Music for Foodies

For three days now I've had a song stuck in my head on permanent rotation: the bubblegum gangsta tune "Paper Planes" by M.I.A. It was used in the trailers for "Pineapple Express" and in "Slumdog Millionaire" when the slum kids are hustling people for cash.



As the tune bounced around my head on the subway ride home, I pondered if there were any foodie songs -- songs that can evoke the sensory experience of eating something delicious. At first, I dismissed this idea as a random brain fart. But it hardly took any effort to come up with a few titles.

The very first thing I thought of was Cibo Matto's debut album, "Viva! La Woman". Every song on the record is related to food. Take the song "White Pepper Ice Cream", for example:

White pepper ice cream
It's like a line drawing
It snipped my heart
White pepper ice cream
In my mouth
It stings my lips
It's like an eclipse

It instantly evokes the clash of creamy sweetness on the tongue contrasted with the slow burn on the lips. Combined with Miho Hattori's adorable Japanese accent, the song acquires a gamine charm. Then there's the heart-breaking "Artichoke":

My heart is like an artichoke
I eat petals myself one by one
Until I feel enough
Until I lose to laugh [...]

I keep asking for you more and more
Can you peel my petals one by one?
Your hands are like a rusty knife
Are you gonna keep on peeling me?

For absurdist foodie music, there's the classic "Lollipop" by the Chordettes, which is more sugary than the candy itself. And of course, "Coconut" by Harry Nilsson:

Brother bought a coconut, he bought it for a dime
His sister had another one, she paid it for the lime
She put the lime in the coconut, she drank 'em both up [repeat 3 times]

There's something about saying "lime in the coconut" 26 times in one song that invokes the grassy hard shell of the fruit and the milk swishing around inside.



The wacky Montreal band Les Amis Au Pakistan has goofy bilingual songs like "Beautiful Hamburger" and "Pomme Segara". But the song that's bugging me right now is "Cendrillon Lave Le Poêle" (Cinderella Washes the Stove). Yeah, yeah, I'll clean my bloody oven.

The video for God Lives Underwater's "From Your Mouth" directed by Roman Coppola features the improbably skinny hot-dog eating champ Hirofumi Nakajima. Nakajima consumes a vast amount of food but the film is shown in reverse. The song is about the lies and gossip that people tell, but frankly it was the video that made a huge impression on the MTV crowd. To this day, I'm not sure if watching it makes me more or less inclined to eat.



What are your favorite foodie tunes?