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I am trying to locate the lyrics or actual song being performed called the Sloth Song I believe. It was sung on this show by a male voice. It was off the cuff, simple almost spoken but not.
Very clever, intelligent and funny. It was about being too tired to move, I want to eat but too tired too, I want to move but too tired too.Sung from the point of view of the animal sloth..... Who was this, can it be heard again? Was I dreaming it?

The best song I've ever heard on the subject is "Three Females" by the a capela group, The Accidentals, on their "Intermittent Plush" album, with the opening lyrics:

"Being lazy, being lazy doesn't bother me.
I don't do anything that interferes with my dreaming..."

Go to http://cdbaby.com/cd/accidentals
for a sound clip. You won't be disappointed!

49 comments and no one pointed out that Oh! How I Hate To Get Up In The Morning was by Irving Berlin and not Arthur Fields? I guess 1918 is a long time ago...

You can see Izzy singing it in This Is The Army: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71smG5d29to

I also thought of Luscious Jackson's Life Of Leisure:
"Lover of the life of leisure/I love to love you/but I just might leave you" - sort of sloth/slacker as seen from the point of view of the pissed off girlfriend. Good groove, too.

How 'bout David Bromberg's "I Like to Sleep Late in the Morning"? It's an upbeat song right on point-laziness. No need to over-interpret that one!

Goin' Fishin' by Taj Mahal. Reminded me of Bing (Bong) Crosby and Sachmo doin' Gone Fishin'.
I love Taj...and I love Cintra Wilson. She was such a breath of fresh air on the show! Not that your show isn't a kick every day. Great conversation. Thanks.

First verse of Jackson Browne's "Your Bright Baby Blues:"

I'm sitting down by the highway
Down by that highway side
Everybody's going somewhere
Riding just as fast as they can ride
I guess they've got a lot to do
Before they can rest assured
Their lives are justified
Pray to God for me baby
He can let me slide

How could you possibly critique Sitting on the Dock of the Bay, without considered that he was a Black man.
I do not hear sloth but rather the lament of someone who has been beaten by racism.

Queen's Layzing on a Sunday Afternoon:

Sounds like something out of Vanity Fair or Oscar Wilde - British social class skewered.

too slow to get these in - oh well

on the flip side, "white and lazy" by the Replacements

or all of low's I could live in hope, like "words" or "lazy"

also, the chorus of "venus in furs" by the velvet underground:

i am tired
i am weary
i could sleep for a thousand years....

what about 'is that all there is' by peggy lee. more apathy than melancholy but definite a version of sloth. i heard cintra say the abbey lincoln was the most depressing, but i find this more so.

The Kinks - Lazing on a Sunny Afternoon
Moody Blues - Lazy Day, Sunday Afternoon
Both wonderful songs - hmm both British - those
Sunday lunches really make you slothful...

"Margaritaville" by Jimmie Buffet. When life's only ambition is making another drink and you don't even know where you got your tattoo from, you are epitomizing sloth. On top of it the melody seems to say, "and I don't care either!"

I think the postal service, sleeping in is a great one...
"don't wake me I plan on sleeping in"
Thanks guys!

Re: Sitting on the Dock of the Bay - with memories of Sam Taylor, who recently passed, and supplied the whistling at the end of the song.

Riders on the Storm

I think most of the slothful tunes you've been playing aren't really about one of the deadly seven, but about melancholy.

"What A Day For A Daydream," now there's a song about sloth.

My whole life "Riders on the Storm" made me sleepy

Glad Kevin mentioned the M. Doughty Lazybones. What about pretty much ALL reggae? I bet Fishbone has a really upbeat song about sloth somewhere; I think they covered all the good sins though I can't recall a particular song.

How about "Already Dead" by Beck?

MY FAVORITE SLOTH SONG:

BANANA PANCAKES BY JACK JOHNSON

"I'm So Tired" - Beatles

"King's Crossing" - Elliott Smith
A brutal take on completely giving up.

When I heard this topic, immediately I thought of Le Tigre's "Much Finer". It's hard to top a song with a chorus of, "Do you wanna stay in bed all day?(Yeah!)/ Do remember feeling any other way?(No!)"

-Rob Nitschke (Brookyln)

Lazybones is the best example I can recall - I think it's a Hoagy song and Leon Redbone did a great version

How about Fugazi's "I'm So Tired" ("I'm sooo tired, sheep are counting me...")? Me & Thumbelina, also off the Instrument soundtrack, also has some excellent slowed down sounds of sloth.

BANANA PANCAKES BY JACK JOHNSON

MY FAVORITE SLOTH SONG :)

TWO Sleepy People

A former lover used to sing me two sleepy people, too much in love to say goodnight.

Not exactly sloth. More like the paralysis of love. An old Hoagie Charmichael song.

--Amy

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_Sleepy_People

What about Pink Martini's hit "Sympathique" from the 1997 album of the same name.

"Je ne veux pas travailler
Je ne veux pas déjeuner
Je veux seulement l'oublier
Et puis je fume"

(I don't want to work, I don't want to eat, I just want to forget, and then I have a smoke)

You should have tied this topic into the Morrissey "Smackdown" you did a couple weeks ago, 'casue the things Cintra is pointing out sound EXACTLY like Morrissey to me!

