← Hit Parade | Music History and Music Trivia
Hit Parade | Music History and Music Trivia
The White and Nerdy Edition
01:24:54
Novelty songs were a tough way to make a music career. Until one self-proclaimed Weird guy turned parodies into pop classics.
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You're listening ad free on Amazon Music.
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Welcome to Hit Parade, a podcast of pop chart history from Slate Magazine about the hits from coast to coast. I'm Chris Melanfi, chart analyst, pop critic and writer of Slate's why Is this Song Number One? Series on today's show. Last month in our December 2019 episode of Hit Parade, I talked about the improbable smash that was sitting on top of Billboard's Hot 100, Mariah Carey's holiday classic All I Want for Christmas Is yous, the first Christmas song to top Billboard's Hot 100 in 61 years. That compelled us to play you the prior Christmas song to hit number one, which reached the top all the way back in 1958. Christmas, Christmas time is near As I noted, David Seville's the Chipmunk Song is less a Christmas song than a novelty record. It was still on the Hot 100 for weeks into 1959, long after the holidays were over. And in a way this wasn't surprising, because in the early rock era, novelty records were chart dominators. This was the golden era for goofy hits. A time when comical records would not only make the Hot 100 regularly, but quite frequently top the chart. A time when live comics and veteran standups won Grammys, sold piles of albums and even got on the radio.
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Hello Mother, hello Father.
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And while the so called golden age of novelty songs was the 1950s and 60s, right through the 70s, novelty and comedy songs did serious chart business. The thing about novelty records though, what distinguishes them from Christmas songs is they are a hard way to sustain a career. Sure, some novelty hits are holiday related, which does make them perennials. But most novelty hits, by their very nature, are flashes in the pan meant to capture a specific cultural moment. That's what makes the one major novelty artist who broke in the 1980s, the one whose name now leaps immediately to most Americans minds when they hear the phrase novelty song. So exceptional he pulled it off. He built a decades long career out of being a goofball. But before we talk about the man who actually called himself Weird, I will explain how the charts both helped him and made his job so challenging, thus making his chart topping success that much more amazing. You might say the magic ingredient was poke powder. And as we enter the 2020s, we'll even talk about how this accordion playing national treasure could come back and command the hit parade again more than four decades after he started.
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They see me mowing my front mind I know they're all thinking I'm so.
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Wide and dirty and that's where your hit parade marches today, the week ending October 21, 2006, when Weird Al Yankovic's White and Nerdy reached number nine on Billboard's Hot 100. It was Al's first top 10 hit in a multi decade career and the start of a new age for novelty songs on the charts. Before we get there, let's talk about the time B A before Al the Golden Age of the Novelty Hit. This is often the moment in Hit parade episodes where I offer provisos and definitions. And for this episode we have a real head scratcher. What exactly is a novelty record? Who decides? The recording artist? The music industry? The public? In a way, they all do. Because novelty is in the eye, ear and funny. Bone of the beholder.
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Take out the papers and the trash.
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For example, consider this classic by R and B group the Coasters, Yakety yak, a number one hit in 1958 written and produced by Jerry Lieber and Mike Stoler. Both that legendary songwriting duo and the Coasters are in the Rock and Roll hall of Fame, and the song is hilarious, a series of drill sergeant commands by a comically pissed off parent at a surly 50s teenager. Okay, but is Yakety Yak a novelty record? Joel Whitburn, the authoritative chart statistician who publishes books tracking Billboard hits, does not tag the socially satirical Yakety Yak a novelty song. However, Whitburn does claim that the Coaster's follow up hit, also written by Lieber and Stoller, was a novelty record. The equally funny Charlie Brown, a number two hit in 1959. Is this song a novelty because it name checks a comic strip character? Music scholar Steve Otfinosky, in his book the Golden Age of Novelty Songs, includes both Yakety Yak and Charlie Brown in his study of the genre, which he says has a proud tradition. And that's another thing. Is it even insulting to call a record a novelty? Because both Yakety Yak and Charlie Brown are pretty great. Propulsive, witty, clever, who's always goofing in the hall? We could do this all day in this episode. Talk about the mysterious distinctions between novelty and normal hits. Is this number one hit from the 80s by Austrian singer Falco a novelty or a sly mash up of the classical figure Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and the then new musical idiom of rap. Speaking of rap, what about this 1992 number one smash by Sir Mixalot? We devoted a large chunk of our 90s rap episode of Hit Parade to Baby Got Back because it's an important song for the emergence of hip hop on the charts in that decade. But it starts with a spoken word comedy bit and the whole song is a laugh riot. And yet few tag baby got back a novelty.
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I like big butts and I cannot lie you other brothers can deny.
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One more comparison. In the 60s, this song by Australian Rolf Harris, Tie Me Kangaroo Down Sport, a number three US hit in 1963, was regarded as a culturally specific novelty hit, a borderline offensive ditty that trafficked in Australian stereotypes for non Australians amusement. But 20 years later, this 1983 men at work number one hit trafficked in many of the same snarky Australian tropes. But down under was regarded as a whimsical pop song and a new wave classic. While Rolf Harris Aussie satirizing hit is called a novelty, Men at Works is not. My point is not to come up with a definitive answer to what a novelty record is. Rather, I want to emphasize that the border between so called serious hits and novelties is thin indeed. Novelty may be like pornography. To paraphrase a Supreme Court justice, you know it when you hear it. Several artists we will discuss have walked that line throughout their careers. In fact, dating back to the days of Tin Pan Alley, novelty songs were such a fixture of on the Hit parade that some of the most celebrated singers found them irresistible vehicles for getting on the radio.
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How Much Is that Doggy in the Window? The one with the waggly tail?
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That's traditional pop vocalist Patti page. With the 1953 number one hit how much Is that Doggie in the Window, Page recorded all sorts of songs and scored hits with everything from the classic Tennessee Waltz to Allegheny Moon. But Doggy in the Window, complete with barking sounds, was one of her biggest. It is whimsical, if not exactly funny, but it was part of a long tradition of comical or quirky records that were hits for everyone from Al Jolson to Tex Williams. It was somewhat rarer for a recording artist to focus exclusively on comedy records. But spike Jones, the 1940s and 50s performer, not to be confused with the modern day film director, was a pioneer of the novelty form.
