105 To Die for Murder Ballads

Homicide. What a topic for a song! Murder ballads typically tell a story about a crime or grisly death, often including the surrounding context of events. Modern songs tend to involve fictionalized stories and motives, including domestic violence, revenge for adultery, or just plain meanness.

Some of these fierce songs are inspired by real events, however. Murder ballads have historical roots in the Appalachian United States and Europe, with older, historical ballads typically being based upon true accounts. As oral history, their words evolve over time and depart from the original facts. Whereas the victims and circumstances of modern murder ballads are more diverse, traditional murder ballads depict young pregnant women as the most frequent victims of the baby's father. Songs may be sung from the victim's or killer's perspective.

Make a playlist of pop, rock, country, and folk murder ballads. This list of songs really slays!

The rich oilman who married poor Jenny should've thought twice before he raised a hand to her. Perhaps he'd still be alive.

The pretty little backwoods gal in this 2016 country song cleaned up real purty, and the couple had everyone in town fooled thinking they were Barbie and Ken. But behind closed doors, the husband was just another abusive drunk. Jenny hid her bruises behind dark sunglasses and makeup; no one in the Junior League questioned her injuries. Then one night she added a little bonus to his drink: untraceable poison. Who's sorry now?

If you've ever mistaken this firecracker of a country song for a patriotic anthem, then you're not alone. Sean Hannity used it as his radio show's theme song and Sarah Palin used it as a walk-on song at the 2008 Vice Presidential debate. In reality, this 1994 tune tells the tale of domestic violence from the perspective of a child. (Slow cringe.)

The narrator recalls how on one Fourth of July morning her beleaguered mother sent her to the county fair, and while she was there the mother burned down the family home with her abusive alcoholic father in it. The murder was a day of independence for both the mother (whom Martina McBride says did not die in the fire) and the daughter who was sent to the county home:

Let freedom ring, let the white dove sing
Let the whole world know that today
Is a day of reckoning.
Let the weak be strong, let the right be wrong
Roll the stone away, let the guilty pay
It's Independence Day.

In 1972, Vicki Lawrence became a one-hit wonder with this Southern Gothic country/pop crossover song. However, I prefer the 1992 cover version by Reba McEntire.

A Georgia woman relates the dark story of how her older brother went down for a murder he didn't commit. The nameless "Brother" was returning from two weeks away from home when he stopped by a local bar for a drink. While there, his best friend Andy revealed that Brother's young wife was away from home that night cheating and that the young woman had been seeing "that Amos boy, Seth." Andy confessed that he had even been with her himself.

Brother headed home to an empty house to get a gun and assumed his bride had fled town. Then the distraught Brother proceeded to Andy's house, where he found his frenemy, Andy, in a pool of blood. He fired a shot to flag down the sheriff's deputy on patrol, but the police jumped to the conclusion that Brother was guilty. In an unbelievably swift trial, the young husband was tried and hung that night before his younger sister, the song's narrator, could reveal that she was the actual killer.

In this cooker of a country song, the wife waits by the door in the dark and lights a cigarette. She's armed with a loaded shotgun and intends to even the score with her husband once he makes bail and returns home. Lambert's 2008 song was inspired by childhood memories of her parents sheltering abused women, even sharing her own bedroom with a battered mother and her daughter at one time.

Somebody get this guy a lawyer quick. The narrator in this 1974 soft rock song with a reggae vibe has already confessed to murdering Sheriff John Brown.

He claims the lawman always had it out for him and he had to kill the sheriff in self-defense. The narrator insists, however, that he did not kill the deputy. So who did? Eric Clapton's version of the song is a cover of Bob Marley's original. Clapton's rendition was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.

The Dixie Chicks manage to make murder humorous in this 2000 country ditty about two old high school BFFs, Mary Anne and Wanda. While Mary Anne went out into the world to pursue her dreams, Wanda remained in her hometown and married Earl, an abusive loser. Wanda eventually filed for divorce, but "Earl walked right through that restraining order and put her in intensive care." The old friends reunite (because that's what best friends are for, right?) and together they hatch a plan: Earl has to die.

The girls lure wicked old Earl to his final resting place with some poisoned black-eyed peas. Then they wrap him up in a tarp and stuff him in a trunk. It couldn't happen to a better guy. Goodbye, Earl!

