Just to put this out there... There is definitely a heartbreak hotel. It's across the street from Elvis's house. I don't know if it counts as not being fictional because of that. Great quiz!
Technically it was a poor girl ruined by the House of the Rising Sun -- the Animals just changed the lyric for some reason or other when they made their cover.
Probably because they were dudes and didn't want to do the folkie thing of just always using the original words. Dylan's version has "poor girl" in it.
You can't rightly blame The Animals for that. It was a folk song with a number of variations that had been published and recorded with bothfemaleandmale lyrics numerous times decades before the Animals recorded it.
Um...I'm really confused about Gollum stealing anyone's girl. And the location still being Mordor. I mean, I could have guessed Mordor based on Gollum alone, but since it was in a real, contemporary song, I just figured the place had to be some crazy random thing that I also never would have thought of. Obviously, no, I don't listen to much Led Zeppelin. Explain, please. :)
Within a month of hearing this song for the first time I found Electric Avenue in Los Angeles. I chose to believe he was singing about this rather short street.
I believe the "Love Shack" was an actual place, really located where the song says it was outside of Athens, Ga., although it burned down before the song was written. However, David Bowie's Suffragette City doesn't actually exist, if you're looking for more such places.
As soon as I saw ___ Shack, I immediately typed Sugar before I read the clue. I know my age is showing but my brother played that Fireballs song all the time until I wanted to scream.
I remember singing a verse or two of Big Rock Candy Mountain in music class in elementary school, but they must have rewritten the lyrics for kids because there was nothing about cigarette trees, alcohol springs or lakes of gin in our version. The first time I heard Burl Ives sing the real one I was very surprised at the lyrics. It is definitely not a children's song.
TIL
But apparently the Kokomo in the song is supposed to be in the Florida Keys.
"Mine's a tale that can't be told, my freedom I hold dear.
How years ago in days of old, when magic filled the air.
T'was in the darkest depths of Mordor, I met a girl so fair.
But Gollum, and the evil one crept up and slipped away with her, her, her....yeah. "
Boy!....
Boy!...
Down in the streets there is violence...
You got trouble my friend, right here in River City, trouble with a capital T and that rhymes with P and that stands for pool.