Hmm. I’d pick Sat in Your Lap or Babooshka over The Dreaming, for weirdness. Or Violin. Or Get Out of My House.
Not even a win in the 1st 7 posts.
I still think in terms of just sheer weirdness, Maxwell’s Silver Hammer wins in the “WTF” department from the Beatle’s library.
Actually, one of the weirdest songs ever is a James Brown cover. Also shortlisted is a Beatles cover.
Although how I could’ve forgotten Melinda Miel, I’ll never know. Watch the video. (Produced by Marc Almond.)
You win, Jack! What the younger generation might not realize is that this shit got serious air-play in it’s day on AM radio. It was pre-FM.
Sitting in the back seat of dad’s Dodge and this comes on and we all laugh. And it was bizarre even to a teenager! It was WTF?! disturbing to me!
This song is one of those that cemented the idea, in my father’s brain, that drugs were going to kill the modern world.
Evidence of impending Hippy Armaggedon.
Jumpin’ Jack Flash makes perfect sense to me. It is a story of someone who suffered when he was young, but now he is having a good time. It is a bit hyperbolic, but not weird at all. (Is the problem with “it’s a gas”? That was commonplace slang at the time, meaning something like “it’s really fun”.)
It has occurred to me that the “spike right through my head” might be a reference to the story of Phineas Gage, who was a sober minded guy who did indeed get a spike right through his head that turned him into a hellraising drunkard. But maybe that is over-thinking it.
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“Cars” by Gary Numan was a very weird song to be such a huge mainstream hit. Probably not as weird as “Rock Lobster,” though.
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An old friend was once at a party in a fancy recording studio in the early 80s. Fred Schneider shows up, walks into a studio room where some musicians are jamming, and grabs a mike – and it becomes apparent to my friend that (a) this kind of stuff flows out of Fred Schneider like water from a tap and (b) he turns every band into the B-52s without trying too hard.
Eleven year-old Kizarvexilla heard Rock Lobster for the very first time just this past weekend.
In her opinion, there is NO weirder song.
Obviously, I have been neglecting certain crucial aspects of my daughter’s musical education.
It’s especially weird if, when you first heard it, you have no idea what ‘tanning butter’ is. Lotion, yes. Sunscreen, yes. But butter?
Any song by The Residents.
Or anything by Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band.
I get some strange looks when I blurt out, “Little Debbie, Little Debbie, I’m a coming on home baby!”.
Great song, but probably not far enough up the Wierd-O-Meter for this thread.
Screamin’ Jay Hawkins had a modest hit with “Feast Of The Mau Mau”:
Pull the skin off your friend with a razor blade
And tonight change tomorrow bring back yesterday
Shake your hip, bite your lip, shoot your mother-in-law
Put on your gorilla suit, drink some elbow soup and have a ball
Get it straight, don’t be late, it’s time for mad fun
Feast of the Mau Maus has begun
And that’s the most normal part of the song.