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It's a beautiful day for the Race. Stoogehand is the favorite today. Assault is in there. Dog biscuit is 3 to 1. Safety pin has been scratched.
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Spike Jones was not only a bandleader and host of a TV variety show, he was a creator and auteur of comical recordings. His songs could be heard as a satire of the big band era, replacing musical notes with obnoxious clatter in Jones hands a piece of music as grand as Rossini's William Tell Overture would turn utterly madcap instruments competing with noisemakers. Spike Jones and his City Slickers even scored a holiday perennial and novelty standard with with his 1949 number one hit All I Want for Christmas is my two front teeth.
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All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth my two front teeth see my two front teeth.
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With his exposure in a range of media, Spike Jonze would serve as an inspiration to generations of novelty recording artists, including Weird Al Yankovic. But Spike Jonze's hits were largely confined to the pre rock era. Of course, rock and roll had its own manic energy that lent itself to laughs. Hello baby, yeah.
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This is the big map of speaking.
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It is remarkable how many early rock roll hits can be read as basically comical. The Big Bopper's Chantilly Lace is tagged by Joel Whitburn and other rock historians as a novelty record, even as he is also regarded as a rockabilly pioneer. The same goes for multi genre singer Bobby Darin, who broke as a rock and roller with the kitschy catchy Splish Splash.
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Splish Splash Forgot about the bell I went and put my dancing shoes on. Yay.
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And later in the decade, rock pioneer Bo Diddley scored Believe It or not his only top 40 pop hit with say Man, a single that is essentially mostly dialogue as two shit talking friends rank on each other over a beat.
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What's that boy? I wanna tell you about your girlfriend what about my girl?
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Rock and roll was also the meta text for another form of parody hit, the so called Break in record invented by producer Dickey Goodman. His 1956 hit with partner Bill Buchanan, the Flying Saucer reinvented Orson Welles War of the Worlds as a spoken word news broadcast punctuated by snippets of then current rock and roll hits. Goodman failed to get permission for any of the song samples. It was arguably the rock era's first mixtape mashup.
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This is brat your outer space. This jockey with a request for Earth, Earth Angel. Earth Angel.
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In general, comedy records were a ripe forum for experimentation. As we discussed in last month's hit parade, eventual Chipmunks creator David Seville helped refine the art of sped up recording with his 1958 number one hit the Witch Doctor.
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I told the witch doctor I was in love with you and then the witch doctor he told me what to do. He said that.
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And weeks later the high pitched recording trick was replicated by another chart topper, Sheb Woolley's the Purple People Eater. Novelty records were so omnipresent in 1958 that Woolies hit even included a reference to another comical smash. Woolies backup singers. Snuck in a reference to Short Shorts, a song by the Royal Teens that had peaked at number three just weeks. These novelty records were in dialogue with each other, sometimes openly. Joe South, a young singer who a decade later would win the song of the Year Grammy for Games People Play, scored his first chart hit in the summer of 1958 with the mashup record the Purple People Eater meets the Witch Doctor.
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I got real shook I heard the strangest sound I saw the Purple People Eater and to my surprise I saw the witch doctor Sitting by his side Whoa, the witch Doctor had.
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By the start of the 60s, novelty records were topping the Hot 100 on the regular 1960 alone had three chart topping novelty hits and sonically, they were all over the map. Whether it was Brian Hyland's chirpy ode to a tiny bathing suit, very risque by 1960s standards, Or a lurching party record about a caveman named Alley OOP recorded by a fictional one off Los Angeles band who called themselves the Hollywood Argyles, Or the half spoken word Mr. Custer, a faux lament by a soldier in 1876 pleading with his general not to send him into the battle of Little Bighorn. The track was fronted by a man named Larry Verne, who'd never sung in his life but had a memorable Southern drawl.
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Please don't make me go.
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Of these artists, only Brian Hyland of itsy bitsy teeny weeny yellow polka dot bikini fame went on to further recording success. And that was his last novelty hit. However, the producer of the Hollywood Argyles, Gary Paxton, would produce an even bigger novelty smash two years later. Bobby Pickett's Halloween perennial instructional dance record, the Monster mash, a number one in October 1962.
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It's now the Monster Mash and it's a graveyard smash. It's caught on in a flash it's now the mash it's now the Monster.
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Mash Generally, novelty records were a producer's method, and the artists were incidental. The 1961 number one mother in law, a classic of New Orleans R and B and a hilarious plaint about a meddling maternal figure, was the first big hit for legendary writer and producer Alan Toussaint. As for the lead artist of Mother in Law, New Orleans singer Ernie K do it was his only only top 40 hit. On top of all of these musical novelties, the early 60s was a boom time for straight up comedy Recordings by standup and nightclub performers. Performers like Bob Newhart. Yes, that Bob Newhart, the future TV legend was, I kid you not a comedy LP selling Titan. In the early 60s, Newhart's 1960 album the Button Down Mind of Bob Newhart topped the Billboard album chart for 14 weeks and won the 1961 Grammy for album of the year.
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How fast were you going when Mr. Adams jumped from the car?
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75.
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And where was that? In your driveway.
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Two years later that same Grammy was won by another spoken word comedy lp, the First Family, a blockbuster album by comedian and John F. Kennedy impersonator Vaughn Meter.
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I noticed that you didn't either at dinner tonight or at dinner last night.
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Would you tell us why, please?
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Well, let me say this about that now. Number one, in my opinion, the fault does not lie as much with the salad as it does with the dressing being used on the salad.
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At a time in the early 60s when the long playing 3313 RPM album was only beginning to overtake the 45 RPM single, live comedy in front of an audience proved a durable seller of of LP records. And if a live comedian could tell jokes while singing, all the better.
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Harvey's a CPA. He works for IBM. He went to MIT and got his PhD.
