Dafuq is this shit, anyway?
Along with squirrels, unicorns and fucked up humor… if you’ve hung around The Nest long enough, you’ve probably noticed that I have a fondness for music. Well, not just any kind of music. Bluegrass doesn’t do it for me. You won’t see me with a pair of those funny binoculars taking in an opera. And I prefer my singers not to screech like Cookie Monster getting open heart surgery without an anesthetic…
No thank you. And get a fucking haircut, you mangy slobs…
The wide variety of genres that all fall under the umbrella of pop music is where you will usually find my ear. Getting on the Billboard charts is quite an accomplishment for any recording, and most of the tunes that make it to the Top 40 radio stations are the usual fare of songs about love, life and masturbation. But there are some songs that stand out for their uniqueness. Songs that might make your ears do a double take. Songs that are about as serious as one of Fred G. Sanford’s heart attacks…
No, it really is The Big One this time, I swear!
There is a phrase that has come to describe these musical oddities, which are often referred to, sometimes condescendingly, as novelty songs. Most are funny, a lot of them cover a very specific and unusual topic, and there are quite a few that deliberately flirt with naughtiness. It is this segment of the musical pie, novelty songs, that will be the subject of my next Top 30 countdown which will begin next Monday…
I know you’re all excited about this!
Now, the accepted definition of what makes a song a novelty is extremely vague. My novelty might be your mainstream and vice versa. My application of the word novelty to these thirty songs may be even more debatable than my use of iconic in the previous countdown. And because novelty songs are almost by definition out of the mainstream, you can bet there will be many, many great novelty songs I won’t include in this countdown simply because I am not familiar with them. This series will be far from perfect…
But you should be used to that around here…
So what are some of my criteria for judging and including songs in this countdown of novelty songs? First off, the song has to not take itself seriously at all. There has to be some kind of humorous and/or quirky elements in the song for it to qualify. With a couple notable exceptions, holiday themed songs were not considered since they tend to be novel by nature (I’m down with OPP). It also helps if the song is reasonably well known, but had limited or no success on the Billboard charts. Sir Mix-a-Lot’s “Baby Got Back” has novelty song written all over it… but it was also a #1 hit and is still popular on radio today… so it was not considered for this project.
Your anaconda’s just jealous of the junk in my trunk!
Bonus points apply if the artist(s) that performed the song were themselves something of a novelty act. Some of the most novel of all novelty songs were performed by musicians whose act was practically built around their most famous song. And since my rule is only one song per artist, that really crimps the masters of the genre like Weird Al Yankovic and Ray Stephens, but as awesome as a Top 30 composed of nothing but Weird Al classics sounds, we like to spread the love here at The Nest…
Will someone please remove the showoff from the studio…
So anyway, I wound up coming up with just shy of 50 contenders for this countdown… and in compiling the (maybe) final list, I was shocked at some of the awesome novelty songs that didn’t make the cut. Chuck Berry’s “My Ding A Ling” (Which I already featured in the DVA anyway) fell just short. There will be no “Witch Doctor” or “Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Yellow Polka Dot Bikini.” “Barbie Girl” and “Rock Lobster” will be going home with a copy of the home game, as will the masterworks of musical legends like Timbuk3, Murray Head and The Weather Girls. The “Disco Duck” got thrown back in the water, and perhaps most astonishingly to me, we will not care that there might be giants and that Istanbul was once called Constantinople…
Not that it’s anyone’s business but the turkeys.
So….. throwing all those great oddities from music’s past out the window, just what will we see in this silly series anyway? You’ll just have to find out for yourself every Monday (or Tuesday in the case of the two DVA repeats) beginning next week in The Nest’s Top 30 Novelty Songs of All Time countdown! We hope you’ll enjoy the journey to #1 which will be posted on New Years Eve along with the #1 from another countdown starting next week that you’ll get the lowdown on soon! Yep, it’s about to get even crazier than usual at The Nest…
Crazier than a dog in a dishwasher? Impossible!
Evil Squirrel's Nest 
I never could get my dog to help with the dishes… LOL! 😉
Even dogs know when they’re being tricked into household chores…
This sounds like fun!
The only living thing I ever found in a dishwasher were cockroaches. We don’t live there anymore.
I have never even had a dishwasher before. Luckily, I also only have myself and no company, so I can get by just washing the same couple of plates over and over again…
Oh this is going to be GOOD. 🙂
It is going to be interesting for sure. As for good, we’ll see….
Looking forward to your series. The biggest hindrance for sure is No Mainstream … So these boys won’t make it into your countdown:
Or Crash Test Dummies with Mmm
I probably wouldn’t have put either in the countdown anyway since the Dummies’ song is inane and Hanson is…… well, that song annoys the hell out of me.
The dummies song is inane? Mmm – if you do not understand how it fights for marginized groups, yes, it seems to be inane.
And the Hansons – oh, you are just jealous, admit it …
Well, you already mentioned you won’t be featuring some of my faves, so we’ll have to see. Though if those are the rejected ones, imagine what the ones which made the cut will be like. Awesome!
Well, you know how it works for me… you’ll probably hate two-thirds of the countdown. At least until I get to “Na Zare” at #1…… oops! I already went and spoiled everything, didn’t I? Drat!
This is going to be so much fun. I remember my kindergarten teacher used to play Alan Sherman’s “Hello Muddah, hello Faddah.” By the way, I have the exact same birthday, month, day, and year as Weird Al. And my daughter’s birthday is the same day as P.T. Barnum’s. But back to your new feature – Woo Hoo. Dance Party With the Squirrels!
I will always remember you and Al came into this world on the same day. I have always been jealous that no famous people were born the same day as me. The countdown will be a lot of fun… and I know I’m going to end up leaving off a lot of people’s favorites, but hopefully at least some of mine will be to everyone’s liking…
Pop music has never been my thing, but I do know some of the novelty songs that you’ve rejected. I suspect that it means that I’m going to be more clueless than usual here. Carry on, evil. I shall look forward to seeing what this is all about.
We’ll see… there’s a few of these that are pretty obscure, but I’ll bet you recognize about a third of the songs I’ll feature. And that may be a conservative estimate…
Looking forward to this…but NO Witch Doctor?
I was sure it would fit in somewhere near the bottom, but alas. I think I held against it the fact that it came from the same genius who gave us that damned Chipmunks Christmas song!
I was really hoping for My Ding a Ling. Damn.
Still excited, yay!!
There will be plenty of other naughty songs that did make it, you know me….
ody N biskit….lookin for werd ta see in what dad ree veewz N ta see in how manee we noe !! 🙂 ♥♥
I’ll bet you know about half of them. Now whether or not you’ll like them, we’ll see….
Weird Al is almost not novelty anymore because of how popular he became. I’m glad that we’ll get one of his songs though!
Weird Al is an enigma in that he is popular, but rarely crosses over onto the pop charts (Only four US Top 40 songs ever, one in each of the last four decades). And he rarely gets radio airplay, so I think there’s still plenty of novelty to the King of Parody…
Oh wow! This will be fun! I can’t imagine what you’ve come up with, since you’ve already mentioned most of the ones I like won’t be there. And, another mystery countdown (for now) too! Can’t wait.:)
There will be all kinds of fun stuff for sure!
Whoa…hope this doesn’t mean a boatload of Weird Al contributions. 😈 Should be a gas in any event.
One song per artist, that even applies to Weird Al.
Thank gawd!