUTCH

My definitive food song, from one of my favorite records growing up, Clutch’s Elephant Riders. The song is all about those big meals we have with our families for the holidays, and making a wish on a wishbone. “For Thanksgiving/We had ‘tatas/Succotash and rutabagas/then came turkey from the oven” are the first lines of the song!

“MILK DUDS”, “APPLE”, “AUBERGINE” and many, many more by LADY LAMB THE BEEKEEPER

When Ben and I first came up with the idea for this list, the first artist to come to mind was Lady Lamb The Beekeeper, and I joked with Ben that I would include “everything Lady Lamb”. Little did he know, I wasn’t joking! Lady Lamb uses a lot of imagery in her songs and there’s a lot of food, even just in song titles. My friend Kim put together this list: “You Are The Apple”, “Baked Apples”, “Apple”, “Green Grapes”, “Aubergine”, “Milk Duds”, “Peanut Butter & Jelly”, and “Violet Clementine” (thanks Kim!! check out her LLBk lyrics blog!), and that’s just getting started!