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Former TV producer Alan Sherman made a bigger name for himself writing comic parodies of well known public domain songs with goofy lyrics not unlike Spike Jones a decade earlier. Sherman scored three number one LPs filled with Borscht Belt style parody songs in 1962 and 63, back to back to back. He even scored a number two single in the summer of 63 with his dance of the Hours parody about a boy riding home from from summer camp. Hello Mudda, hello Fada, hello Mada.
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Hello Fada. Here I am at Camp Granada Camp is very entertaining and they say we'll have some fun if it stops raining.
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In a more erudite vein, piano playing college professor Tom Lehrer satirized the fears and foibles of Cold War era society with jaunty Cole Porter like melodies.
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If you visit American city you will find it very pretty. Just two things of which you must beware. Don't drink the water and don't breathe the air. Pollution. Pollution.
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After a half decade of performing his original ditties in front of audiences, but both in clubs and on Television, Lehrer's 1965 album that was the year that was cracked the Billboard top 20 and eventually went gold. By the late 60s, after the British invasion and hippie rock began to Take over the charts, the line between novelty records and rock hits became blurry. Some novelty hits still read as pure comedy. Singer songwriter Jerry Samuels, while under the influence of psychedelics, wrote a perverse song about going mad, complete with chipmunk like sped up vocals. Released under the moniker Napoleon the 14th. They're coming to take me away haha. Reached number three in the summer of 1966. They're coming to take me away haha.
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They're coming to take to take me away Ho ho hehe ha ha. To the funny farm where life is beautiful all the time and I'll be happy to see those nice young men in their clean white coats and they're coming to take me away.
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Interestingly, several listeners noticed in 1966 that the Napoleon the 14th song featured the same marching drumbeat as a very recent Bob Dylan stoner anthem.
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Everybody Must Get Stoned.
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Rainy day women, number 12 and 35, had reached number two on the charts just weeks earlier in the spring of 66. Of course, this being Dylan, no one considered his hit a novelty. There was a similarly thin line between novelty and rock credibility on Snoopy versus the Red Baron, the breakthrough hit for Florida band the Royal Guardsman. Their whimsical homage to Charles Schulz's comic strip canine reached number two in early 1967. By the way, the second number two hit named for a Peanuts character after the coaster's 1959 hit Charlie Brown.
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Get that Man. So he asked the Great Pumpkin for a new battle plan. He challenged the German to a real dog fight while the Baron was laughing. It got him in his sight.
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If that little rock breakdown sounded familiar, it's because the Royal Guardsman's Snoopy included an intentionally odd, obvious allusion to the McCoy's 1965 number one hit, Hang On Sloopy. Indeed, throughout the psychedelic era, the novelty status of hit records was debatable. Especially when 60s pop took on the sounds of music hall and and vaudeville. Novelty song scholar Steve Otfinowski claims that the two number one hits by Herman's Hermits, both juvenile revivals of music hall ditties, are in Essence Novelty Records. Mrs. Brown, you've got a lovely daughter.
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Mrs. Brown, you've got A Lovely Daughter Mrs. Brown.
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And I'm Enry. Excuse me, Henry the Eighth, I am.
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Second verse, same as the first.
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A year later, British novelty act the New Vaudeville Band scored their only chart topping hit, Winchester Cathedral, with an old timey megaphone like vocal.
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When Manchester Cathedral, you're bringing me down.
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Again. None of these trippy hits was tagged a novelty by the music business. But what was the difference between these singles and the more outlandish, knowingly tweed novelty hit Tiptoe through the Tulips with me by 1968's ukulele playing four falsetto singing Tiny Tim. Tiny Tim was such a pop culture sensation in 1968 and 69. His televised marriage to Ms. Vicky on the Tonight show drew tens of millions of viewers. That his single hit the top 20 and his album reached the top 10 and rode the charts for more than half a year. On the countryside of the radio dial, Johnny Cash knew the power of a good novelty song. He recorded a stem winding story song written by cartoonist and songwriter Shel Silverstein called A Boy Named sue, and he took it to number two on the Hot 100 in 1969. His biggest ever pop hit, My name is Sue.
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How do you do? Now you gonna die.
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Cash never took himself too seriously. Deep into the 70s, he scored his biggest country no. 1 of the decades and his last pop top 40 hit with the tall tale One Piece at a Time, a novelty record about a GM plant worker building his own Cadillac by smuggling home auto parts from his job.
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I'd get it one piece at a time and it wouldn't cost me a dime. You know it's me when I come through your town.
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And in the early 70s, another rock pioneer, Chuck Berry, scored his only number one with the Lewd novelty My Ding a Lane, recorded live in front of a British audience who lustily sang along. By the 70s, novelty records were a big enough genre to inspire their own radio program. Created by a man born Barry Hansen, who re dubbed himself Dr. Demento. Hello there, this is Dr. Demento.
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We're on the radio here. Wind up your radio. Westwood One presents the Dr. Demento Show. Two hours of mad music launched at.
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A Pasadena radio station and eventually syndicated at dozens of stations nationwide, the Dr. Demento show would play the kind of crazy ephemera too weird for the top 40.
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Fish heads, fish heads. Roly poly Fish heads. Fish heads, fish.
