It's a bit of a mouthful, but also an adjective describing that which makes money in any possible way, from the Latin quomodocunque, and of course there are one or two songs on the subject. A rarely used word, alongside the verb to quomodocunquize, as an earliest example, the Oxford English Dictionary quotes a 1652 phrase by Thomas Urquhart, the Scottish aristocrat, writer, and translator, best known for his translations of Rabelais. “Those quomodocunquizing clusterfists and rapacious varlets,” which is delightfully descriptive of greedy money grasping. It comes either from Pantochronachanon "A peculiar promptuary of time," a genealogy of the Urquhart family, or his best known work, The Jewel (Ekskybalauron), a miscellany that includes Urquhart's fictionalized life of the Scottish hero James Crichton 1560–82, "The Admirable Crichton".
The word itself seems not to have been used in any song, but its meaning is not uncommon as a lyrical theme. As the need, and the act of making money is one of the biggest human preoccupations, there are many thousands, but here is a selection across a few genres:
Where better to start than Barrett Strong’s Money (That's What I Want) from 1959, written by Janie Bradford and Berry Gordy Jr. It was also given a great postpunk reinterpretation by The Flying Lizards 20 years later.
The best things in life are free,
But you can give them to the birds and bees
I need money
That's what I want
Or how about the O'Jays and For The Love of Money from 1973? It’s one that takes a more moral tone:
For the love of money
People will steal from their mother
For the love of money
People will rob their own brother
Pink Floyd's Money, also from '73 and written by Roger Waters from the classic Dark Side of the Moon album, goes back to greed, and rings out the cash machine sound effects with a rich sound:
Money, get away
Get a good job with good pay and you're okay
Money, it's a gas
Grab that cash with both hands and make a stash
New car, caviar, four star daydream
Think I'll buy me a football team
Taking a more ironic and gentle angle, the brilliant Randy Newman, from his 1979 album Born Again, cuts straight to it:
I don't love the mountains
I don't love the sea
I don't love Jesus
He never done a thing for me
I ain't pretty like my sister
Or smart like my dad
Or good like my mama
It's money that I love
It's money that I love
Alice Cooper's Make That Money (Scrooge's Song) from 1982 takes a another ruthless approach that stems from childhood:
When I was a boy
I never played with toys
Never had a friend
Never laughed or cried much
And when I was a boy
My father was a man
With a strict and sturdy hand
No soft touch
Make that money, make that money
Make that money run like honey
On your tongue
Gotta make that money
Make that money, listen sonny
Learn to sting before your stung
In 1986 the Pet Shop Boys captured the 'greed is good' culture of the Thatcher era with Opportunities with crisply chosen lyrics that could be taken as sincere or ironic at the same time:
I've had enough of scheming and messing around with jerks
my car is parked outside I'm afraid it doesn't work
I'm looking for a partner someone who gets things fixed
Ask yourself this question do you want to be rich.
I've got the brains you've got the looks
Let's make lots of mone
Hip-hop can reflect rich source of money-making opportunity, a hustling, bustling genre that lends itself to bravado, braggadocio and raw ambition. Here are three examples. Let's kick things off with 1989's Road To The Riches with Kool G Rap & DJ Polo:
When I was five years old, I realized there was a road
At the end, I will win lots of pots of gold
Never took a break, never made a mistake
Took time to create 'cause there's money to make
To be a billionaire takes hard work for years
Some nights I shed a tear while I said a prayer
Been through hard times, even worked part time
In a Key Food store sweepin' floors for dimes
I was sort of a porter takin' the next man's orders
Breakin' my back for a shack from headquarters
All my manpower for four bucks an hour
Took my time and wrote rhymes in the shower
Ice-T's New Jack Hustler from 1991 is more prescriptive, ruthlessly imperative style:
You gotta deal with this cause there's no way out,
Why? Cash money ain't never gonna play out.
I got nothin to lose, much to gain,
In my brain, I got a capitalist migraine.
Wu-Tang Clan's landmark 1993 album Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) included a layer of C.R.E.A.M. but things don't always go to plan:
Cash, Rules, Everything, Around, Me …
It's been twenty-two long hard years, I'm still strugglin'
Survival got me buggin', but I'm alive on arrival
I peep at the shape of the streets
And stay awake to the ways of the world 'cause shit is deep
A man with a dream with plans to make C.R.E.A.M.
Which failed I went to jail at the age of 15
A young buck sellin' drugs and such who never had much
Trying to get a clutch at what I could not
The court played me short, now I face incarceration
Pacin' going upstate's my destination
So money brings mixed fortunes, but let's end with something more old-fashioned, going back to a song from 1956, written by Marve A. Fisher, a song filled with clever images and performed so distinctively by Eartha Kitt, who claims she's Just An Old Fashioned Girl in a warbling reverie of the finer things that money can buy:
I'm just an old fashioned girl with an old fashioned mind
Not sophisticated, I'm the sweet and simple kind
I want an old fashioned house, with an old fashioned fence
And an old fashioned millionaire
I want an old fashioned car, a cerise Cadillac
Long enough to put a bowling alley in the back
I want an old fashioned house, with an old fashioned fence
And an old fashioned millionaire
I'll stay weaving at my loom
Be no trouble to my groom
If he'll keep the piles of money mounting
In our cottage there will be
A soundproof nursery
Not to wake the baby while I'm counting.
So then, that’s just a scattering of notes about the culture and variety of entrepreneurial or imaginative musical quomodocunquizing. Feel free to share any further examples in songs, instrumentals, on albums, film, art or other contexts in comments below.
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