Songs About Eating

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Well, I feel quite the fool. I did a heap of columns about food and various food-stuffs, and yet I didn't do one about the thing that tied it all together. I mean, I had the songs ready, but the column just didn't get written.

Well, thanks to a gentle reminder from a constant reader (TM, Stephen King), I will now endeavour to rectify that situation by presenting songs about eating!


Eating is a huge topic in song, though it rarely features as the centrepiece of individual tracks. That being said, I found well over 50 that did just that. This did mean that the sheer amount of songs that mention eating I went through was insane, so I have limited my choices to very specific tracks, and these are the ones that have
the word eat (or its variations) in the title.
Apart from that, one song per artist, one version of each song, I need to like the song – standard rules apply here.

Let's get to songs about eating!
'The Purple People Eater' by Sheb Wooley (1958)

And we'll start with the classic novelty song about a space alien that came to earth to eat purple people… or was purple and ate people. Hard call. But it all ends up fine because he plays saxophone through his horn. They don't write songs like this anymore!
'Dog Eat Dog' by AC/DC (1977)

AC/DC are one of the stalwarts of rock music, not just Australian rock, and this song from the Bon Scott era is a fun album cut that was always a hit when performed live. Just a bit of harmless rock.
'Eat To The Beat' by Blondie (1979)

The title track from Blondie's fourth album, continuing the pop-punk they had perfected on their previous album. This is the sort of track you can imagine being performed by some pop-punk band today, although this is not as polished as modern music, and is the better for that.
'Dog Eat Dog' by Adam And The Ants (1980)

One of the singles released from Adam And the Ants' breakthrough Kings Of The Wild Frontier album, this is typical of the percussion-heavy production that they employed at the start of their career.
'Maneater' by Hall & Oates (1982)

A warning against a specific woman who does not have a good reputation, this was one of the many Hall & Oates songs that charted and made them ubiquitous in the early to mid 1980s pop charts.
'I Eat Cannibals' by Toto Coelo (1983)

Another weird novelty song from a band that had a sort of theme going (their other charting hit was 'Dracula's Tango'). I guess the song is supposed to be ironic – eating the man-eaters – but it was silly and we all enjoyed it at the time.
'Eat It' by 'Weird Al' Yankovic (1984)

The eating song, a comedy track from 'Weird Al', the song that broke him across the world. Before this, he was rather niche, after this – done with the approval of Michael Jackson, whose 'Beat It' is the and video song being parodied – he was everywhere, including in the movie sphere .
'Eat Me Alive' by Judas Priest (1984)

An album cut, I am hard-pressed to find Judas Priest songs from the 1970s/1980s part of their career I don't enjoy, and this is certainly a fun, hard-rocking track from the band.
'Eat Your Heart Out' by Dio (1984)

And we'll stick with 1984 and hard rock with Dio and another album cut, one that I also enjoy listening to. Mind you, Holy Diver, the album this track is from (The Last In Line) and the following Sacred Heart make a great trio of OTT hard rock.
'I Ain't Gonna Eat Out My Heart Anymore' by Divinyls (1992)

I enjoy it when I get another chance to highlight a song by Chrissy Amphlett and her band. This song was reasonably big in Australia (I have the CD single) but, like too much of their work, didn't really chart outside of the country.
'Eat The Rich' by Aerosmith (1993)

From the huge album Get A Grip, this is one of many great tracks that came out of that collection. This shows that, despite heading in a more radio-friendly direction, they still had not lost that harder edge they had at the start of their career.
'Can't Sleep, Clowns Will Eat Me' by Alice Cooper (2000)

And we'll finish with a fun Alice Cooper track, from the more recent end of his career when he just leans into the caricature the character has become, and seems to be enjoying himself much more. Just a fun, albeit lyrically silly, track, one for Coulrophobes everywhere.
And there we are – a dozen songs about eating. I am not sure what it was about 1984 that was so encouraging of artists to mention eating things in song, but that is the way these things go sometimes.

I hope you found something here to enjoy!
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