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The Dr. Demento show would prove a formative influence on a generation of novelty performers. In later years, Hansen would claim that he launched the show because novelty records were starting to disappear from the radio airwaves after rock turned more serious in the late 60s. Airplay was indeed often the limiting factor. With funny or novelty records, the amusement would become less amusing amid the repetition of top 40 radio rotation. But truth be told, novelty records could still become hits in the 70s. One musician even spent the decade Successfully walking the line between serious and silly. Ray Stevens was the Iroquois, irrepressible Energizer bunny of novelty hitmakers. He had been knocking around the music industry since the early 60s. He'd even scored a couple of top 40 novelty hits early in the decade, like Ahab the Arab. But Stevens stepped up his game toward the end of the 60s. Guitar Zan, an ode to a loincloth clad rock and roller, was his first gold single in 1969. During the 60s, Stevens had on occasion tried his hand at serious singles, scoring minor hits with tracks like Sunday Morning Coming down, which was later a country hit for Johnny Cash. But it wasn't until the 70s that Ray Stevens career took an unexpectedly earnest turn. On the 1971 hit Everything Is Beautiful, Ray Stevens turned kitsch into canticle. The single was received as a straight faced inspirational song, complete with a children's chorus chorus, an anthem of tolerance that was even played in churches. Everything Is Beautiful won Grammys in both the pop and inspirational categories in 1971 and it was played on easy listening and even country stations. But Stevens couldn't stay in this lane. By the mid-70s, he put his tongue firmly back in his cheek. In 1974, Stevens jumped on a fad sweeping the nation and the world. Streaking from sporting events to universities and even the Academy Awards. Pranksters were sprinting new public like never before. Never one to pass up a whimsical trend, Ray Stevens wrote and recorded the Streak, which topped both the US and UK charts in the spring of 74. It even reached number three on the American country chart, pointing the direction that Stephen's career was headed. By the end of the decade, Stevens brand of humor had been most warmly embraced by country audiences and he began aiming his novelty tracks like the 1981 hit Shriners Convention directly at country radio. Stevens politics also turned more conservative. Later decades would find him scoring country hits with the likes of Osama Yo Mama and Caribou Barbie. However, 1974's the Streak remains Ray Stevens biggest ever hit. But Ray Stevens remained the exception. A mostly novelty hitmaker with more than one hit. To Dr. Demento's point, by the 70s, novelty singles were largely one offs. C.W. mcCall, another country pop crossover artist who like Stevens, tried to build a career out of novelty hits, managed one chart topping smash in the winter of 1976 that capitalized on the growing fad of Citizens band or CB radio, the trucker anthem Convoy. CW McCall, an Iowa singer who invented his truck driver Persona for an advertising campaign and wound up assuming it for decades never reached the top 40 again. The 70s were a kitschy decade in general, and like Ray Stevens's song about streaking or C.W. mcCall's song about CB radios, no cultural trend escaped novelty hit status. Dickey Goodman, who in the 50s had invented the so called break in record, scored another such smash in 1975 with the number four hit Mr. Jaws, a combination spoken word and pop song satire of Steven Spielberg's blockbuster shark movie.
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We are here on the beach where a giant shark has just eaten a girl swimmer. Well, Mr. Jaws, how was it? Darn. Oh my. And what did she say when you grabbed her? Please, mister, please, I know sharks are stupid.
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And in 1976, radio DJ Rick Dees took a break from from his day job to satirize disco music with Disco Duck, a number one hit that would make a cameo appearance in the movie Saturday Night Fever a year later. Speaking of media personalities moonlighting from their jobs, I would be remiss if I left the 70s without talking about the recording success of TV's Saturday Night Live. SNL's first five years are renowned for several reasons including reinventing TV sketch comedy for a new generation and introducing a new wave of comic performers like like Chevy Chase, Gilda Radden and Bill Murray. But one underrated aspect of Saturday Night Live's launch was its impact on the music business. Of course, each episode featured a musical performer which by itself helped break various artists. But the SNL cast members, the so called Not Ready for Primetime players, were also music dabblers whose dabblings sold a lot of records. The Blues Brothers were an invention of SNL cast members John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd, originally devised as a warm up act for SNL's studio studio audience. Belushi's and Ackroyd's performances as Jake and Elwood Blues, complete with kitschy 50s style suits and fedoras, eventually made the live TV show itself. Then, with the help of future David Letterman bandleader Paul Schaefer, Belushi and Ackroyd assembled an actual Blues brothers band with legendary sidemen from Booker T and the MGs. And their album Briefcase Full of Blues was a no kidding number one LP on the Billboard album chart. It even spun off top 40 hits like their straight faced cover of Sam and Dave's Soul man and their novelty hit Rubber Biscuit. What's more, in January 1979, the Week briefcase Full of Blues broke into the album chart's top three, it was sitting next to another LP by a Saturday Night Live Regular. Steve Martin was never an official SNL cast member, but he was the show's most frequent guest and his repeat appearances made him a comedy megastar. Martin's LP A Wild and Crazy Guy was mostly a stand up album recorded live in front of crowds in San Francisco and Denver, but it closed with a novelty track Martin wrote for and first performed on Saturday Night Live. King Tut celebrated and satirized Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamun, whose remains toured American museums in 1978 and were a cultural blockbuster. Released as a single in 78, Steve Martin's King Tut made the Hot 100's top 20 and it pushed Martin's A Wild and Crazy Guy LP to number two on the charts and double platinum. Entering the 1980s then, Novelty Records were not exactly scarce and some were even hits. But they were a tough way to build a sustained career. Tightening radio formats meant that most stations would not play comical records in regular all day rotation, especially after the launch of FM radio's so called morning zoo programs. These madcap morning shows offered a venue for novelty singles, but they might be the only time such songs would be played. So while established performers like Frank Zappa could score one off, novelty hits like 1982's Valley Girl, a number 32 hit recorded with his daughter Moon unit like.
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Oh my God, Valley Girl like totally.
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Valley Girl and Cena or pop superstar Rick Springfield could crack the top 30 with the song Bruce. A novelty hit about how Mr. Springfield's fans confused fused him with Mr. Springsteen. It was understood that these songs were never going to receive heavy radio rotation. And for performers who specialized in novelty hits like Chicago's Jump in the Saddle, The time in the spotlight was brief. Jump in the Saddle smash the Curly Shuffle sold well enough to reach number 15 in early 1984. But again its radio spins were largely confined to more morning and drive time hours. And Jump in the Saddle never cracked the Hot 100 again. Dr. Demento had a point. Novelty hits, even when they found an audience, were now no longer radio hits. It was around this time that a young protege of Dr. Demento's broke on the charts. A novelty recording artist who would go on to build the most enduring career in comical music. When we come back. How Al Became Weird. In the summer of 1979, 19 year old Alfred Yankovic, a student at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo, California, noticed that there was this punchy song dominating the radio. It was My Sharona, the top hit of 1979. Recorded new wave rock band the Knack and One Thing Al knew right away, this would be a funny song to parody. Al Yankovic had already spent years listening to the Dr. Demento show and home recording his own comical songs played on accordion. Al had even passed a tape of some of his songs to Demento. When the radio host visited Al's high school in 1976, Demento played a couple of Al's songs on the show. Now at Cal Poly, Yankovic took his accordion into a bathroom across from the college radio station and recorded his own version of the Knack's hit Ooh, My.
