Pet sounds
A strong advocate of adopt-don't-shop, Welsh pop artist Bright Light Bright Light marks this Change a Pet's Life Day with a new single, “Sunny”, and a playlist of songs inspired by pets.
When Rod Thomas, aka Bright Light Bright Light, released his fifth album Enjoy Youth last spring, his rescue cat Sunny was a major part of the rollout.
The ginger tabby’s face appeared in the artwork for the record, on a sold-out T-shirt, and was a regular feature on Bright Light Bright Light social media pages, living his best life in Manhattan, going for walks and lounging about on the roof of Thomas’ apartment building. Then, just a few months later, the young cat received a shock diagnosis of heart failure after Thomas noticed that his breathing had become disturbed. A month later, Sunny passed, leaving Thomas bereft and feeling a little cheated out of what could have been another ten years together.
Today he releases a new single, simply titled “Sunny”, to commemorate the “silly, sassy man” who’d brought him so much joy. Featuring guest vocals from dog lover Nerina Pallot and cat lady Beth Hirsch (most famously the voice of Air’s “All I Need”), the release coincides with Change a Pet’s Life Day and is raising funds for the NYC-based animal shelter and adoption agency Bideawee (a Scottish word meaning ‘stay a while’) where Thomas volunteers as often as possible.
Bideawee was where Thomas first met Sonny, during the tail end of the Covid peak, and fell instantly in love. “They were so happy because he was quite badly behaved at the shelter, but as soon as he came home with me he was just an amazing cat,” he says, laughing. Adopting Sunny first led to Bideawee hiring Thomas for a DJ set at one of their galas, and then to signing up for volunteering slots. “I was a bit nervous I’d be shit at it, or that it would be too emotional,” he recalls. “Because it’s a shelter, there are cases of animals that are very sick and have come from really horrific backgrounds, but the team is amazing and it’s the fucking best thing that I’ve done in my whole life. I absolutely love it.”
As a full-time musician and essentially a one-man operation, much of Thomas’ work can feel quite abstracted from the real world; volunteering at the shelter gives him a sense of fulfilment that endless hours of social media management and maintaining spreadsheets can’t quite match.
“With music or writing or journalism, you can spend hours toiling over something with no guarantee that it will come to fruition,” he says. “So it’s really nice to see direct results from the time that you put into rehabilitating an animal and spending time socialising it to make it comfortable enough to eventually be adoptable. To see how that time love results in an animal opening up and showing emotions is just overwhelmingly incredible. I volunteer there as often as I can, and sometimes I kind of forget that I have an actual job outside of that.”
With “Sunny”, Thomas joins a long line of musicians who have penned songs about or inspired by their beloved furry, scaly, and feathered friends, from Bobbie Gentry to The Beatles, Led Zeppelin to Lorde, and Joanna Newsom to Neil Young, and many, many more. The playlist that Thomas has created only scratches the surface of this fascinating subgenre of song – but it might surprise you too. Check it out below or listen on Spotify.
1
“Sunny” by Bright Light Bright Light
Written by: Rod Thomas
For: His cat Sunny
Non-album track (2025)
Thomas started writing this song on one of the first nights that Sunny was hospitalised after being diagnosed with heart failure, adding the middle eight and backing vocals after he had passed. “I never thought I’d write a kind of elegy for a cat,” he says. “But it’s a reminder about the amazing connection that you can have with animals, and the fact that if you are a good person with an open heart then you can find friends in any interaction that you have.”
Having collaborated with Nerina Pallot and Beth Hirsch independently on several earlier songs, “Sunny” is the first time that Thomas is bringing them together. “I never thought that I would share something so personal with some of my favourite artists,” he says. When Pallot sent him her vocals after Sunny’s death, she’d gone the extra mile to create eight or so vocal parts around the track, full of improvs and riffs. “I just collapsed into tears,” he says. “Beth’s voice is just heaven, too, and it feels really amazing to have them both on this song.”
