Songs with the name Bill

The oldest record here is also the most durable idea: "(Won't You Come Home) Bill Bailey," sung by Arthur Collins in 1902, is a vaudeville-style plea from a wife to a husband who's been out too long — the sort of comic, sentimental parlor number that spread sheet music across America. Twenty-five years later, Helen Morgan's "Bill" is the opposite in mood: a slow, wounded show tune from *Show Boat*, sung in her famously small, heartbreaking voice about loving a man who isn't much, but loving him anyway. Jack Sheldon's "I'm Just a Bill," from 1975's Schoolhouse Rock, turns the name into a character — a scrappy cartoon piece of legislation waiting on Capitol Hill — set to a laid-back, jazzy shuffle that made civics catchy for a generation of kids.

The 1982 Van Halen track, "Big Bad Bill (Is Sweet William Now)," is actually an old tune dressed in barroom rockabilly: a lounge-y swing number about a tough guy gone soft from marriage, sung with a wink. Roger Waters' "The Ballad of Bill Hubbard" (1992) is its quietest and saddest cousin — a spoken, ambient piece from *Amused to Death* about a wounded soldier Waters knew, built on drifting soundscapes and uneasy silence. Whitney Houston's "Million Dollar Bill" (2009) is pure joy by comparison: a disco-flavored R&B track built on a sampled groove, celebrating a man who's worth everything to her. And SZA's "Kill Bill" (2022) drags the name into modern heartbreak — a airy, melodic R&B song about wanting an ex gone, named after the movie, half-joke and half-confession. Seven records, and the same four letters doing wildly different work in each.