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Little hungry One, Hungry one Open up a package of my bologna I think the toast is done, the toast is done Top it with a little of.
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My bologna Never gonna My Bologna, an homage to Lunch Meat, would not only launch Al Yankovic's recording career, it typified several trends for him. For one thing, it was a smash on the Dr. Demento Show. Demento claimed My Bologna was his most requested song of 1979. For another thing, Al's parody charmed the artist behind the original song. Doug Figar, lead singer of the Knack, found out about My Bellona, expressed his appreciation for the flattering homage and helped Al get it released on the Knack's own label, Capitol Records. And it was on that 45's actual label that Al formally debuted his full performing name, Weird Al Yankovic, a moniker given to him by fellow Cal Poly students a couple of years earlier. By 1980, Al was a star on the Dr. Demento show, and when he appeared as a guest on the program late that year, he came ready to record a follow up to My Bellona and had even selected his next hit song to parody. Queen's Another One Bites the Dust, was rising to number one on the Hot 100 in the fall of 1980, just as Al appeared on the Demento show accompanied only by his accordion and the pounding of of self styled drummer John Bermuda Schwarz on Al's accordion case. Yankovic recorded Another One Rides the bus live in Dr. Demento's studio. Released on former disco label TK Records, Another One Rides the Bus became Weird Al's first Billboard hit, reaching number 104 on the magazine's Bubbling under the Hot 100 chart in March of 1981. The song was popular enough that Al was invited by late night TV host Tom Snyder to perform Another One Rides the Bus on his NBC program the Tomorrow. Tomorrow's Show.
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Weird Al Yankovic, who first became known for his parodies of popular rock tunes.
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In 1979 with his parody of a song done by the next, which was called My Sharoma.
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And Weird Al rewrote it and called it another one Ride the Bus.
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Weird Al knew how to present himself on television with his shaggy hair and Frank Zappa like mustache and his rabid rock and roll attack on the accordion, an un rock instrument. Here was a performer who had seemingly learned from every novelty act that had come before from Spike Jonze and Alan Sherman, the wit of combining a familiar melody with unexpected lyrics from Shel Silverstein. How to build a whimsical song like a story from Tom Lehrer, how to make parody song lyrics not only only funny, but sharply phrased. All of these skills, including the visual, would come in handy very soon. It should be noted that Weird Al's initial breakthrough via the Demento show predated the 1981 launch of MTV. But once that video channel took off and popularized the music video in America, the kinds of new wave songs that became hits like lent themselves to parody. And Al Yankovic had a great ear for hit songs with both comic and visual potential. Joan Jett and the Black Hearts cover of the Arrows, I Love Rock and Roll was a number one smash in the spring of 1982. And it lent itself to another Weird Al food related parody. I Love Rocky Road helped get Al a permanent signing to a label, Scotty Brothers Records. And it spawned one of his earliest music videos in which a laboratory leather clad Al, trying to look as badass as Joan Jett herself, makes a grand entrance in an ice cream parlor and demands his favorite flavor. Later, in 1982, another new wave chart topper would inspire another TV friendly parody. Mickey was a hit largely fueled by mtv, a song that singer, choreographer and video artist Tony Baszel wrote specifically to accompany her clip of a drill team of cheerleaders. It reached number one on the Hot 100 in late 1982. And in weird Al's hands.
- [50:12]
A
Hey, Lucy, I'm home. Oh, Ricky, you're so fun, you're so fine, you can blow my mind. Hey Ricky. Hey Ricky.
- [50:22]
B
It became an homage to TV's I Love Lucy, with future Simpsons voice actress Tress McNeil playing the part of Lucille Ball and Weird Al doing his best, Ricky Ricardo. The video, shot mostly in black and white, presented a madcap but letter perfect parody of the Lucy show and went into regular rotation on mtv. This exposure finally got Al onto the Hot 100 itself, not just the Bubbling under chart. Ricky reached number 63 in the spring of 1983, less than six months after Tony Basil's original Mickey had topped the chart, a follow up single release of I Love Rocky Road also charted in Billboard, but missed the Hot 100, bubbling under at number 106. This mixed chart performance reflected the specific challenge facing Weird Al in the early 80s. Al's skill was parodying songs that were very recent hits, trading on their familiarity and adding not only comical lyrics but hilarious MTV friendly videos. But even following up hits as big as Joan Jett's and Tony Basil's. In an era of regimented top 40 radio playlists, a Weird Al parody would have to be truly enormous to make the upper reaches of the Hot 100. Remember also that in the 70s, what got songs like the Streak and Convoy to number one was latching onto a major trend or fad. In short, Al would have to parody a positively massive cultural phenomenon to break into the top 40. And as 1983 turned to 84, that same exactly what he did. Weird Al targeted the biggest pop sensation on the planet with Eat It, a parody of Michael Jackson's beat. A number one hit in the spring of 1983. Taken from Jackson's all time best selling album Thriller, Eat it was recorded and released when Jackson mania was at its absolute apex. It should also be noted that as per his usual policy, Al reached out to Jackson himself to secure his approval. Parodies are protected in in U.S. law as fair use, but Al insists on receiving the original act's blessing to ensure there are no misunderstandings and to ease the process of apportioning royalties on songs Al did not originally write. Like Doug Feiger of the Knack, most artists are flattered by a Weird Al parody, but Michael Jackson's seal of approval in 19801984 proved invaluable. That's because Weird Al not only parodied Eat it, the song for the first time, he parodied an original song's video. Shot for shot, the Eat it clip recreated Jackson's iconic Beat it video, including its war boring west side story like Gangs, and even included some dancers from Jackson's original video. On mtv, it was a smash. And on the radio, a Weird Al hit was finally too big to ignore. Eat it reached number 12 on the Hot 100 and went gold. Because the Hot 100 averages both sales and airplay, those those gold record sales helped overcome the handicap novelty songs have on the radio. But even on the airwaves, Eat it received considerable rotations. At the height of Jackson mania, Eat it was the lead single on the album Weird al Yankovic in 3, 3D Al's first LP to crack the top 40. Like the single, it was certified gold the week in April 1984. That it reached its peak of number 17 on the album chart in 3D was one position higher than the Police's blockbuster 1983 album Synchronicity, which was ironic because Al's next single was a parody of the Police's hit from that album, King of Pain, transformed by Al into the sales pitch of a proprietor of cowhide. King of Suede reached number 62 in May of 84, and it was immediately followed by another 3D hit that, like Al's earlier single Ricky, doubled as a throwback to the early television era. Al turned The Greg Kinn Band's 1983 number two hit Jeopardy. Into I Lost on Jeopardy, an homage to the TV game show. Notably, Al recorded the song after the original NBC version of Jeopardy. Hosted by Art Fleming, was on a long hiatus, Al got the show's original announcer, Don Pardo, who also served as the announcer for Saturday Night Live, to record a hilarious spoken word interlude calling Al a complete loser.
