20 Best Songs About Siblings of All Time

PUP lead singer Stefan Babcock and his sister have a funny tradition of taking each other on terrifying camping trips. As described in this 2019 pop-punk rager, they’ve gone rafting through sewage and barely survived freak Chilean snowstorms. “I’m not trying to stick it to you,” Babcock sings to his sis, hella annoyed but somehow still enjoying himself. “But who thought of this in the first place?”

With brass and organ reminiscent of Britain’s pre-rock music-hall days, “Come Dancing” is a sweet song about how time passes and people change but certain things stay the same. It’s all about Kinks leader Ray Davies’ sister—a onetime teenage heartbreaker who’s now all grown up, worrying about her daughter smooching boys on the front steps. This being a Kinks tune, there’s a whiff of melancholy, and it comes in the final verse: “She knows they get away with things she never could,” Davies sings of his big sis. “But if I asked her, I wonder if she would.”

Best remembered as the theme to TV’s Malcolm in the Middle, “Boss of Me” is a punk-ska anthem for nerdy younger brothers and sisters everywhere. While the lyrics don’t explicitly mention sibling squabbling, it’s about refusing to be pushed around by someone just because they’ve got a few years and/or inches on you. The lesson: “Life is unfair.”

When the King gets cheated on, he doesn’t throw in the towel. He simply works his way down the sibling chain and gives his two-timing ex’s kid sister a try. “Little sister don’t you do what your big sister done,” Elvis warns over twangy guitars with just a hint of menace in his voice. Or else what—he goes after the mother?

Penned by Bernard Edwards and Nile Rodgers of Chic, this disco-soul solidarity anthem applies to all kinds of families—not just the ones united by blood. “Just let me state for the record,” the ladies of Sister Sledge sing, “we’re giving love in a family dose.” Guaranteed to make even the most dysfunctional siblings butt-bump on the dance floor

The harmonica is but one of many heartwarming elements in this song about brothers helping brothers, no matter the cost. The title phrase comes from a slogan for Boys Town, a famed community for homeless youth, and the piano comes compliments of Elton John, who falls in with the tastefully saccharine strings to deliver an emotional knockout.

Indie-pop singer Ella Vos has never shied away from heavy subjects. She’s sung about abortion and postpartum depression, and this 2016 song was written after her younger brother was involved in a car accident. “Stay close, little brother,” Vos sings tenderly, promising to always have his back. “I know your true colors.”

Legend has it that Billy Idol wrote this taunting 1983 new-wave classic as a dig against his sister, who was pregnant and engaged. Except there was no drama with her real-life shotgun wedding. With lines like, “Hey little sister, what have you done?” Idol was thinking back to a time when such things were considered highly scandalous. Idol has described this song’s narrator as an “incestous, kind of sick brother,” and that adds a whole other level to the bizarre family drama he so gleefully describes.

As co-leader of the pioneering power-pop band Big Star, Chris Bell co-wrote and sang poignant, tuneful guitar ditties that should’ve been huge hits. “You and Your Sister,” the B-side to the debut solo single he released in 1978, shortly before his death, is a pure-hearted love song for a girl whose sister thinks he’s no good. This doubting sis is only mentioned in one line—which happens to feature harmony vocals from Bell’s old bandmate Alex Chilton—but her disapproval is clearly dragging this innocent soul down.

Despite the lighthearted vibe of the music—based around a sample of Wayne Fontana and the Mindbenders’ 1965 No. 1 “The Game of Love”—this tale of addiction is no joke. De La rhymer Pos is angry and frustrated as he watches his brother graduate from weed to crack, with predictably disastrous results. “Unlike the other drugs where you had control,” he raps, “this substance has engulfed your body and soul.”

Some kids dream of being astronauts or pop stars or the first woman president. On this sweet piece of ‘70s pop, Diana Ross tells her best friend—presumably her brother, though not necessarily—that all she wants in the future is for them to remain close. Note the feminist subtext in the second verse: She’s already figuring society will make him an engineer and her a perfumed lady in gloves.

Supposedly driven by concern, not scorn, Lily Allen spends the entirety of this song—the fourth single off her excellent 2006 debut, Alright, Still—marching through her brother’s room and cataloging his shortcomings. It seems he’s a lazy stoner addicted to TV and video games, and Lily thinks he needs to get off his butt and find a job. Thankfully, he did. Alfie Allen is now a successful actor best known for playing Theon Greyjoy on Game of Thrones. He even earned an Emmy nomination in 2019.

Despite the slightly flippant tone he takes with his little sister, Martha, Rufus sings this gorgeous piano ballad straight from the heart. Their mother is sick, he’s out of town, and now more than ever, they need to put aside petty grievances and help each other out. The way he stretches out the final quavering “call me back” is enough to make anyone with a sibling reach for the phone.

The words aren’t intelligible unless you read along with the lyric sheet and use some imagination, but this ghostly 2010 electro-pop jam is all about feeling. It finds Grimes on a late-night stroll with her only friend, the sister who’ll keep all her secrets—like why she needs to “cry on the 4th of July,” or why she sings like a mystical nymph who’s wandered into the world of Twin Peaks.

The Purple One has a gas courting controversy on this infamous ode to incest. “I was only 16 but I guess that’s no excuse,” goes the opening line, and it’s all downhill from there. The only thing even remotely clean on this Dirty Mind gem is Prince’s guitar sound. Otherwise: filthy.

So many emotions in this alt-rock favorite—the first one being anger, which Hatfield spells out rather plainly in the first verse: “I hate my sister / she’s such a bitch.” Juliana also respects her big sis for being cool, envies her for being good at everything, and misses her because she left home before she could take her to see the Violent Femmes

Art Brut lead talker Eddie Argos can only sit back and watch while his 22-year-old brother goes mental for indie rock. “There’s a noise in his head and he’s out of control,” a frazzled Argos says over precisely the kind of punky guitars his troubled sibling probably fancies. If Argos were really concerned, he’d have made this a jazz song.

As the drummer in a major rock band, this song’s author, Kelly Keagy, knows exactly what’s on guys’ minds when they offer to take a young girl “motoring.” That’s why he delivers this warning to his kid sister—Christy in real life, Christian in this schlocky power ballad, thanks to a bandmate mishearing the lyric.

A cop has certain responsibilities to his community, but they don’t trump the obligations he has to his family. That’s the moral of this story—a real heartbreaker about a mostly honest policeman and his no-good brother, Franky. It all ends at the Canadian border, where Bruce’s beautifully sketched lawman character realizes there are some messes he can’t clean up.