Flickr user veganfeast/

The way to a music video audience's heart, it seems, is through its stomach -- or at least that's the route these videos take, with varying degrees of deliciousness.

From rank amateurs trying to grab a little YouTube stardom to established rock stars, food is a good way to establish a connection with an audience, because we've all got to eat. And if your audience loves peanut butter and jelly, chances are decent they'll like a song about peanut butter and jelly too. Perhaps that's why most of the songs on this list celebrate everyday foods -- waffles, chicken, fast food drive-thrus.

Conversely, there aren't that many musical odes to uppity or obscure foods -- songs about items like truffle oil, pig knuckles, or foie gras seem few and far between -- but that last one could potentially inspire some passionate serenades or angry protest songs. Until goose liver becomes a rich musical genre, however, there's plenty of meat-and-potatoes music to enjoy. Turn the page.

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An Family

Cooking at Crustacean

Are you a jazz fan who hasn't made New Year's Eve plans yet? Have you bought yourself a Christmas present yet? Have you bought us a Christmas present yet? If any of those apply, we've got a delicious suggestion. The very talented and magically charming Jeff Goldblum and his jazz ensemble will be playing at Crustacean and reservations are being taken, now. Roasted garlic crab and a tall drink of musical water to ring in 2013? Yes, please. Happy New Year to us everyone!

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E. Dwass

New Springsteen biography

At 63, Bruce Springsteen is known for a legacy of great music and political conscience. He's also admired for his buff-ness and extraordinarily physically demanding performances, helped by an intense workout regimen and healthy eating. So it's surprising to learn that when he was starting out on the road to stardom, he was fueled by an addiction to junk food.

In a new biography titled Bruce, by Peter Ames Carlin, we're told that as a young man, Springsteen "had the gastronomic sophistication of a feral dog, feasting on Velveeta-and-mayonnaise sandwiches, or the glistening fried chicken at the Tasty Dee-lite drive-through. Vegetables rarely made an appearance ..."

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G. Snyder

Mayer Hawthorne with burger in hand

If you're someone who subscribes to the theory that food is the new rock, then you might have see last Wednesday night as a watershed moment. Umami Burger, the L.A.-based gourmet burger chain that's set to open it's thirteenth location next week, released the first of what it's calling its "artist-exclusive burgers."

The idea of designing menu items around musicians isn't new -- back in 2008 Denny's infamously introduced a list of "rockstar" menu items including a Katy Perry-themed "Hot 'N' Cold Cherry Chocolate Cappuccino" and a "Hooburrito," a chicken strip and cheese sauce-filled abomination inspired by Hoobastank. (Apparently it did to your small intestine what their music did to your ears.) But the slicked-out Umami Burger franchise is no Denny's, of course, and you can be sure that when these burger-marketing gurus pick an artist to design a burger around, it's going to be one with plenty of hipness to spare.

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Screenshot of the Hot Cheetos & Takis video

It's not every day that a group of kids in an after-school program makes a music video that gets a million and a half views on YouTube and is deemed "the summer's final truly great jam" by, um, Rolling Stone. Even more unlikely: The video is about snacks. Well, maybe that does make a lot of sense. If you're going to get poetic about anything, hanging out in a playground in a Minneapolis community YMCA, it might be your favorite junk food. Apparently rapping makes you hungry. Especially if you're ten.

If you haven't heard about the song, you need to read Rolling Stone, or listen to NPR or read The Washington Post -- or follow Aziz Ansari on Twitter -- more often. If you haven't heard the piece, go listen to it now. It will be the first time of many.

The song is the latest performed by Y.N.RichKids, the kids of the Beats and Rhymes after-school and summer program at the Minneapolis North Community YMCA. With some professional help, the kids in the program have put together not just this tune, but eight albums since 2006. The music program, which is which is affiliated with the Nellie Stone Johnson Community School, is a way to use creative expression to address issues of bullying, drugs and violence.

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Cookie Monster

We liked Cookie Monster when we were 5. We realized we loved him seven years ago when he went nuts on Martha Stewart, begging like a pitiful junkie for the cookies she hadn't finished baking, even trying in vain to pimp out Bert for a freshly iced specimen. Now there's yet another reason to appreciate our favorite googly-eyed Chaos Muppet: "Share It Maybe," an inspired, cookie-centric video spoof of Canadian singer Carly Rae Jepsen's "Call Me Maybe," complete with dancing cubicle workers and a band (sort of) tapping away on kiddie instruments.

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Santa Monica Farmers Market

Have a guitar? Like to warble Velvet Underground tunes in a voice huskier than an ear of corn? Play blues solos through an amp the size of a cereal box? If your idea of a good gig is creating a soundtrack for the ogling of vegetables and grass-fed beef, you may want to apply for the honor of providing musical entertainment at the Santa Monica Sunday Farmers Market.

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A. Scattergood

Jamie Oliver on a mission ... to find lost Joy Division tapes.

Update: 2/15/12 3:00 p.m. We should have known this was as bogus as the prospect of a goat on a leash getting down (in the video) to a band bolstered by the drumming talents of a man known to cheerily carve and cook domesticated beasts. NME was wrong and so were we. The treasures used to reside in the vault of a bank that once occupied the same site as the Manchester restaurant. Whoah.

Perhaps it's fitting that master tapes of Joy Division and New Order recordings would surface in the basement of a Manchester restaurant owned by Jamie Oliver, the once-Naked Chef and former drummer of the late and probably unlamented Brit-pop band Scarlet Division. We imagine Oliver himself dug up the tapes with his own bare, dirt-encrusted fingers. According to NME, the basement stash, which also included a pirate-like triumvirate of guns, gold and jewelry, is estimated to be worth £1.1 million. The whole find reportedly was handed off to the Treasury.

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caryatidxx/flickr

Ingredient No. 1 in Tacos "Culver City"

Last week, Good. Food. Stories. compiled a few highlights from the early '90s alt-teen mag Sassy's Eat This column. The highlights? Evan Dando's "Morning Noonan Knight" chocolate sauce for ice cream and Kim Gordon's recipe for tuna fish tacos "Culver City." The husky-voiced Sonic Youth bassist developed the latter when she was a student at the Otis Art Institute (now known as the Otis College of Art and Design) in the early '70s.

Hinging on a can of "white, dolphin-safe" tuna, a "glob" of mayonnaise and "as-fresh-as-you-can-find" corn tortillas, the recipe is rudimentary, and yet the sort of satisfying, low-cost, low-effort concoction many of us associate with student days. For some, it's egg sandwiches on hot dog buns; for others, it's Hamburger Helper without the hamburger. We're not making that up. A college housemate prepared it on many occasions, filling our shotgun flat with noxious, powdery fumes. In light of such crimes against lunch, Gordon's tacos seem positively refined.

LidoLido in the "Chop It Up" video

If you're looking for a Justin Bieber clone who can rap with all the finesse and complexity of a fourth-grader, LidoLido is your boy and "Chop It Up" is your song. The Norwegian teen "hip-hop" "star" (we use both of those words loosely) has channeled his love of "the entire American lifestyle" including "the food, basketball, the language" into this oddball, one-take music video set entirely in a kitchen. [Video after the jump.]

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