3 Famous Songs That Were Named After Characters Who Never Actually Existed

Half the time, songwriting is just making things up and rolling with it. However, there’s something magical about songs that makes it feel like we know the characters personally in our favorite songs. Even if they aren’t real people, they feel like real people to us. Here are some famous country and rock songs that were written about made-up characters that we feel connected to.

“Levon” by Elton John

John and Taupin might have taken the name of this song from a person in the musical group The Band. However, “Levon” isn’t about a specific person. The person that it was supposedly named after, Levon Helm, didn’t even like the song, which appears on John’s album Madman Across The Water. According to John, “Levon” is about “a guy who just gets bored doing the same thing…”

“Maxwell’s Silver Hammer” by The Beatles

Although “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer” is indisputably one of the weirdest (and most questionable) songs in The Beatles’ catalog, it also has a story. This story is, however, entirely made up. In fact, as Paul McCartney told Barry Miles, “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer” is kind of like an analogy for when things just refuse to go your way in life.

“..I wanted something symbolic of that, so to me it was some fictitious character called Maxwell with a silver hammer. I don’t know why it was silver, it just sounded better than Maxwell’s hammer.”

“A Boy Named Sue” by Johnny Cash

There wasn’t actually “A Boy Named Sue” who shares the story of the character in this song, but there were people that “A Boy Named Sue” took inspiration from. The song was originally conceived by poet Shel Silverstein, who also dabbled in songwriting. He took inspiration from one of his friends, Jean Shepherd, who had the same problem as the character Sue. Shepherd was made fun of often for having a girl’s name. There’s also a rumor that a male lawyer named Sue K. Hicks inspired the name choice. Regardless, this song ended up being a No. 1 hit for Johnny Cash, who first heard it when Silverstein played “A Boy Named Sue” at a guitar pull in Tennessee.

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