Sleep late my Lady Friend - Harry Nilsson

Loser by Beck

Best sloth song: Marlene Dietrich, "I'm the Laziest Gal in Town." Hilarious.

How about the Irving Berlin song, "Lazy" from "There's No Business Like Show Business" sung so beautifully by Marilyn Monroe?

First Version (written by Frank Loesser; featured in the biographical movie "Hans Christian Anderson")

Inch worm, inch worm
Measuring the marigolds
Could it be, stop and see
How beautiful they are

(Chorus:)
Two and two are four
Four and four are eight
Eight and eight are sixteen
Sixteen and sixteen are thirty-two

Inchworm, inchworm
Measuring the marigolds
You and your arithmetic
You'll probably go far

(Repeat Chorus)

Inchworm, inchworm
Measuring the marigolds
Seems to me you'd stop and see
How beautiful they are

Another Version:
(lyrics Written By: Mark Rew)

Stay, longer, for me,
Wait, longer, for me,
I know you must be getting sick,
of wondering exactly where this leads you,
Why did it take so long,
why did it take so long,
Why did it take so long,
Stay, longer, for me,
Wait, longer, for me,
I know you must be getting sick,
of wondering exactly where this leads you,
Why did it take so long,
Why did it take so long,
Why did it take so long,
Inchworm, inchworm,
measuring, the merrygold.

You didn't touch on the Slacker Jazz movement, spearheaded (I believe) by our very own Brooklyn's Mike Doughty and Soul Coughing -

They have a version of Lazybones too...

"when all the money is lain and sank
and money sleeps inside the banks
I'll drift there to meet you, Lazybones"

I don't understand the comment about the religious aspect of sloth being depicted by the demand to stop being lazy and "build those pyramids", because, according to the story in Exodus, it was Pharoah who enslaved the Isrealites, and God who rescued them from this bondage through the leadership of Moses.

Add [1] + [3], & you get Hoagy's "Up a Lazy River"! Lines like "Linger in the shade of a kind old tree/Throw away your troubles, dream a dream with me" & "Up a lazy river, where the robin's song/Awakes a bright new mornin', you can loaf along" show that it's not just the river that's lazy.

The best!

when i wake up early in the morning lift my head, i'm still yawning...when i'm in the middle of a dream stay in bed float upstream ... please don't wake me no don't shake me... i'm only sleeping

I'm Only Sleeping The Beatles Lennon / McArthy

Rich

Edith Piaf's Je Ne Peux Pas Travailler.

Meaningful, driven sloth, not from laziness, but heartache. It is a timeless song whose opening line always cuts right to the core of what we all really want to be (not) doing. In happy days, nevermind the melancholy lyrics that comprise 90% of the song, revel in the desire to be idle.

Correction: The line in "Brown Gal" is "Not even taking the trouble to even blow the bubbles away."

velvet underground, mgm album (third lp)
afterhours

Beatles - Only Sleeping
Higgins - (Going, Going, Gone) Fishing
Suzanne beat me to the Kinks

Have to include the classic written by Lil Armstrong, "Brown Gal", which she recorded in 1936. It was covered many times, most famously in the 1950s by the Jive Bombers (great group name!) as "Bad Boy". It has great lines like "I'm taking the trouble to blow my bubbles away."

ok i lied. bob mosley's ''gone fishin''

(bob mosley from moby grape, off his solo lp)

Anna Egge's Lazy Days is a perfect example
of the love of Sloth.

It's a cover s album of lazy songs.

tuli kupferberg's ''nothing nothing nothing'' from the fugs' first record.

i can't be bothered to look any further.

what about sloth in the process of making songs - is performing a cover song sloth? or some hip-hop that repeats the same 2 lyrics over a sample?

"Sunny Afternoon" by the Kinks

Otis Redding's "(Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay" is my favorite song about slothfully wasting time, and it has that tinge of melancholy too: he's given up on trying because his life hasn't gone the way he wanted it to (boy, can I relate).

I love the song because of the duelling interplay between the music, which captures the carefree joy that can come with idleness, and Otis's soulful vocal delivery, which underscores the sadness behind the reasons for his sloth.

The singing grasshopper in the old Disney cartoon, The Grasshopper and the Ants. "Oh, the World owes us a living!"

Nellie McKay's "Long and Lazy River"

And now I know you're mad
I know you're filled with hate
I know that as I stand here
You know I'm too late
But do you know you can't be wrong
How do you know you can't be wrong
You've got a long and lazy river to your soul

:-)

What about the classic tune Lazy Bones, written by Hoagy Carmichael, sung by Paul Robeson, Louis Armstrong, and others?

"Lazy bones, dozin' through the day
How you 'spect to make a dime that way?
Never make a dime that way
Never heard a word I say"

In this climate seems we're most vulnerable to sloth. Cafes are lousy with unemployed folk. And who wouldn't want to spend the day napping if they could get away with it?