While many great philosophical quotes have been uttered extolling the virtues of extending an olive branch, we don’t all lie awake at three o’clock in the morning dwelling on the people we’d like to forgive. Revenge is much more attractive and harder to get out of our heads, even if it’s over something petty and stupid that you should have forgotten about a long time ago.
This state of affairs has yet to escape the notice of songwriters, who have used the topic of revenge for as long as there have been songs to write. So, while you may be quietly nursing a grudge and trying to keep it to yourself, take some comfort in the fact that millions of songwriters throughout history have been in your corner.
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1. ‘Delilah’ by Tom Jones
This Tom Jones song tells the chilling story of a man whose beloved Delilah has taken up with another man secretly, and he takes revenge that has fatal consequences. Many people have performed and recorded this song, but Jones’ powerful baritone communicates an anguish that no other recorded version does.
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2. ‘Goodbye Earl’ by The Chicks
‘Goodbye Earl’ is as gruesome a revenge song as anyone has ever dreamed up, as it details the demise of the titular domestic abuser at the hands of his wife and her best friend. To add insult to injury, Earl turns into a cold case because “he was a missing person who nobody missed at all.”
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3. ‘The Pill’ by Loretta Lynn
In ‘The Pill,’ Loretta Lynn goes out on the town and takes up with different men, now that the birth control pill will stop any critters from resulting from these casual unions. Until it came along, sexual freedom was for dudes only, and they would leave the missus at home with the kids while they went out on the town. Now, women could do the same thing as their husbands watched helplessly, and there’s no sweeter revenge than doing to him what he did to you.
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4. ‘I Just Can’t Let You Say Goodbye’ by Willie Nelson
One of the creepiest murder ballads ever written, the lyrics are sung from the perspective of a man who doesn’t want his partner to leave. It doesn’t get into much detail about the relationship issues, but it gets into graphic detail about the narrator getting mad and strangling her. It’s absolutely chilling.
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5. ‘You’re No Good’ by Linda Ronstadt
The mighty Linda Ronstadt belts this one out, and while the lyrics get a little repetitive – she sings “you’re no good” a lot – it starts by detailing her feelings about the stupid jerk she was previously entangled with. “Feelin’ better now that we’re through, Feelin’ better, ’cause I’m over you, I learned my lesson, it left a scar; now I see how you really are.”
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6. ‘The Cold Hard Facts of Life’ by Porter Wagoner
For the first 90% of this song, Wagoner sings about a string of events that listeners immediately recognize as him getting cheated on and being the last person to know about it. The song ends with him getting drunk and murdering his wife and her lover, but he seems happy with himself as he asks, “Who taught who the cold hard facts of life?” from his prison cell.
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7. ‘Delia’s Gone’ by Johnny Cash
Yet another country murder ballad, this one is sung by the legendary Johnny Cash and doesn’t go into a lot of detail about what’s driven him to tie Delia to her chair and end her life. He does, however, engage in character assassination, saying of Delia, “She was low down and trifling, and she was cold and mean, Kind of evil make me want to grab my sub machine.” Yikes.
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8. ‘Raining Blood’ by Slayer
Slayer’s ‘Raining Blood’ tells the story of what one presumes is a demon who’s been exiled to purgatory, “awaiting reprisal.” The magical day finally comes, and the demonic entity takes vengeance on pretty much everybody, but at the end of the song, he sounds happy, which is what matters. “Raining blood from a lacerated sky, Bleeding its horror, creating my structure, Now I shall reign in blood.”
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9. ‘Screaming for Vengeance’ by Judas Priest
Judas Priest singer Rob Halford was in the unenviable position of being a gay man in the highly homophobic 1980s metal scene, and he didn’t come out until the late 1990s. Until then, he expressed frustration in the lyrics of many of their songs, especially ‘Screaming for Vengeance,’ which was less about punishing others and more about raging at the forces that kept him down. He describes the world as “a manacled place,” and while he’s not specific about what kind of vengeance he’s screaming for, he’s clearly not happy.
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10. ‘Iron Man’ by Black Sabbath
If you have a song with an iconic guitar riff, some of your lyrics can afford to be a little vague. In the case of Black Sabbath’s ‘Iron Man,’ the title character is a pariah shunned by a society that owes him their survival. “Now the time is here for Iron Man to spread fear, Vengeance from the grave, kills the people he once saved.”
This article was produced and syndicated by MediaFeed.
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