I had never paid much attention to Rod Stewart, but I was in my car, listening absentmindedly to “Maggie May” (1971) on Classic Vinyl, when I was KO’d by the lyrics, “I suppose I could collect my books and get on back to school. Or steal my daddy’s cue and make a living out of playing pool.” Alas, the situation does not end so well for our forlorn narrator, but my mind had already forgotten the poor sap and started to wonder what other songs prominently featured billiards, whether lyrically or visually. I therefore present my Top 10 Billiards Songs and Music Videos for your consumption, amusement, and critique. This list consists of 5 songs with great billiards videos and 5 songs with great billiards verses. Enjoy!

10. “The Pool Shark” (lyrics). Written by Tom T. Hall and recorded by country music artist Dave Dudley in 1970, this lead single tells the story of a hustler getting hustled. The narrator, who had been “known to hustle a few,” misreads his opponent badly. When the narrator raises the stakes, his opponent brings out a custom cue with “gold initials in a leather grip pearly and silver inlaid tip” and proceeds to “make those balls and table talk…speaking English” until the narrator is out “187 bucks and a ring.”

9. “Stronger Than Me” (video). Dead from alcohol poisoning at the age of 27, the genre-bending, husky-voiced Amy Winehouse released this 2004 debut single from her debut album Frank. The song is about Winehouse debasing her boyfriend for failing to be a more dominant and present partner. The video follows the song’s lyrics, with the boyfriend getting sloppy-drunk while playing pool on purple-felt tables. Winehouse is shown making only one shot in the video, though off-screen she was known for her billiards skills, having posthumously even earned the moniker, “The Demon of the Pool Table.”

8. “The Snooker Song” (lyrics). In 1986, composer Mike Batt assembled an all-star ensemble, including Roger Daltrey, Art Garfunkel, John Hurt and Julian Lennon, to record The Hunting of the Snark, a concept album based on Lewis Carroll’s poem of the same name. The album was withdrawn but re-released in 2010. Act Two includes “The Snooker Song,” sung by Captain Sensible (who founded the punk rock band The Damned) as the Billiard Maker. The lyrics primarily consist of the Billiard Maker, who is “famed for his aim” and can get a “break of fifty-eight (maybe more?),” repeatedly taunting his opponent by saying, “I’m going to be snookering you tonight.” The “Snooker Song” was also the theme to the British billiards game show Big Break.

7. “I Can’t Dance” (video). Genesis, the English rock band fronted by lead vocalist Phil Collins, released the 1991 album We Can’t Dance, which included the single, “I Can’t Dance.” Half way through the music video, which is about the artifice and false glamour of television commercials, Phil Collins enters a pool hall where the unctuous proprietor insists he wager his blue jeans in a game of pool if he wants to stay. The sequence is a reference to (and parody of) the 1991 Levi Jeans “Pool Hall” commercial, which featured The Clash song, “Should I Stay or Should I Go?” that was the inspiration for the main riff of the Genesis song. Of course, in the commercial, the pants stayed on; in the video, Collins was not so lucky.

6. “Rack ‘Em Up” (lyrics). Grammy-winning, American blues guitarist Jonny Lang, who has toured with everyone from the Rolling Stones to Aerosmith, released the 1997 album Lie to Me, which included this four-minute ode to billiards, written by Lang’s pianist Bruce McCabe. The brilliant lyrics talk about the opportunity to go down to Jack’s Pool Hall and play the resident ace, who only ever said “rack ‘em up” until “the day he was dead.” Best line: “I tell him listen son, ain’t no disaster |There ain’t no shame in being beat by a master.”

5. “Sink the Pink” (video). On their ninth studio album, Australian bad boys Angus and Malcolm Young, the founding brothers of the legendary hard rock band AC/DC, released the 1985 song “Sink the Pink,” which is about sex and alcohol, naturally, with scant mention of pool. The video, however, features the gradual entry of Susie Cue, a high-heeled, pink-clad lady, who brings her own custom pink cue to the barroom, where she first challenges, and later dances, with a local patron. Also featured in the video is a conspicuously pink 3-ball and an animated fly, whose facial gestures are as memorable as Angus Young’s signature school boy shorts. (Note: AC/DC also featured clips of trick shot billiards wizard Florian “Venom” Kohler in the video to their 2014 song “Play Ball.”)

4. “The Baron” (lyrics). In 1984, Gary Nelson directed famed man-in-black Johnny Cash in the made-for-TV-movie The Baron and the Kid, based on his 1980 tune “The Baron” from his 66^th album of the same name. Peaking at number 10 on the US Country charts, “The Baron” tells the story about the pool hall showdown between The Baron and his son Billy Joe to determine who shoots “the meanest game around.” The Baron is repeatedly the 8-ball winner until Billy Joe, in a fit of rage, bets “this ring on one more game against [the Baron’s] fancy stick.” When the Baron realizes the ring belonged to his estranged wife, the family ties crystallize for him, and the deadbeat dad laments that had he not run out on his family, “maybe [Billy Joe] would shoot straighter than [he does].”

3. “Snooker Loopy” (video). English pop rock duo Chas & Dave released the humorous single “Snooker Loopy” in 1986 with back-up vocals from the Matchroom Mob, a quintet of famous snooker professionals employed by promoter Barry Hearn’s company Matchroom Sport. If the lyrics are absurd (“We’ll show you what we can do |With a load of balls and a snooker cue.”), then the video, which features the five legends — Steve Davis, Tony Meo, Dennis Taylor, Willie Thorne, and Terry Griffiths – acting out the lyrics is downright preposterous, such as when the balding Mr. Thorne chalks his pate because “when the light shines down on his bare crown…it’s not fair giving off that glare.”

2. “Ya Got Trouble” (lyrics). One of the most recognizable songs from the Tony Award-winning 1957 Best Musical The Music Man is “Ya Got Trouble,” written by composer Meredith Wilson. Sung by the smooth-talking, traveling salesman Harold Hill, who is determined to convince the citizens of River City, Iowa, to fund his idea for a boys’ marching band rather than a pool hall, the song conveys what could happen if they choose the pool hall. The lyrics are genius, with references from everything to three-rail billiards shots to Balkline, though my favorite verse is: “You got one, two, three, four, five, six pockets in a table. | Pockets that mark the diff’rence |Between a gentlemen and a bum, | With a capital “B,” |And that rhymes with “P” and that stands for pool!”

1. “Bad to the Bone” (video). There was never any question about which billiards video would rule the roost. Of course, that honor goes to the 1982 video “Bad to the Bone” by George Thorogood and the Destroyers. Benefiting from heavy rotation on a nascent MTV, the video featured Thorogood competing in a billiards match with blues pioneer Bo Diddley. Billiards Hall of Famer Willie Mosconi appears in the video at 3:00 to make a large wager on Diddley, but it is Thorogood who prevails with his iconic 8-ball shot in which the ball appears to fall in the pocket as Thorogood flicks a large quantity of his cigar ash onto the floor.

So, there’s my Top 10. Did I slight the Maryland rockers Clutch for not including their single “Mob Goes Wild,” with a video featuring one of the all-time pool-hall beat-downs? Should I have cited the video for “Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik” by Southern hip-hip duo OutKast? Or, what about the lyrics to “Pool Shark” from New York ska pioneers The Toasters? Hopefully, this list provokes thought, if not outrage. And if so, let me know what you would have included on your top 10.

Special thanks to the creators of the following two websites for spurring my thinking:

• http://mydefinitionofcool.blogspot.com/2013/02/ten-music-videos-featuring-billiards.html
• http://www.legacybilliards.com/top-20-pool-table-songs