TL;DR: This post is very long, with tons of info about the songs and the artists, but if you’re just here for the music, here is the full playlist! Enjoy the tunes!
Welcome Back to Rock ‘n Roll Head to Toe! This is the 10th installment in the series featuring songs with body parts in their title. Today I am presenting songs with the word TONGUE in their title. Off the top of your head, can you think of any songs with Tongue in the title? I was truly shocked at how many I came across…several different genres, spanning the decades, and spotlighting a bunch of British bands too, most of which I didn’t know. I gotta say: there is some serious earworm material here! And in this case, I say earworm in a good way…catchy tunes… and you might find one or more of them will play in your head throughout the day. I’ll tell you my Top 5 at the end. Would love to hear yours as well so please share in the Comment section.
But first, get your groove on with my TONGUE playlist:
(btw, if you’ve missed my other Rock ‘n Roll Head to Toe series installments or want to check any of them out you can always head over to the Series Index page for a list of all the published posts to date. I update the index with each new installment so bookmark it if you’d like a quick convenient access to the entire series)
DEEP-DIVE INTO ALL FEATURED SONGS IN THE TONGUE PLAYLIST:
First up:
BLACK TONGUE by Gene Simmons
“Black Tongue” is a track on the second solo studio album, Asshole, by Kiss‘s Gene Simmons. Released in 2004, it wasn’t a high-charting album, although it did make the Billboard 200 at No.86. It fared batter in other countries, coming in at No.23 in Norway, No.25 in Sweden and No.57 in Australia. Its controversial title does not appear on the front cover. On the side of the CD case the title reads “asshole“. “It’s just another way of me saying, ‘I don’t care what anyone says about me,” Simmons declared. “I’m preempting what people say and therefore diffusing the power of my detractors.”
“Black Tongue” is based on an unreleased, unfinished song of the same name composed by the late Frank Zappa. The riff in the song is Zappa’s previously unreleased, descending guitar part which became the foundational element of the song. The riff is described as having a dark, “King Crimson-kind of sound,” with a complex 7/8 time signature, which is characteristic of Zappa’s avant-garde and progressive rock style. One listener noted that the initial guitar lick sounds like it could be from Zappa’s signature piece, “Black Napkins“.
The final track has authentic Zappa touches and includes more than just the riff; it incorporates Frank Zappa’s own voice from the original demo, including him saying, “Alright kids, here’s a real rock ‘n’ roll song”. Additionally, Dweezil Zappa extracted some of his father’s original lead guitar bits from the demo and included them in the final recording, meaning the song actually features Frank Zappa’s lead playing as well. Pretty cool, huh? Continue reading
