Songs with the name Jimmy

Martha & the Vandellas' "Jimmy Mack" (1967) is prime Holland-Dozier-Holland Motown: bright horns, handclaps, and Martha Reeves pleading with an absent sweetheart to hurry home before her resolve slips. It's one of the great pop-suspense records — the name is the absent lover, kept at arm's length the whole song. The Undertones' "Jimmy Jimmy" (1979) is something else entirely: two minutes of jittery Northern Irish punk-pop, buzzing guitars and Feargal Sharkey's yelp, with Jimmy as a restless kid the narrator can't quite reach. Madonna's "Jimmy Jimmy" (1987 album track from True Blue, released 1986) gives the name a new-wave sheen — snappy, synth-flavored pop about a rebel boy who won't settle down.

Spin Doctors' "Jimmy Olsen's Blues" (1991) casts the name onto Superman's pal, a groovy, riffing rock tune sung from Olsen's side of a love triangle with Lois Lane — funny, guitar-heavy, and very much of its post-grunge bar-band moment. M.I.A.'s "Jimmy" (2007) repurposes an old Bollywood disco tune into clattering, glamorous electro-pop about an arranged-marriage suitor; it's her most openly melodic track. The White Stripes' "Jimmy the Exploder" (1999) opens their first album with furious, stripped-down garage blues — Jack White howling over an explosive riff. Looking Glass's "Jimmy Loves Mary-Anne" (1973) is gentler, harmony-soaked soft rock in the vein of their bigger hit "Brandy (You're a Fine Girl)" — three-and-a-half minutes of warm early-seventies AM-radio ease.