Songs with the name Danny

The name gets its warmest setting in "Danny's Song," which Kenny Loggins wrote for his brother and recorded with Jim Messina in 1971 — a gently strummed, early-'70s singer-songwriter piece best known for the refrain "even though we ain't got money." Anne Murray's 1972 version strips it down further into her soft country-pop style, all smooth piano and calm reassurance, and it's the reading many people know first. Elvis Presley's "Danny," from 1958, comes from an entirely different world: a slow, brooding ballad written for the film "King Creole," in which Danny is the character he plays — his voice low and theatrical over lush late-'50s orchestration.

The Ramones' "Danny Says," from 1980, is the odd one out — a sparse, oddly tender acoustic-ish shuffle from the "End of the Century" sessions, produced with Phil Spector's heavy hand, in which the name belongs to Danny Fields, the band's onetime manager, and the lyrics are wry, bored snapshots of life on the road. Rickie Lee Jones's "Danny's All-Star Joint" (1979) is a rolling, jazzy, piano-bar stomp from her debut, painting a scuffed, cheerful diner in vivid slang — the name marks a real place rather than a person. Tiffany's "Danny," from her 1987 debut, is bright, synth-driven teen pop: crush-on-a-boy territory, glossy and bouncy, with the name doing exactly the simple work a name does in a song like that.