2
“Gulliver / It’s Hay Chewed / Reprise” by Elton John
Written by: Elton John & Bernie Taupin
For: A sheepdog named Gulliver
From the album Empty Sky (1969)
Recorded almost 60 years ago on a four-track recorder, this unusual mishmash of a song closes out Elton John’s debut album, Empty Sky, and was inspired by lyricist Bernie Taupin’s childhood growing up on a farm in Lincolnshire. The Gulliver of the title was Taupin’s favourite sheepdog, who would sleep outside of the barn come rain, snow, or shine, and the feeling of loss when he came to the end of his life, leaving a bare patch on the ground and a hole in Taupin’s young heart. John’s wailing vocal at the end was intended to imitate the sound of a crying child.
If you’re wondering, the second part of the song is a jazz combo instrumental whose title is a farm-life pun on The Beatles’ “Hey Jude”, while the reprise section represents one of those bizarre artifacts of the era where little snippets of each of the album tracks are all smashed together in a medley.
3
"Delilah" by Queen
Written by: Freddie Mercury
For: His cat Delilah
From the album Innuendo (1991)
Queen’s final album Innuendo, released just nine months before Freddie Mercury’s death, features this somewhat divisive track about the singer's favourite cat Delilah, an unpredictable calico that seemed to rule the roost at home. Although you can hear the other members of Queen meowing on the track, it was apparently done through gritted teeth. Rumour has it that drummer Roger Taylor only relented on recording the song because of Mercury’s declining health, but he still hates it to this day. “[It’s] just not me,” he told Classic Rock magazine in 2013. Clearly a dog person!
4
“Sunday Girl” by Blondie
Written by: Chris Stein
Inspired by: Debbie Harry’s cat Sunday Man
From the album: Parallel Lines (1978)
“Sunday Girl” isn’t obviously about a pet, but Blondie guitarist Chris Stein is on record as saying that the song was inspired by Debbie Harry’s grey cat Sunday Man, who had run away from home while the band were out on tour.
“I never asked Debbie why she had a cat called Sunday Man,” Stein wrote on social media a few years ago, but his mission to cheer Harry up had the unforeseen effect of giving the band their second consecutive UK #1 hit in 1979 – right after the equally brilliant but pet-unrelated “Heart of Glass”.
5
“Goose Snow Cone” by Aimee Man
Written by: Aimee Mann
Inspired by: Her friend’s cat Goose
From the album: Mental Illness (2017)
Aimee Mann was on tour in Ireland when she wrote this song, with winter in full swing outside her hotel room. Scrolling through Instagram, she came across a photo of a friend’s cat named Goose, described by Mann as having “a fluffy white face and these very arresting eyes.” Goose had recently been to the vet and was wearing a recovery cone, and her eyes told a sad little story that chimed in some way with Mann’s own feelings of being homesick and lonely. As she described to a US radio station, the phrase ‘goose snow cone’ was originally intended just as a placeholder that she would go back and fix later, but she never found a lyric she liked more. “And now I’m stuck explaining it,” she laughed.
6
“Rocket’s Tail” by Kate Bush
Written by: Kate Bush
Inspired by: Her cat Rocket
From the album: The Sensual World (1989)
Partly recorded in Bulgaria with the powerful and distinctive backing of Trio Bulgarka, Kate Bush’s “Rocket’s Tail” is an otherworldly summons to learn to seize the day.
In a BBC Radio 1 interview broadcast in 1989, Bush confirmed that the song was connected to one of her cats, saying: “It's very strange subject matter because the song isn't exactly about Rocket. It's kind of inspired by him and for him, but the song is about anything. I guess it's saying there's nothing wrong with being right here at this moment, and just enjoying this moment to its absolute fullest, and if that's it, that's ok. It's kind of using the idea of a rocket that's so exciting for maybe 3 seconds and then it's gone… But so what? It had 3 seconds of being absolutely wonderful.”
