I have just completed mowing your lawn
Mix 25: Novelty (pt 1), followed by mostly non-novelties from Thailand, Senegal, Iceland, Italy, Ukraine, South Africa, and Boise, Idaho.
I spent the last week participating Jel Bugle’s Novelty10 music challenge over on Bluesky. I’ll post my top ten here, with as much commentary as I can fit within the email limit. I have reams (maybe books?) worth of thoughts about novelty music generally, but space is tight, so you’ll only get the first half this week.
10. INSTASAMKA: Juicy (2021)
Russian rapper INSTASAMKA with a song as monomaniacally wet as “WAP,” plus “blah-de-blahs” (“Поплатят и платят” — “they pay and they pay”) and Muppet flow.
Category: Goofy filth
Other contenders: Hank Penny: “The Freckle Song”; Doja Cat: “MOOO!”; Gillette: “Short Dick Man”; Jimmy Castor Bunch: “Troglodyte”; Skylar Grey f. Eminem: “C'mon Let Me Ride”; NEIKED f. Dyo: “Sexual”
9. Das Racist & Wallpaper.: Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell (Wallpaper. Remix) (2009)
I associate this song with a party equal parts mind and body, including a very long conversation over at TSJ detailing a story of drinking so much orange soda I barfed at the roller rink.
Category: Party ‘til you puke
Other contenders: Brian Hyland: “Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Yellow Polka Dot Bikini”; Boots Randloph: “Yakety Sax”; AronChupa: “I'm an Albatraoz”; Mungo Jerry: “In the Summertime”; Disco Tex & The Sex-o-Lettes: “Get Dancin’”; B-Rock & The Bizz: “MyBabyDaddy”
8. Rachel Bloom: You Stupid Bitch (2016)
Thee self-loathing torch song underlines the distance between fan and diva (puny mortal!), and is the twisted soundtrack to one's inner critic, especially live when the crowd shouts back. The making-of story: Bloom had the critic part but not the tune; Schlesinger launched it into the rafters.
Category: Funny ‘cuz it hurts 1
Other contenders: Spike Jonze: “Der Fuehrer's Face”; Daniel Johnston: “Walking the Cow”; Farrah Abraham: “Finally Getting Up from Rock Bottom”; Tom Lehrer: “My Home Town”
7. Phil Harris: The Thing (1950)
Wrote about this one previously, describing the way “music can be a question you can’t answer even though it feels like you know the answer anyway.” “The Thing” was a beguiling mystery to me when I was a little kid; I wondered queasily whether the thing was alive in there.
Category: The thing that shouldn't be, but is (derogatory)2
Other contenders: The J. Geils Band: “No Anchovies Please”; Psychotic Pineapple: “Headcheese”; Tony Burrello: “There’s a New Sound”; The Shaggs: “My Pal Foot Foot”; Sri Darwin Gross: “At the Grassroots”; Estelle: “The Year 2000”
6. Crash Test Dummies: Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm (1993)
This was one of the few songs whose lyrics I had no trouble whatsoever memorizing (still know them by heart). It's got some real sadness in there, but it's also generous and generative—the stories feel unsettled, like you could add your own verses and keep it going. Not could—must. (Wrote about the song previously here.)
Category: Unfinished symphonies
Other contenders: Benny Bell: “Shaving Cream”; Rebecca Black: “Friday”; “Weird Al” Yankovic: “Albuquerque” and “Jurassic Park”; Bobbi Blake: “I Like Yellow Things”; The Presidents of the USA: “Peaches”; Jesus H. Christ and the Four Hornsmen of the Apocalypse: “I Miss Your Arm”; Nancy Tucker: “Everything Reminds Me of My Therapist”
Mix 1 // Mix 2 // Mix 3 // Mix 4 // Mix 5 // Mix 6 // Mix 7 // Mix 8 // Mix 9 // Mix 10 // Mix 11 // Mix 12 // Mix 13 // Mix 14 // Mix 15 // Mix 16 // Mix 17 // Mix 18 // Mix 19 // Mix 20 // Mix 21 // Mix 22 // Mix 23 // Mix 24
MIX 25: I HAVE JUST COMPLETED MOWING YOUR LAWN
1. Emilíana Torrini: Miss Flower
I see a lot of Icelandic singer-songwriter Emilíana Torrini’s work appear in my playlists and though my interest is usually piqued, nothing has really stuck until the opening line on this one (the title line today) sealed the deal. I mostly know Torrini from 2008’s I Can’t Believe It’s Not Novelty single “Jungle Drum” (raga-doonk-a-doonk-a-dooga-dooga-doonk-doonk) but the rest of her career leans toward more staid coffee shop stuff.
2. Ginger Root: Better Than Monday
Ginger Root came to my attention with “Loretta,” a formidable B-side in the People’s Pop 2021 poll, where they found a way to punch above their weight with a threadbare funk outfit, a sound that as far as I can tell they’ve maintained since then. The structural integrity is weak — their songs are constantly in danger of collapsing in on themselves (and many of them do) but when they pull it off it’s a neat trick.
