Clear your ears, but especially your throat. What word is coming up this time? An archaic term that that was in use from the late 16th to 19th centuries means to cough, from the Latin tussicus, or tussis, having that affliction. Coughing of course has never been far away from the human condition, from the common cold to the whooping cough to the Black Death, so it is no wonder that there have been other words for it the past, Tussicate is a particularly evocative, visceral example. An early use can be found in the book Chrestoleros: Seven Books of Epigrames by T. B. (short for ‘Thomas Bastard’, and this, from the imprint of 1598, comes ‘Epigrame 15’, In Mirum Medicum:
Phisician Mirus talkes of faliuation
Of Trophes and Pustules, and Febrecation
Who doth ingurgitate, who tufficate
And an ulcer hath inveterate.
Thus while his Inkehorne terms he doth apply
Evacuated is his ingenie.
This highly descriptive, onomatopoeic language captures the claggy, guttural experience of past times very well, and remains something familiar to anyone with similar afflictions in modern winters.
But where does coughing come up in song. It no doubt has appeared in folk for centuries, but has also come up in different genres, so let’s sample a few from the 1950s onwards:
A mention certainly appears in the 1950 Frank Loesser musical Guys And Dolls, and from the 1955 film starring Marlon Brando and Jean Simmons, here’s Vivian Blaine doing a little Adelaide’s Lament, trying to cure her cough that is caused by more than germs:
In other words
Just from worrying
Whether the wedding is on or off
A person
Can develop a cough
Coughing was something one should never hear in a recording, but in 1966, The Beatles broke the golden rule with the throat-clearing beginning of Taxman from Revolver:
In 1967 David Bowie, when was still David Jones and at that stage had ambitions to be more of a musical comedy performer like Anthony Newley, worked with the Riot Squad to create the strange, sound effects-laden Littly Toy Soldier, about a girl call Sadie, and song that draws liberally from the Velvet Underground’s Venus In Furs, with various references to S&M and sexual violence, ending in a riot of coughing and smoky explosions.
Whether if was the smog and fog from 20th century industry, or a particularly wet decade in the sixties, coughing in songs was beginning to become more common. One of the most rebellious sounds of spluttering came in that punk-inspiring number by the Stooges, in their song T.V. Eye from Fun House in 1970, where Iggy Pop cleared his throat for a whole generation to spit out their guts.
Meanwhile though, other artists were doing this in even heavier rock. such as Black Sabbath, featuring of course Ozzy Osborne, in Sweet Leaf from their Master Of Reality album in 1971:
Robert Plant’s coughing in Led Zeppelin In My TIme Of Dying from 1975’s Physical Grafitti is more about the death rattle, followed by saying the word:
But inspired by Iggy earlier in the decade, punk was the ultimate genre in which artists could really cough up the bile. Chris Bailey from The Saints is one of the ultimate spluttering vocalists, delivering it with full throated aplomb here with International Robots from the Eternally Yours album in 1978:
Sometimes coughing comes from self-induced state. Jello Biafra from The Dead Kennedys gives it the lung-collapsing treatment in the classic Too Drunk To Fuck, from 1980's Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables.
There are many songs that referring to the act of coughing. Here’s one example, from the US-Russian singer-songwriter Regina Spektor, summing up the suffering of the artist in the cold in Small Bill$, from the 2016 album of the same name”
All the poets in the alley coughing up blood
And their visions and their dreams are coming up red
They can either wake up or go deeper
But it's so dangerous to wake a deep sleeper
And finally, there are also bands that feature the word. Pick of them is Soul Coughing, and Mr Bitterness, from the American band's debut album Ruby Vroom in 1994.
Care to cough up any more in lyrics or vocal delivery? Feel free to share any further examples in songs, instrumentals, on albums, film, art or other contexts in comments below.
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