- [56:40]
A
That's right, Al, you lost. And let me tell you what you didn't win. A 20 volume set of the Encyclopedia International, a case of turtle life and a year's supply of rice a Roli, the San Francisco treat. But that's not all.
- [56:54]
B
Don Pardo also appeared in the I Lost on Jeopardy. Music video, which featured additional cameos from Art Fleming, Dr. Demento and even original songwriter Greg Kinn. The clip was a smash on MTV and other televised video shows, but the song only made it to number 81 on the Hot 100 in the summer of 1984. The single's release preceded the return of the game show in a new syndicated forum hosted by Alex Trebek by just a couple of months. In short, just months after the success of Eat It, Al was back to peaking in the lower half of the Hot 100. In fact, Eat it would be Al's last top 40 hit of the 1980s. In part, of course, the radio bias against novelty songs was to blame. But also weird. Al was benefiting in different ways. Increasingly, his fan base was springing for his albums, not his singles. So even when he served up a parody of a dominant song, like his 1985 reboot of Madonna's chart topper LA Like a Virgin, The album did better than the single Like a Surgeon just missed the top 40, peaking at number 47. But its album, Dare to Be Stupid, was gold. Within six months, Al fans were coming to appreciate not only his parodies of big hit singles, but his deep cuts. These included his so called style parodies like Al's Devo homage Dare to Be Stupid, a track that doesn't evoke any specific Devo song, As well as as his album's Polka Medleys in which Al ingeniously mashes up accordion covers of more than a dozen hit songs in three to five minutes with beer garden worthy arrangements. Generally, as long as a Weird Al album contained at least one parody of a chart topping song, the disc could be relied upon to go gold. In 1988, one year after Michael Jackson returned with the song Bad Al once again parodied both the song and the video with fat. The single only reached number 99, but Al's LP even worse hit the top 30 and went gold.
- [59:51]
A
I take up seven roles because I'm fat, fat I'm bad.
- [59:58]
B
Weird Al's mixed chart success in the late 80s had to be considered against the backdrop of novelty recording in general. Very few novelty singles besides Owls were hits at all, at least the ones labeled as such. The 80s rise of a new genre, Hip hop lent itself perfectly to parody. In fact, to digress for a moment, the history of rap from Rapper's Delight to Baby Got Back is littered with songs that skirt the line of novelty. Many of rap's formative tracks are built as de facto comedy records, including Doug E. Fresh and Slick Rick's seminal the Show.
- [60:41]
A
Have you ever seen a show where fellas on the mic with one minute rhymes that don't come out right? They write. They never write. That's not polite. Am I lying? No, you're Quite right.
- [60:51]
B
Biz Markey's top 10 hit just a Friend. And the deliberately wacky instructional dance single the Humpty Dance by Digital Underground, a group that by the way would later spawn the solo career of Tupac Shakur. None of these rap classics was officially tagged as a novelty track. Joel Whitburn only tags the show as a novelty and that status is debatable. Any actual rapper trying to get over would avoid being perceived as a joke. Meanwhile, numerous comedians tried to record deliberate rap parodies and none was a major chart success. From Rodney Dangerfield, I played hide and.
- [61:52]
A
Seek when I was three. No respect, no respect. Why they would even look for me.
- [61:58]
B
To Eddie Murphy who issued a low charting rap parody before switching to straight faced pop music. To a John Wayne imitator who called himself the Rappin Duke. His self titled Minor hit in 1985 was legendary enough on hip hop radio to later be name checked by the Notorious B.I.G.
- [62:31]
A
So you think you're bad with your rap? Well, I'll tell you, pilgrim, I started the crap when you were in diapers and wetting the sheets I was at the Ponderosa rapping to the Bing da.
- [62:43]
B
Hot the rise of hair metal and hard rock in the late 80s and early 90s would also seem ripe for parody. Legitimate hits by the likes of Poison and Motley Crue Fight flirted with comedy. But again, the need for these rockers to appear hardcore kept them from producing out and out novelty singles. Only one hard rock act really attempted a pure novelty single. The metal grunge hybrid band Green Jelly, with their thrashy fairy tale Three Little Pigs, a top 20 single in early 1993 that got little radio airplay but sold a half million copies. By the early 90s, Weird Al was himself trying to regroup, and hard rock would be the ticket to his comeback. At the end of the 80s, he'd made a detour into Hollywood that proved momentarily fatal to his career. His 1989 film UHF, written by and starring Al, was hyped by Orion Pictures as a potential summer blockbuster, but it flopped at the box office in a movie season dominated by smashes like Batman and Indiana Jones.
- [64:06]
A
We got it all, we got it all on, uh, Al, you get to drink from the fire hose.
