14 Foodie Songs to Whet Your Appetite

A writing prompt for songs about food

Music and food — two of my passions. Photo by Robert Lozano.

I’ve been tagged in some super-fun writing prompts that really got me thinking outside the music box. So I thought it was high time I created a music writing prompt of my own.

I love food as much as I love music. Why not combine two of my passions?

So here’s the prompt: What are your favourite songs that mention or are about food?

There are some great tunes to choose from and I had a hard time narrowing down my list. But here are some of my favourite foodie songs:

American Pie by Don McLean (1971)

Mmm, pie! One of my life’s ambitions is to sample some home-cooked pie in an American diner.

“American Pie” isn’t really about pie, though. It’s about the death of Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper in a plane crash on February 3, 1959. But the song is about more than that. Don McLean sings about the loss of innocence he felt as he moved from his 1950s childhood to a 1960s adolescence.

“American Pie” tells the parallel tale of music and politics. And although I don’t think the music died that day in 1959, this song does fill me with a yearning for a time I never lived through.