Note: This is a compilation of my capsule reviews for Jel Bugle’s July 2024 Novelty10 music challenge over on Bluesky. You’ll see my review of the song followed by a broad category of novelty music it fits into, along with other examples.
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 hurts1
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”
5. Barnes & Barnes: Fish Heads (1978)
“Fish Heads” tormented me as a child, so I used it to torment everyone else. It was every jingle, every cloying pop hook, every nursery rhyme, every random phrase I might get lodged in my head like a popcorn kernel in the roof of your mouth. I hated it; I loved it.
Category: I'm not touching you I'm not touching you I'm not touching you
Other contenders: Toy-Box: “Tarzan & Jane”; Lonnie Donegan: “Does Your Chewing Gum Lose Its Flavour (On the Bedpost Overnight)?”; Louis Prima: “Yes, We Have No Bananas”; Sheb Wooley: “Purple People Eater”; Ray Stevens and the Henhouse Five Plus Two: “In the Mood”; Ween: “Push Th’ Little Daisies”; Kay Kyser: Three Little Fishies
4. Margaret Berger: Robot Song (2006)
This lane, of questionable “novelty” fidelity, overlaps with what I call my heart songs or “moon songs” — talismans of earnest sentimental value. This silly song about a taboo robot relationship imagines an end of the world when true love can finally prevail through annihilation. Laugh, cry, etc. (Wrote about “Robot Song” previously here.)
Category: Novelties of the heart
Other contenders: Keke Palmer: “Music Box”; Shelley Duvall: “He Needs Me”; Melissa Carper: “Christian Girlfriend”; Kermit the Frog: “Rainbow Connection”; Vitas: “Opera #2”; Mike Posner: “I Took a Pill in Ibiza (Seeb remix)”
3. Lil Nas X: Old Town Road (2018/2019)
Some songs come in as novelties but end up changing something about the world, or your world, that explodes your sense of containment (#3 category), safety (#2 category), or mental landscape (#1 category). Those three things aren't mutually exclusive, but I think they’re distinct ideas. So, containment: this utterly joyous song also created a rift in the timestream. Lots of things probably do that (arguably everything does), but you can't always track the butterfly → typhoon trajectory like you could with “Old Town Road,” a small song that was too big to fail in this universe. (Wrote about this song when it came out at the Singles Jukebox. It’s a [10].)
Category: Butterfly typhoons
Other contenders: Black Eyed Peas: “My Humps”; Soulja Boy: “Crank That”; Big & Rich: “Save a Horse, Ride a Cowboy”; The Beatles: “I Want to Hold Your Hand”; Backstreet Boys: “Everybody (Backstreet’s Back)”; Eminem: “My Name Is”
2. Napoleon XIV: They’re Coming to Take Me Away, Ha-Haaa! (1966)
Next, exploding your sense of safety. Napoleon XIV scared me as a kid; I wanted to hide from this song. The militant stomping iambic tetrameter makes the time signature sound like it’s in ONE. A nightmare you laugh at as you recall. A cartoon smashes your head with a mallet and you bleed.
Category: Funny ha-haaa!
Other contenders: The Trashmen: “Surfin’ Bird”; The Fools: “Psycho Chicken”; Nervous Norvus: “Transfusion”; The Stooges: “I Wanna Be Your Dog”; Geto Boys: “Mind Playing Tricks on Me”; Offspring: “Bad Habit”
1. Crazy Frog: Axel F (2005)
Last one: explodes your world. Every song can change you, and everything on this list changed me in some way, but this is the rarefied air wherein you boggle at the mental energy necessary to even describe a before and after. Just try to explain to someone why this stupid fucking frog changed your life!!!!
Category: New me who dis
Other Contenders: Scatman John: “Scatman (ski-ba-bop-ba-dop-bop)”; Rednex: “Cotton Eye Joe”; Harry Belafonte: “Banana Boat (Day-O)”; Wang Rong Rollin: “Chick Chick”; Skye Sweetnam: “Billy S”; Britney Spears: “Work Bitch”; Azealia Banks: “212”; Tag Team: “Whoomp! There It Is”; Immortals: “Techno Syndrome (Mortal Kombat)”
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.