- [64:17]
B
So it had been nearly four years since Weird Al had issued a regular studio album, and the UHF soundtrack had underperformed on the charts. Al briefly considered again parodying Michael Jackson, who was back with a 1991 album, but he didn't want to deepen his reputation as primarily a Jackson parodist. But Jackson's new album was competing on the charts with a completely different kind of act, and it gave Weird Al a truly inspired super meta idea. The breakthrough of Nirvana on the charts was a seminal moment in 90s rock. But what Weird Al keyed in on in their breakthrough hit, Smells Like Teen Spirit, was Kurt Cobain's elliptical, at times indecipherable lyrics. So after getting permission from a very flattered Cobain, Al proceeded to do a Nirvana parody about nirv. Released in the spring of 1992, just weeks after Smells Like Teen Spirit had peaked on the Hot 100, Smells Like Nirvana returned Weird Al to the top 40 for the first time since Eat it in 1984. In fact, Al's Nirvana parody climbed the charts so fast, when it peaked at number 35, it leapt two spots over come as yous Are. Nirvana's own follow up hit, Smells Like Nirvana gave Weird Al a new lease on chart life and another wave of young fans. The decade of grunge and gangster rap would be creatively fruitful for Al, who got a lot of mileage poking fun at at the self seriousness of these genres, whether he was puncturing a new generation of glowering rock hits on his alternative polka despite all my rage I.
- [66:35]
A
Am still just a rat in a cage despite all my rage I am still just a rat.
- [66:40]
B
Or rebooting Coolio's smash Gangsta's paradise as Amish paradise.
- [66:49]
A
Now and so long that even Ezekiel thinks that my mind is gone. I'm a man of the In a.
- [66:55]
B
Tale that could only be told in the 90s, Coolio was so protective of his reputation that Al had trouble getting the rapper's permission to remake the song. Coolio sounded genuinely pissed at Al for deflating his street cred.
- [67:11]
A
Have you heard Weird Al's Amish paradise yet? I ain't with that. Nah, I didn't give it any sanction, you know, I think that my song was too serious, you know, it ain't like it was Beat it.
- [67:24]
B
A contrite Weird Al apologized to Coolio. Al recorded Amish paradise thinking Coolio's management had signed off and they had squashed the beef by 1996. By the end of the 90s, Weird Al's albums were selling as well as ever. 1999's Running with Scissors went gold and eventually platinum, fueled by Al's Star wars homage set to the tune of Don McLean's American Pie. It was called the Saga Begins.
- [67:57]
A
We started singing My my this here Anakin guy maybe Vader someday later now he's just a small fry and he left his home.
- [68:06]
B
But once again, Al found himself out of favor on the song charts. The Saga Begins didn't even appear on the Hot 100. Entering the 21st century, between his sellout live shows and his strong album sales, Weird Al contented himself with what was already one of the longest lasting and strongest selling careers in novelty music history. But as we explained in our holiday episode of Hit Parade, the chronicling the technological changes that eventually gave Christmas songs a bigger profile on the charts, the digital evolution of the music business was about to give a major boost to Weird Al and all novelty musicians. All of this music with all of these rights you can buy for 99 cents per song with no subscription fee. The mid aughts launch of both legal commercial music downloading by Apple and video sharing by YouTube would change the possibilities for hit making. Download sales were added to the Hot 100 in 2005, making it possible for album cuts, holiday songs and other ephemera to score single sales and chart like they never had before. And the launch of YouTube that same year, even though it did not count for the charts back then, changed the possibilities for music promotion. And the first big beneficiary was a novelty song, Lazy Sunday.
- [69:43]
A
Wake up in the late afternoon Call Parnell just to see how he's doing. Hello. What up pawns? Yo Samberg, what's cracking? You thinking what I'm thinking?
- [69:54]
B
Saturday Night Live cast member Andy Samberg, who was also part of a comedy music troupe called the Lonely island, made a name for himself in his very first season with a rap parody called Lazy Sunday. The video, recorded with fellow castmate Chris Parnell, was not only a buzzworthy hit on a December episode of snl, it happened to land just weeks after the launch of YouTube. Lazy Sunday became YouTube's first major hit. Reinforcing that the combination of music and comedy was potent viral content. Andy Samberg's unwitting proof of concept for YouTube was well timed for Weird Al, who was preparing to return with a new album. And even more than on his 90s Coolio parody, Al was going to go hard after Hip Hop. Ridin was a number one hit in the spring of 2006 for Hughes Houston rapper Chamillionaire. The track told a tale of urban policing as the rapper bemoaned overzealous state troopers pulling over his car looking to catch him riding dirty or finding illegal substances. If it sounds like your hit parade host is over, explaining a street rap cut and taking the edge out of it in a rather Caucasian manner, well, Weird Al Yankovic went much further than I did. Weird Al turned Chamillionaires Ride and Dirty into White and Nerdy, a different kind of street tale of a geek who wants to hang with the gangstas but unfortunately is too white and nerdy. The meta brilliance of the song was that Weird Al wrapped it with legitimately dazzling flow, matching Chamillionaire's triple time beat for beat and packing literally dozens of jokes in rapid fire succession. The White and Nerdy video was also a tour de force. Like Edit, the video recreated the look and feel of the original clip, with geeky Al standing in for the original star. But here was the difference between this single and every other video and song release in Weird Al's history. White and Nerdy could be shared on YouTube and the song could be purchased digitally. Again, YouTube did not yet count for the charts, but it didn't matter. Fans who were enthralled by the video, piled into the iTunes Music Store to buy the song for 99 cents. The result? White and Nerdy exploded onto the Hot 100. When it debuted in mid October 2006 at number 28, it instantly became Weird Al Yankovic's highest charting hit since Eat it in 1984. One week later, White and Nerdy pole vaulted to number nine, becoming Al's first ever top 10 hit. As had been true since the 80s, radio airplay of the song was limited, but its sales more than made up this deficit. White and Nerdy was eventually certified by the Recording Industry association of America as Weird Al's first first ever platinum single. Had these technologies existed in earlier decades, Al might well have racked up multiple top 10 hits. We'll never know, but digital music changed the possibilities for comedy singles. Over at Saturday Night Live, videos by Andy Samberg and the Lonely island became the show's most viral content, including the Justin Timber Timberlake collaboration Dick in a Box, Take a Look Inside, It's My.
