Songs about toys are inherently creative, using a childlike sense of imagination to convey double-meanings often much darker than expected from such a light-hearted, innocent concept.
From songs about toy soldiers to discarded toys trapped in the attic, our playlist of pop and rock songs about toys collects the best and covers it all.
Songs About Toys
1. Aqua – Barbie Girl
Aqua’s iconic 1997 single, Barbie Girl, perverts the moldability of action figures by threading strange sexual connotations throughout their lyrics.
Comparing the endless potential of childish, world-building play with the fulfilment of a man’s never-ending fantasy, Aqua personify the Barbie doll as a vapid woman who can be bent and broken by manhandling, submersing this dark, degrading twist beneath their bubblegum pop sound.
Barbie Girl harbours countless lyrics which transfer equally as well to either child play or adult play, each line served with a mildly sickening taste given the child-oriented sexualisation plastered throughout the track;
“You can touch, you can play, if you say I’m always yours … You can brush my hair, undress me everywhere, imagination, life is your creation … Make me walk, make me talk, do whatever you please, I can act like a star, I can beg on my knees.”
2. Martika – Toy Soldiers
Martika’s US #1 single, Toy Soldiers, is about succumbing to addiction, whether you perceive her lyrics as referring to obsession with a person, a feeling, or literal substance abuse.
Clouded with backing vocals by a children’s choir, this dreamy 80s pop track is anchored in its chorus metaphor of falling hopelessly under mounting emotional pressure; a strikingly pessimistic contrast to the track’s imaginative soundscape;
“We all fall down like toy soldiers, bit by bit, torn apart, we never win but the battle wages on for toy soldiers.”
Martika’s title metaphor cleverly belittles the human experience, making pawns out of the troubled whilst highlighting the overarching insignificance of being just one of many identical tiny plastic pieces in a toy box;
“Only emptiness remains, it replaces all, all the pain (won’t you come out and play with me?)”
3. Alice Cooper – Wind Up Toy
The last track featured on Alice Cooper’s hit 1991 album ‘Hey Stoopid’, Wind Up Toy is a masterfully theatrical and atmospheric glam rock track.
Metaphorising a problem child for a broken, wind-up toy, Alice’s lyrics illustrate a number of eerie scenes composed from a simple, childlike perspective; “All my friends live on the floor, tiny legs and tiny eyes, they’re free to crawl under the door, and someday soon so will I.”
Beneath his prominent lyrical concept of feeling outcast from the family, Alice’s soundscape is breathtakingly creative, embellished with countless imaginative childlike sound effects such as a music box intro and a stunted feeling to the verses, as if still learning to crawl into fully-fledged life.
The highlighting feature of this track is by far the strange boy-like backing vocals threaded through the second verse, sounding in innocently creepy harmony with Alice’s adult voice.
4. Elvis Presley – (Let Me Be Your) Teddy Bear
Elvis 1957 track, (Let Me Be Your) Teddy Bear, compares cuddly love to teddy bears, the narrator selling himself like a toy to get into the bed of the woman he loves; “I just wanna be your teddy bear, put a chain around my neck, and lead me anywhere, oh let me be your teddy bear.”
This cute simple song is centred in an almost-sparse composition of piano and doo-wop backing vocals, with Elvis adopting the drummer’s role in this vintage performance.
(Let Me Be Your) Teddy Bear is a track for anyone swapping the torments of love for the bliss of cosy contentment, “I don’t wanna be a tiger ’cause tigers play too rough, I don’t wanna be a lion, ’cause lions ain’t the kind … I just wanna be your teddy bear.”
5. Eminem – Like Toy Soldiers
Eminem samples the children’s chorus from Martika’s pop hit into his own track, Like Toy Soldiers, reassigning its original meaning to reflect the pressures of the music industry and cut-throat attitudes of his fellow rappers.
Whilst calling out the immature rivalry erupting throughout his genre, Eminem draws attention to the deathly nature of being a rap musician alongside exposing the rapid escalation of murderous negativity, comparable to acts of war;
“There used to be a time when you could just say a rhyme, and wouldn’t have to worry about one of your people dying.”
Tying this track together is a message of preserving the self against hostility whilst persevering through every individual battle you’re thrown into, backlit by war-time themes of unbreakable leadership and adopting an army-like mentality;
“I’m supposed to be the soldier who never blows his composure, even though I hold the weight of the whole world on my shoulders, I ain’t never supposed to show it … I’m supposed to set an example, I need to be the leader, my crew looks for me to guide ’em.”
6. Aerosmith – Toys In The Attic
This retro glam rock single by Aerosmith appears as the first song on their similarly titled 1975 album, Toys In The Attic.
Despite only containing a smattering of lyrics, Aerosmith’s single, resounding verse gives a haunting insight into what it means to be adored and discarded by the only person in your life.
Descriptions of screaming voices coming from the lightless attic form the disturbing backdrop for a message of letting go of the things you love in the endless search for growth;
“Leaving the things that are real behind, leaving the things that you love from mind, all of the things that you learned from fears, nothing is left for the years, toys, toys, toys in the attic.”
7. Netta – Toy
Netta’s 2018 Eurovision song, Toy, is the needed antidote to Aqua’s degradingly submissive toy concept.
Adopting an initially similar playtime theme, Netta magnificently twists and topples Aqua’s romantic power play with a vibrant streak of goddess-like independence; “I’m not your toy, you stupid boy.”
This track is irresistibly quirky, even for a Eurovision track, driven by Netta’s indescribable, onomatopoeic hooks interspersed by multitudes of imaginative toy and game-playing references such as, “My Simon says leave me alone, I’m taking my Pikachu home, you’re stupid just like your smart…phone.”
Netta’s most iconic moment is found within her pre-chorus, imaginatively asserting her feminist flair through a child-like metaphor; “Wonder Woman don’t you ever forget, you’re divine and he’s about to regret.”