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Top Ten Law Song List

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Over at Above the Law, a silly season list of the best songs about the law, as polled by readers of that blog.

Here’s the official ATL Top Ten Law Song list:

1. I Fought The Law – The Clash [ Lyrics│YouTube ]

2. Lawyers, Guns, and Money – Warren Zevon [ Lyrics│YouTube ]

3. 99 Problems – Jay-Z [ Lyrics│YouTube ]

4. Folsom Prison Blues – Johnny Cash [ Lyrics│YouTube ]

5. We’re All Winners, as arranged by Nixon Peabody [ Explanation]

6. Law and Order theme song [ YouTube │Dance Remix ]

7. Hurricane – Bob Dylan [ Lyrics│YouTube ]

8. Alice’s Restaurant – Arlo Guthrie [ Lyrics│YouTube ]

9. I Fought The Law – Bobby Fuller 4 [ Lyrics│YouTube ]

10. The Road Goes on Forever – Robert Earl Keen [ Lyrics│YouTube ]

Check out the rationales and the debates about what’s missing. One English commentator lamented the loss of Ian Dury’s magic couplet from What a Waste:

I could be a lawyer with stratagems and ruses
I could be a doctor with poultices and bruises

I fought the law

Comments

  1. Mark
    June 25th, 2008 at 12:51 pm

    I shot the Sheriff, Bob Marley version (the original) has to be on the list.

  2. Michel-Adrien Sheppard
    June 25th, 2008 at 1:13 pm

    Other suggestions:

    1) Springsteen – American Skin (41 shots)
    2) Police & Thieves (Junior Murvin for the reggae version or The Clash)
    3) Copperhead Road (Steve Earle)
    4) Theme from the movie Shaft by Isaac Hayes
    5) Bonnie and Clyde (Serge Gainsbourg and Brigitte Bardot)

  3. Simon Chester
    June 25th, 2008 at 4:02 pm

    What about Jackson Browne’s Lawyers in Love:

    I can’t keep up with what’s been going on
    I think my heart must just be slowing down
    Among the human beings in their designer jeans
    Am I the only one who hears the screams
    And the strangled cries of lawyers in love

    God sends his spaceships to America, the beautiful
    They land at six o’clock and there we are, the dutiful
    Eating from TV trays, tuned into to Happy Days
    Waiting for World War III while Jesus slaves
    To the mating calls of lawyers in love

    Last night I watched the news from Washington, the capitol
    The Russians escaped while we weren’t watching them, like Russians do
    Now we’ve got all this room, we’ve even got the moon
    And I hear the U.S.S.R. will be open soon
    As vacation land for lawyers in love