- [74:21]
A
Dick in a Box.
- [74:27]
B
And the hip hop parody I'm on a Boat, which featured T Pain. The Lonely island made the track available as an itunes download, and it cracked the Hot 100 too. As for Weird Al, the calculus for his career had changed fundamentally. YouTube and iTunes would allow him to release one off tracks whenever he felt inspired. And while video had always helped his singles, now it was more essential than ever. Weird Al began issuing tracks for his next album years before it was even complete. His 2006 album Straight Outta Linwood had been his first ever top 10 hit, driven by the video for White and Nerdy. When Al finally issued his follow up album Alpocalypse In 2011, he commissioned videos for every track, including his Lady Gaga parody Perform this Way.
- [75:30]
A
I'm sure my critics will say it's a grotesque display.
- [75:39]
B
The result? Alpocalypse debuted at number nine on the charts, a bit higher than Straight Outta Linwood. Weird Al's multi single multi video strategy had worked and video play still didn't count for the charts. But that was about to change too. As we discussed in prior episodes of hit parade, in 2013, Billboard rebooted the Hot 100 again to include YouTube views for the first time. Brooklyn DJ Bower's electronic dance track Harlem Shake instantly debuted at number one, fueled by a viral fad that felt felt a lot like a novelty trend. Before 2013 was out, an actual novelty song would benefit from this new chart map. Bard and Vigard Ilvasacker, a pair of brothers from Norway and a comedy duo who called themselves Ilvis for short, recorded a parody of EDM for their Norwegian TV talk show. The oddly legitimate sounding dance pop song was called the Fox, parentheses what does the Fox say? And they accompanied it with a hilarious video of the brothers in fox costumes cavorting in a forest. Never intended for the the US Market, the Fox became a viral sensation anyway, with both adult pop fans and kids, especially the video. And under Billboard's new Hot 100 rules, the Fox became an actual top 10 hit, peaking at number six. Observing all of these changes, Weird Al Yankovic decided to go all out for his 2014 album Mandatory Fun. As with Alpocalypse, he would produce multiple music videos, except this time he would deploy all of the videos in a single week, turning his album deployment into an event. Some of the videos, like his parody of Pharrell Williams Smash Happen called Tacky, aped the look of the original clip. Others were animated or more conceptual. Al did not attempt to pick a lead single. He let the marketplace decide. Eventually, the most shared video, his parody of Robin Thicke's hit Blurred Lines turned into a grammarian's lament called Word Crimes became the most shared video and it brought Weird Al back to the top 40. Word crimes hit 39 in August of 2014, But the best Billboard news of all for Weird Al Yankovic was on the album chart. That week of YouTube blanket videos spurred the best week of sales of his career. More than 100,000 copies of Mandatory Funds sold in its first week, the collection debuted on the Billboard 200 album chart at number one. The magazine reported that it was not only the first number one album in his three decade career, Weird Al A chart topping Debutante at age 54, mandatory fun was also the first comedy album of any kind to top the chart in 51 years. Since Alan Sherman's LP My Son the Nut hit number one in 1963.
- [79:42]
A
Gee, that's better. Moda Father, kindly disregard this letter.
- [79:49]
B
Six years after Weird Al's chart triumph, Mandatory Fun remains the last album he has issued. In interviews in the late 10s, Al has indicated he might not release albums anymore, focusing on individual singles and videos. Given his improbable success, you can understand why. Still happy to capitalize cleverly on a cultural phenomenon, in 2018, Al teamed up with Tony winning Broadway composer Lin Manuel Miranda for the Broadway medley the Hamilton Polka.
- [80:23]
A
They placed him in charge of the trading charter. Alexander Hamilton My Name Is Alexander.
- [80:31]
B
The Hamilton Polka topped the digital sales chart for one week, making it hilariously polka music's first ever digital chart topper, but at a time when downloads count less for the charts than they once did. As the music industry moves towards streaming music, the Hamilton Polka didn't make the Hot 100, so should weird Al retire from recording? He continues to tour, but now entering his 60s, it might be sensible to pass the torch to a new generation of parodists. On the other hand, in some ways it has never been a better time for funny music and certainly viral music. On the Billboard charts, The number one song of 2019 was not, strictly speaking, a comedy record, but Old Town Road by Lil Nas X featuring Billy Ray Cyrus was certainly funny. And as the song spent over four months on top of the Hot 100 and the music business debated what genre Old Town Road belongs in, pop or R and B or rap or country, many called it admiringly the biggest novelty hit of all time. Remember that since the birth of rock and roll and the rise of hip hop, the lines between novelty and normal hit hits have been unsettled at best. And when modern day songs become hits because of memes like Lizzo's Truth Hurts. Or Even because of TikTok videos like the song at number one this very week, Roddy Ricch's the. It seems that there has never been a greater premium placed on recording artists who can bring the snark, the goofy, the kitschy, the funny. As of 2020, Billboard has even started to count official YouTube videos for its album chart. If an artist like, say, Weird Al ever pulled a multi video album launch again, well, who knows how big that album and its singles could be.
- [83:05]
A
White and Dirty for 1200.
- [83:09]
B
In 2019 as Weird Al Yankovic toured the country with a full orchestra, a concert your Hit Parade host was thrilled to attend last summer, he looked happier and prouder of his unprecedented career than ever. For us fans, that's more than enough. But hey Al, if you ever wanted to record again and maybe make some tiktokable content, that chart topping career of yours just might enter its fifth decade. You could be rapping into your 70s. I hope you enjoyed this episode of Hit Parade. My producer is Justin D. Wright and we also had help this episode from Rosemary Belson. June Thomas is the Senior Managing Producer and Gabriel Roth the Editorial Director of Slate Podcasts. Check out their roster of shows@slate.com podcasts. You can subscribe to Hit Parade wherever you get your podcasts, in addition to finding it in the Slate Culture feed. If you're subscribing on Apple Podcasts, please rate and review us while you're there. It helps other listeners find the show. Thanks for listening, and I look forward to leading the hit parade back your way. Until then, keep on marching on the one. I'm Chris Melancholy.