Looking for Course Materials...

So, I thought it would be a good idea to use a song to demonstrate types of characterization to my Literary Analysis class. I thought it would be fairly easy to find such a song, but in fact it is quite difficult! It seems that very few songwriters these days actually write songs about people! Here are some potential choices and why they got shot down...

"Kate" by Ben Folds Five: While this song is awesome, there are just too many confusing references (Bhagavad Gita?). Also, I'm not sure if the class will understand why the narrator loves a girl who smokes pot and wears the same clothes every day...

"Cath..." by Death Cab for Cutie: Just too depressing. I don't really want to have an in-depth discussion about Cath settling for an unsatisfying marriage at 8:00 AM.

"Lua" by Bright Eyes: See above. While this song is brilliant, I feel like the bulimia and drug issues might be a bit much to explain.

"Heroin Girl," "Amphetamine" by Everclear: I'm seeing that drug themes are a definite problem for basically every song I can find. I don't know how much I want to rock Comrat's world here. Plus, am I allowed to drop the f-bomb in a college classroom? Even if no one knows what it means?

"Jeremy," "Off He Goes," "Better Man," "Elderly Woman Behind the Counter In a Small Town" by Pearl Jam: Once again, too depressing! Teenage murder is another topic I don't want to discuss in-depth. "Off He Goes" seems too subtle, although I actually think it would be awesome in a native English speaker class. "Better Man" is basically a proto-version of "Cath..." so I'm going to nix that one. Plus, Eddie Vedder just doesn't enunciate enough. "Elderly Woman" actually is a really cool song and I think people would relate to it, but I think it doesn't actually give enough examples of characterization to use in the class.

And the winner is..."Candle in the Wind" by Elton John!

While this song is actually very depressing and also has drug themes, I think the fact that it is (1) famous and (2) about Marilyn Monroe will be interesting for the class.

If anyone has any suggestions for songs that display characterization in its many forms (direct, indirect, etc.) I would gladly consider them! Remember that songs have to be fairly comprehensible for people who don't speak colloquial English.

PS: This is rather unrelated, but did anyone know that Simon and Garfunkle did a take on "Richard Cory"? Would definitely be interesting to use in an American literature class.