7
“Man from Mars” by Joni Mitchell
Written by: Joni Mitchell
For: Her cat Nietzsche
From the album: Taming the Tiger (1998)
Joni Mitchell has had a lot of cats in her life, but only one of them has been lucky enough to feature on the cover of one of her albums. In the self-portrait Mitchell painted for her 16th studio album Taming the Tiger, the cat looking indignantly back at the viewer was Nietzsche, a strong-willed Abyssinian mix tomcat that Mitchell adored. ‘Man from Mars’ was one of his nicknames, because she thought he looked like an alien and would indulge in un-cat-like behaviour like walking on his hind legs “as an expression of affection.”
Written during an 18-day period when Nietzsche went missing after she had scolded him for peeing inside the house, “Man from Mars” originally featured (in a slightly different version) on the soundtrack to the fictionalised music biopic Grace of My Heart, loosely based on the very real life of singer/songwriter Carole King.
"The grief that I felt in [Nietzsche’s] absence coincided with the grief of the character in the movie," Mitchell told USA Today in 1998, adding: “It took me 17 days to write this song, and the night I finished it, my amazing little man-cat appeared in a neighbour's yard and I retrieved him. That was kind of mystical. When I found him, he just yelled at me, almost hyperventilating by telling me off. So I yelled back in his language, you know, 'Meow-meow-meow!' When I changed to coaxing tones, he stopped yelling and went belly up."
8
“The Cat-Song” by Laura Nyro
Written by: Laura Nyro
For: Her cat Eddie
From the album: Smile (1976)
At the time of recording her sixth album Smile, Bronx-born singer/songwriter Laura Nyro was mother to two cats, Mamasan and Eddie. Mamasan doesn’t lend itself so easily to song lyrics, though, so it’s Eddie who stars in “The Cat-Song”, by nature and by name, whether sleeping with one eye open or begging for a breakfast of fish. It’s a short and sweet piano song, with Nyro’s distinctively soulful voice tapping into something bigger than herself.
9
“Blood Moon (I Did Give You Love)” by Bright Light Bright Light
Written by: Rod Thomas
For: A dog owned by Del Marquis of Scissor Sisters
From the EP Blood Moon (2016)
When Thomas first moved to New York in 2014, he rented an apartment in a Brooklyn brownstone belonging to his friend Del Marquis of Scissor Sisters. Not long afterwards, Marquis brought home a Welsh terrier named Gigio, who Thomas would often take for walks and just hang out with a lot. Tragically, in September 2015 – the day of the blood supermoon – Gigio died suddenly, alone at home, in “a horrific accident.” “It was really wild, because he was so young,” says Thomas. “I just really couldn’t cope with it, so when I heard the news this song just came to me in a stream of consciousness, just as ‘Sunny’ did, and now it’s really one of my favourite songs that I’ve written.”
Released the following year, “Blood Moon” is a ruminative, sax-lit song that builds into clashing beats. Unlike “Sunny”, which is more subdued and morose in tone, Thomas says “Blood Moon” feels “sort of like a scream, because it was a really violent death, whereas Sonny’s was a really sad death.” “I don’t really know where the phasing or the melodies or anything for ‘Blood Moon’ came from. It felt like it just came out of my soul, which sounds so pretentious, but it was just fuelled by this deep pain and grief, as both of these songs were.”
10
“You & Me (The Dog Song)” by Nerina Pallot
Written by: Nerina Pallot
For: Her dog Maggie
Non-album track (2021)
When Nerina Pallot was asked to write a song that would soundtrack a new ad campaign by veterinary charity PDSA, all she knew in advance was that the short clip would have a dog and a young girl in it. “What could I offer but a song about the love of my life, Maggie?” she wrote in her newsletter. “As she eases into old age, and sleeps more, snores more loudly than ever and has stopped barking at owls because she can’t hear them anymore, it occurred to me that never was there a better time to write a love song to my best canine friend, and what she means to me.”
11
“Cracker Jack” by Dolly Parton
Written by: Dolly Parton
Inspired by: Her adopted stray Cracker Jack
From the album: Jolene (1974)
Originally recorded in 1973 but not officially released until a remastered and expanded reissue of her classic album Jolene some 30-odd years later, “Cracker Jack” is a song about a stray dog that Parton adopted as a child and the bond between them. “Even though they don’t live as long as people, dogs leave lasting memories,” she wrote in her book Dolly Parton, Songteller. “They have that unconditional love. You can tell them anything, and they accept it.”