There ain't no motive for this crime
Jenny was a friend of mine

This chilling 2004 alt-rock tune is inspired by a real-life convicted killer, Robert Chambers, tagged as the Preppy Killer. He pleaded guilty to strangling 18-year-old Jennifer Levin, claiming that the death was an accidental consequence of rough sex. Chambers was released from prison in 2003.

The third installment in The Killers' murder song trilogy, this tune features a murderer being interrogated at length by the police. He offers up a cryptic, twisted account of the crime ("She couldn't scream while I held her close") and acknowledges he knows his rights. Justifying his innocence by alleging they were friends, the guy clearly isn't firing on all cylinders.

This 1982 Springsteen number will give you chills, especially once you know the backstory. The dark song is based on the true tale of a ruthless killing spree committed by two teens, 19-year-old Charles Starkweather and his 14-year-old girlfriend, accomplice Caril Ann Fugate. They shot, strangled, and stabbed 11 innocent people in Wyoming over an 8-day period in 1958. Starkweather was executed. Fugate, the youngest female to date to have been tried for first-degree murder in the US, served a lengthy prison sentence, then was released on parole, subsequently marrying and working as a hospital janitor.

The chilling song is told from the perspective of an unremorseful Starkweather who gives an overview of the couple's crimes. As he sits in the electric chair waiting for the executioner to pull the switch, he expresses that at least for a while he and Fugate had some fun and that she should be with him on his lap as he is put to death. The song's narrator justifies the killing spree by invoking a line reminiscent of A Good Man Is Hard to Find, Flannery O'Conner's short story: "Well, sir, I guess there's just a meanness in this world."

This unsettling tune is a variation of the traditional Scottish folk song, "Young Hunting." The 1996 ditty depicts a lass who goes medieval on a man when he rebuffs her advances. She implores him to spend the night with her, but he responds that he loves a more beautiful woman.

Jealousy quickly takes hold, and the broken-hearted lady takes a pen-knife and stabs him to death. He subsequently disposes of the corpse in a well 100 feet deep. The woman expresses zero remorse:

Lie there, lie there, little Henry Lee
'Til the flesh drops from your bones
For the girl you have in that merry green land
Can wait forever for you to come home
And the wind did howl, and the wind did moan.

Throughout the song, the narrator is taunted by a little bird. The "La la la la la" will leave you hearing it long after the song is over. "Henry Lee" is part of an entire album on murder, Murder Ballads by Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds.

Michael Jackson's career took an edgier turn with this dark 1988 pop number in which an onlooker sees that a smooth criminal has broken into Annie's apartment and attacked her. The man spots bloodstains on her carpet then tracks the path of Annie's demise before coming across her lifeless body.

Repeatedly, the narrator asks, "Annie, are you okay?" but it's clear that Annie is not. This refrain was inspired by the CPR training dummy, Resusci Anne. Trainees in CPR classes are taught to ask the victim whether they are okay.

This 2002 country cover by Johnny Cash is a cover of Sting's tune about murder, guilt, justice, and (alas) redemption. Having borrowed his brother's rifle, a man sits on a hill one morning and points it at a stranger atop a horse. The gun discharges and kills the rider. The man flees and disposes of the rifle in the river, but he is apprehended by the sheriff and subsequently tried by a jury.

As he faces the jury, the begs forgiveness. Then, as the condemned soul later awaits the gallows up on the hill he sees the semblance of the man he murdered:

And we'll ride together
To kingdom come.

When the narrator in this 1988 country song was a boy he became intrigued with guns and didn't listen when his mama attempted to quell his interest. "Mama said the pistol is the devil's right hand." As a young adult, the fella shoots a man to death when his friend cheats at a card game. In his own defense, he repeats the same line his mother told him which amounts to a flimsy insanity defense.

This creepy 1968 power ballad has become a signature song of Tom Jones, telling the story of a man who spots his girlfriend making love to another man as he walks by her window. Out of his mind with jealousy and anger, he waits and watches all night to confront her in the morning.

Cheating Delilah simply laughs in his face. Enraged, he stabs her to death. As he waits for the police to break down the door and arrest him, the narrator begs the dead woman for her forgiveness.

Jones is a Welsh singer, and this murder ballad is frequently sung at Welsh rugby matches, becoming an unofficial second national anthem. Some people, however, have called for the practice to stop because the song glamorizes violence against women. What do you think?

