Nobody sat down and decided that “songs with dogs in them” should be a genre. It just quietly became one, the way most good things do. If you want a founding document, a reasonable place to start is 1935 and a country tune called “Old Shep.” The Red Foley and Arthur Willis song follows a beloved shepherd dog to the end of his life, and it is an unapologetic tearjerker, the kind that leaves the singer too choked up to finish the line. It hit so hard that it became a standard, cut by artists as different as the hard-living country outlaws and the wholesome radio acts of the day, and Led Zeppelin later tipped a hat to it on 1970’s “Bron-Y-Aur-Stomp.” Turn on the radio nearly a century later and the impulse has not faded one bit.
Call it Pup Pop: the sprawling, cross-genre tradition of artists handing the emotional spotlight to their dogs. And here is the thing about these videos, the reason they keep going viral. In almost every one, the dog is the best performer on set. They cannot fake it, they cannot oversing it, and they have no idea a camera is rolling, which is exactly why they wreck us. Here are seven to watch, sorted less by chart position than by how hard they hit.
The ones that will make you cry
Lewis Capaldi, “Wish You the Best”
If you are in the mood to sob, start here. Scottish balladeer Lewis Capaldi built the video around a loyal dog grieving a late owner, and it went viral for the obvious reason. As the chorus aches over someone who is gone, the dog’s quiet devastation carries the whole thing better than any human actor could. Capaldi himself posted it with a warning that amounts to: show this to someone you want to make weep. Consider yourself warned.
The classic weeper, updated
The whole “Old Shep” lineage still runs straight through pop today, which is why a video like Capaldi’s lands so hard. We are primed for it. A dog on screen plus a sad chord is a nearly unfair combination, and songwriters have known it for ninety years.
The art-pop entries
Buzzy Lee, “Cinderblock”
Sasha Spielberg, recording as Buzzy Lee, turns “Cinderblock” into a Kate Bush-adjacent synth-pop fever dream about the trap of chasing perfection. The video is stocked with impossibly composed, flawlessly behaved dogs whose restraint honestly defies belief. It is mesmerizing, and it will leave you with one urgent question: who is the on-set trainer, and can we hire them?
Jonah Yano, “Portrait of a Dog”
We really do start to resemble our dogs over time, or so the sly premise of this track suggests. It comes from Montreal-based, Japanese-born singer Jonah Yano. The accompanying short film splits the screen between Yano and a Dalmatian echoing each other’s movements. The artist says the song is really about how musicians get flattened from artists into commodities, but the curious pup keeps hauling that lofty concept back to earth, which is, of course, what dogs are for.
Corook, “The Dog”
The one that put Pup Pop back on TikTok’s radar. Corook (Corinne Savage to her family) is a rising songwriter behind hits like “If I Were a Fish,” but “The Dog” is the one that guts people. It is a gentle, aching take on the least romantic question of any breakup: who gets to keep the dog? A sweet video starring her own cuddly best friend seals it. Finally, a song for the custody battle nobody talks about.
The rowdy ones and the icons
Mudhoney, “Little Dogs”
For the grunge heads. The Seattle lifers first made their name with the scuzzy anthem “Touch Me I’m Sick,” and frontman Mark Arm loves recounting how a label exec once told him he had a marketable bit going: dogs and sickness. The band leaned all the way in. “Little Dogs” is a fuzzed-out, affectionate tribute to every pup loitering at the dog park, delivered in Arm’s gloriously grimy snarl. His thesis statement: “I like little dogs.” Not a tearjerker. A good time.
Sublime and the legend of Lou Dog
No Pup Pop list is complete without the most famous dog in music. Lou Dog, the Dalmatian belonging to late Sublime frontman Bradley Nowell, was practically a band member, wandering through the group’s videos and stamped onto their artwork. He is the patron saint of the genre: a real dog, woven into a real band’s mythology, immortalized without ever being asked to do a single trick.
Meghan Trainor, “I’m a Dog Mom”
And for proof the genre is alive and thriving, there is Meghan Trainor’s unabashedly goofy “I’m a Dog Mom,” a bubblegum anthem for everyone whose personality is now ninety percent their dog. It is silly, it knows it is silly, and it captures something true about modern pet love: we are not embarrassed anymore. We made it a pop song.
Why the genre never dies
Trends come and go, but the dog-as-muse never gets old, and the reason is simple. A dog gives us the one thing pop music is forever chasing: uncomplicated, unconditional feeling. When a songwriter wants to say something about loyalty, grief, home, or love with no strings attached, reaching for the dog is not a gimmick. It is the shortest possible distance to the heart. So build the playlist, cue the videos, and go hug your own four-legged co-star. They would absolutely steal the scene.
References
- Foley, Red, and Arthur Willis. “Old Shep.” Recording history and covers, AllMusic.
- uDiscoverMusic. “The Best Songs About Dogs: A Tribute To Our Four-Legged Friends.” uDiscoverMusic.