3. Addict Ameba f. Elasi: Cicale
Italian collective whose members pride themselves on their eclectic international approach, but go a bit too far beyond transnationalism for my taste: they’re against continental drift.
4. Yaraki: La Corsa
I swear I didn’t put the two Italian tracks together on purpose and in fact only just now noticed that the artist was Italo-Brazilian.
5. Kat Dahlia: Futuro Amor
This one had me scrambling to remember what Kat Dahlia’s whole deal was — I remember her as the Singles Jukebox Controversy Champion in 2015 for “I Think I’m in Love.” She started releasing singles in Spanish after the pandemic, as was the style at the time, and this direction suits her, if only for erasing the awkward halfway point between millennial pop diva and post-YouTube-ukulele lady affectation that, er, distinguished (ahem) her former work.
6. Yeboyah: Daddy
Skittering Finnish R&B whose melodic hook reminded me of something very specific, and it took me several days to realize it was…Rogue Wave’s “Nourishment Nation.” Now I can rest.
7. Merveille: Dans ma tête
French R&B with some Afrobeats atmospherics, pretty and in the pocket.
8. Silva & Steini: I Ought to Stay Away from You
A Casio-beat bossanova so flimsy the chanteuse cracks up before the song is over and throws in the towel with a shrug. Every song I write sounds like this.
9. Gretel: Far Out
10. Lola Young: Good Books
Two London singer-songwriters. Gretel starts with cheerleader claps but the composition is more eclectic — pretty guitar paired with a buzzing morse code synth that Stereo Total would have cranked up a few dozen more decibels. Lola Young sounds like Marina singing over a Little Dragon song (million dollar idea!) until, sadly, it turns into something more like Marina singing over a Marina song in the chorus.
11. Wadfah: Angry Angry Song
Thai indie, sugary sweet spite-pop.
12. 浦小雪 [Ura Koyuki]: フリック入力オールデリート
J-rock tilts fully over into power-pop, someone alert Brad Shoup!
13. Vioria: барабанщик!
Ukrainian pop can’t decide if it wants to go electro or pop-metal, so pulls a why not both dot gif, like reconciling both halves of Kelly Osbourne’s discography.
14. Melt-Banana: Flipside
Melt-Banana is back! I didn’t even listen to this before putting it on the playlist. Finally hearing it now. Good choice!
15. Bone Haus: Silent Hill
Killer sludge from Boise, Idaho. I don’t know if my friend who lives in Boise, Idaho actually reads these things, but if you happen to live there, you should go see them!
16. Yayee: Don’t Say You Love Me
I won’t claim that this is anything other than a merely-competent uptempo cover of M2M’s “Don’t Say You Love Me” by a Thai pop striver whose first single was called “Covid” but could just as easily have been called “Butterflies.” But I couldn’t just not put it on here.
17. Dieyla Gueye: Doflo Ngama
18. Viviane Chidid: Xarit
A find from a Senegalese playlist (“Doflo Ngama”) finally opened up a few better Spotify pathways to mbalax, and to the much bigger Senegalese song of the year frontrunner by Viviane Chidid that follows it. My sense is that Senegal has been criminally underrepresented on my mixes.
19. Ayben: Anlat Madem
Turkish rapper veers a little close to earnest Eurovision rap. Her brother is Turkish rapper Ceza, whose biggest hit according to Spotify is from 2004, a decent iteration of the seemingly inexhaustible supply of Euro boom-bap.
20. Nuno Beats: Confusão no Ghetto
Even for Príncipe this one strains the category of dance song, a hypnotic percussive clatter prowling around in a circle ready to pounce on its own tail.
21. Chley: Kancane (MODAR Live Session)
A stripped-down performance of Konke & Musa Keys’s amapiano hit from 2022 from one of my favorite South African singers.
22. Djy Biza, Shakes & Les: Jazz3 (On!)
Their Funk Series is the year’s Djy Biza/Shakes & Les flagship but I’ve been interested in the jazz series they’ve been releasing, too — some of the more subtle instrumental amapiano I’ve heard recently. This is a bit more expansive and confident, and less jammy, than their Jazz 6, which seems to have disappeared from Spotify in the US.
***
That’s it! Until next time, stay novel.
—Dave Moore (the other one)
Title from Emilíana Torrini’s “Miss Flower”
This is somewhat similar to what Frank Kogan calls “funny like Joe Pesci in Goodfellas,” a category in which he includes Green Velvet’s “Preacher Man” and V.I.M.’s “Maggie’s Last Party.” But I think I get closer to Frank’s category in my #2 pick, which I’ll write about next week.
I think a huge swathe of “outsider music” in the Irwin Chusid model falls more or less into this category. “The Thing” is a poor representative in that sense, but its grip on my imagination — the sense that there's something wrong here and you can never really know what — was never more powerful.