Poor Delia Green was a poor Black 14-year-old girl who was shot to death on Christmas Eve 1900 by her drunk 15-year-old boyfriend, Moses “Cooney” Houston during a lover's quarrel. She is buried in an unmarked grave in Savannah, Georgia. Houston served only 12 years in jail for her murder.

Since Delia's death, murder ballads have provided accounts of her demise from both the victim's perspective and the killer's. Over the years, singers have taken liberties with the facts surrounding her death, with some of the versions blaming Delia for her own murder. Johnny Cash's 1962 country version, for example, inserts an explanation that Delia was a cold, mean, and evil woman. His cover song has the narrator tying poor Delia to the chair in the parlor and deliberately shooting her multiple times—not in a heat of passion but because she was devilish. No excuse, Johnny.

Two scorned women team up to bury the man who dared to deceive them both in this deliciously wicked 2012 country ditty. It was only two months ago that the wife called an unfamiliar number on her husband's cell phone. She reached his mistress, who should have known she was getting sloppy seconds when it came to love.

The women compared notes. However, instead of turning on one another, they conspired to get even with the two-timing man they unwittingly shared. At the funeral, they went through the motions of grieving as the preacher and the dead man's brother sang his praises.

You may not know that this uncharacteristically dark Garth Brooks song from 1990 is a murder ballad. That's because there are two versions, an edited-for-radio version that deletes the fourth stanza referencing murder and the extended version from the No Fences album. Brooks usually performs the longer version in concert.

The protagonist in the song is a wife who anxiously waits for her cheating husband to return home as a nasty thunderstorm rages outside. It's 3:30 a.m., and she's been praying for his safety all night. But as he pulls into the driveway, she runs to greet him, and her relief quickly turns to feelings of fury and betrayal as she catches a whiff of another woman's perfume. The thunder rolls both between them and above in the skies.

Here is the murder stanza:

She runs back down the hallway, and through the bedroom door
She reaches for the pistol, kept in the dresser drawer
Tells the lady in the mirror, "He won't do this again"
'Cause tonight will be the last time she'll wonder where he's been.

Several country video outlets (CMT and TNN) banned the video for "The Thunder Rolls" at the time because of the domestic violence references.

In this 1991 pop song, tongues are wagging all over town blaming the narrator for murdering his missing girlfriend. The townsfolk of Hazard, Nebraska have always looked at him with suspicion, often commenting, "that boy's not right." His girlfriend of three years, Mary, saw the man within—that is, until she took a walk alone by the river and never returned home. Now everyone's looking at him for answers and his reaction is to skip town. (Don't be suspicious.)

The protagonist of this 1991 hip-hop number is 12-year-year-old Brenda, a girl who already has no future. It goes from bad to worse when her own cousin takes advantage of her and knocks her up. Brenda lives on the wrong side of town with a drug-addicted dad and an unsupportive family that doesn't notice the girl's growing waistline.

After the preteen delivers the baby alone on the bathroom floor, she disposes of it on a trash heap, later retrieving the infant when it cries. Her mother rebukes her and Brenda runs away as a result, scared and unable to support herself. In an attempt to make ends meet any way she can, the adolescent sells drugs. After getting robbed she turns to prostitution. Finally, Brenda's body is found lifeless. A child herself, this murder victim was someone's mother.

John Wayne Gacy Jr. was the most prolific serial killer known to date and is memorialized in this creepy 2005 indie rock song fictionalizing his life. Gacy adopted the persona of a killer clown, Pogo or Patches the Clown. He joined a local "Jolly Joker" club and provided entertainment at hospitals, kids' parties, and charity events. Then the savage Bozo wannabe brutally violated and murdered 33 young men and boys before being executed in 1994. Gacy was nicknamed "The Killer Clown."

The song takes liberties with Gacy's life, imagining that he was hit in the head as a child. It portrays him deceptively earning his community's respect and also eerily foreshadows a Gacy copycat, a killer clown with hidden bodies under his floorboards.

This powerful 2020 track by rapper Eminem features lyrics with a message. At the beginning, it purposefully creates a double meaning by juxtaposing two very different images: the singer as he nervously prepares for a concert and a mass shooter preparing to open fire. Later in the song it becomes clear that this is from the perspective of the mass murderer who gunned down 58 innocent people in the 2017 Las Vegas shooting.

The video, but not the song, ends with a call to action: "When will it end? When enough people care. Register to vote at vote.gov. Make your voice heard and help change the gun laws in America."