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"Weird" Songs That Were Hits

#3
Anyone remember "Popcorn"?

Don't forget Jerry Reed and "Amos Moses" and "When you're hot, you're hot".

Then, being an old guy playing music that was old when I was born, let's not forget the Hoosier Hot Shots and "From the Indies to the Andes in His Undies" or "When There's Tears in the Eyes of a Potato".

"I Can't Dance, I've got Ants in My Pants".
"Saturday Night Fish Fry"


Gee, once I get started it may take me a while to run down.
 
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#4
oldandbold said:
Jeez, novelty songs were almost a genre of their own, and Ray Steven’s was the King. Ahab the Arab, Gitarzan, The Streak, Yakety Yak, and many more.
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I had more than a couple novelty albums in my collection as a kid in the 70s, featuring all of the those songs and more. K-tel Looney Tunes compilation, for example. For some godforsaken reason, I've had the Transfusion song by Nervous Norvus rolling through my brain recently...

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Macarena is clearly a more sexually explicit song than Brand New Key. A Spanish-born colleague of my wife's (she's a Gr. 1. teacher) was horrified to learn that some Canadian teachers sometimes play this song in the classroom - to get the kids up and moving. No one's read the lyrics of that song in English, apparently!
 
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#7
I never thought “novelty” songs, as defined by most(but not all)titles mentioned above, were weird, just musical comedy bits, audio cartoons. The instrumental “Popcorn” was mentioned…That was just the sound of the future coming at you; one of, if not the, first all-synthesizer pieces aimed at the pop charts. However, even in the aftermath of psychedelia, Richard Harris’ “McArthur Park”, with its odd operatic structure and overwrought vocal(forget the cake in the rain business)struck me as a little off for Top 40 radio at the time.

The writer of that article was really reaching for an angle to dress up essentially an obit piece with not much else to say, and failed miserably. They missed what should have been at the top of the list. It came and went in a matter of two weeks when I was a kid, skyrocketed to number one, and disappeared almost immediately, either due to over-saturation or banning, but it appealed to many with a warped sense of humor, and introduced a slang phrase…

It was perfect… parents and authority figures hated it.
The B-side of the 45 was just the track backwards, and there eventually was an entire album of similarly themed songs, many quite orthodox and witty, if you weren’t offended by the subject matter.
 
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#10
Bunk McNulty said:
The author apparently has never heard the term "novelty songs." What a load of pretentious nonsense. And as I was there at the time, I can say I do not remember anyone suggesting "Brand New Key" was about sex.

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Bunk, dear Bunk... Every pop song is about k'nockin' boots.
 
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#12
dalkowski said:
Bunk, dear Bunk... Every pop song is about k'nockin' boots.
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It’s even in the name…Rock and Roll…derived from a blues lyric, “my baby rocks me with a steady roll”. It ain’t about rocking the baby to sleep, but the act of makin’ babies(if you slip up).
 
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#15
Michedelic said:
It’s even in the name…Rock and Roll…derived from a blues lyric, “my baby rocks me with a steady roll”. It ain’t about rocking the baby to sleep, but the act of makin’ babies(if you slip up).
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Which came first? Rock n' Roll or Rockabilly?

Man, I really hope the latter of the two doesn't have something to do with goats :vomit:
 
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#16
Also overlooked is the sub-genre of “teen death” songs(with the attached ghost story variant)of the very early 60’s. While adolescents go through some sort of obsession with death, these songs tapped the subconscious fear of the nuclear annihilation concerns of the time period, Cuban missile crisis and all that. Dickie Lee was the king of such stuff, “Patches”, “Laurie”, and more, plus J. Frank Wilson’s “Last Kiss”. Later on, there was maudlin stuff like Bobby Goldsboro’s “Honey”. Then, ‘recitation’ records, like Jimmy Dean’s “Big Bad John”(more death), Red Sovine’s “Phantom 309”(another ghost story), and sappy stuff like Walter Brennan’s(an actor who portrayed crotchety farm hand types)record, “Old Rivers”.
 
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#17
Bunk McNulty said:
The author apparently has never heard the term "novelty songs." What a load of pretentious nonsense. And as I was there at the time, I can say I do not remember anyone suggesting "Brand New Key" was about sex.

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As I was about 9 at the time, I remember EVERYBODY believing it was about sex.
 
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#18
turf3 said:
Anyone remember "Popcorn"?

Don't forget Jerry Reed and "Amos Moses" and "When you're hot, you're hot".

Then, being an old guy playing music that was old when I was born, let's not forget the Hoosier Hot Shots and "From the Indies to the Andes in His Undies" or "When There's Tears in the Eyes of a Potato".

"I Can't Dance, I've got Ants in My Pants".
"Saturday Night Fish Fry"


Gee, once I get started it may take me a while to run down.
Click to expand...
Don`t forget Jerry Reed`s "She got the Goldmine & I got the Shaft".
 
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