Parton also honoured Cracker Jack’s memory in an episode of her Netflix anthology series, Dolly Parton’s Heartstrings. In the episode “Cracker Jack”, in which four old friends reunite for a girls’ weekend, one of the women remembers her dog who died while protecting her from a rattlesnake.
12
“A Dog Called Money” by PJ Harvey
Written by: Polly Jean Harvey
Inspired by: The pet dog of a female rapper
From the album: The Hope Six Demolition Project (2017)
PJ Harvey’s divisive ninth studio album raised a few hackles for its somewhat ill-judged documentary-style reporting from disadvantaged and war-torn neighbourhoods from the US to Kosovo and Afghanistan, but The Hope Six Demolition Project did have some moments of vivid storytelling. “A Dog Called Money” is one of those, describing life as Harvey saw it in the historic Anacostia neighbourhood of Washington DC. In the accompanying documentary that shares the song’s name, we learn that Money was a dog belonging to a young, queer female rapper and gang leader in Anacostia. In one scene, the dog is shown drinking vodka as if it were water.
13
“The Floyd Song (Sunrise)” by Miley Cyrus
Written by: Wayne Coyne, Dennis Coyne, and Steven Drozd
For: Her dog Floyd
From the album: Miley Cyrus & Her Dead Petz (2015)
Miley Cyrus is 100% a dog person and, up until he was killed by a coyote attack in 2014, the favourite of her “dog army” was Floyd, an Alaska Klee Kai that she’d adopted as a puppy. Co-written with members of The Flaming Lips, “The Floyd Song (Sunrise)” pays tribute to her golden child with one of her loveliest, wobbliest vocals, packaged with Oklahoma band’s signature, kitsch-adjacent foibles.
Posting to social media on the second anniversary of Floyd’s death, which happened while she was away from home on tour, Cyrus wrote, “I’ll never forget thinking it was the most fucked up April Fool’s joke of all time,” adding, “He is with me more now in spirit than he could’ve ever been physically… never ever ever will I forget my very special baby boy.” During his short life, Floyd appeared in the music video for “We Can’t Stop” and as a giant inflatable that appeared on stage with Cyrus during her Bangerz tour. Cyrus has a tattoo in his honour.
14
“October Song” by Amy Winehouse
Written by: Amy Winehouse, Matt Rowe, and Stefan Skarbek
For: Her pet canary Ava
From the album: Frank (2003)
Amy Winehouse didn’t have Ava for very long, as the little canary passed away after just a few months. “I was devastated,” she told the audience at the North Sea Jazz Festival in 2004, joking. “I wrote a song for her, because I thought I might as well try and get some money back off that £120 I spent on a nice cage and all that shit.” Jazz fans will instantly recognise that “October Song” is a variation on the jazz standard “Lullaby of Birdland” – specifically the version by New Jersey-born jazz singer and pianist Sarah Vaughan. “Ava was the morning, now she’s gone / She's reborn like Sarah Vaughan” goes one lyric, as Winehouse imagines life in bird heaven surrounded by all that sweet music.
15
“Everything Reminds Me of My Dog” by Jane Siberry
Written by: Jane Siberry
For: Her border collie Gwyllym
From the album: Bound by the Beauty (1989)
Both sad and uplifting, this track by Canadian singer/songwriter Jane Siberry is dedicated to a border collie that she adopted from her ancestral home of Wales and brought to Vancouver. Although Gwyllym had all the right genetics, he apparently wasn’t all that interested in learning to herd sheep over in Canada. Having taken a few sheep herding lessons with him, Siberry decided that she was probably learning more than he was. Written after Gwyllym’s death, “Everything Reminds Me of My Dog” is full of lovely little insights that any dog person would recognise. Plus the occasional loving barb like, “Guys in bars remind me of my dog / The way it takes you so long to choose the perfect table.”
"Sunny" is out now. Bright Light Bright Light tours the UK in April.
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