Anything Box - 45. The YouTube video is exactly 1:00, but the song is only 45 seconds.
I give you Coffee mug by the Decendants
In addition to the previously mentioned song “Boa Constrictor”, the incredibly massive 69 Love Songs triple album by the Magnetic Fields is a treasure trove of short little songs. “How F*@$ing Romantic” comes in at 0:57, “Roses” at 0:27 seconds, and my favorite, “Reno Dakota” at 1:05.
I have a bootleg with the full Dig It which is a lot longer than a minute. Do chopped up songs count?
Michael Hurley, “Old Ratface”, from Hi Fi Snock Uptown.
Lyrics: Old Ratface…
0:22
I’m fond of Enterlude by The Killers.
Free & Easy :21
by folkies Hedge and Donna from the 60s
Wild West Hero (demo track) :26
Electric Light Orchestra (nice harmony, too)
Mike’s Life/Mike’s World :40
Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers (slide guitar instrumental from the box set)
Trotto :41
John Renbourn (instrumental)
They Won’t Play This Song on the Radio :48
Eric Idle
Wood Wind :51
The Henry Paul Band from the Grey Ghost album (instrumental)
La Rotta :52
Pentangle (instrumental)
Soul Saver :53
Aerosmith (instrumental)
You Got the Power :54
Steve Miller Band
My favorite, though, is Steve Goodmans
I Ain’t Ever Heard You Play No Blues,
which poses and ethical question, and answers it neatly in a mere 56 seconds
OK, one more. The theme from WKRP is its own mini-songlet. And though it rolls in at 1:01. the first 19 seconds are the sounds of tuning across the radio dial, with various snippets of news and commercials("…but the senator, while insisting he was not intoxicated, could not explain his nudity") and snatches of music before the theme starts. In that case, its really only 41 seconds, with plenty of wistful lonliness. (“got tired of packing and unpacking/town to town/up and down the dial”)
First class stuff by singer Steve Carlisle, music by Tom Wells, with lyrics by series creator Hugh Wilson.
Man I couldn’t find a single decent song in my collection that is under a minute.
I’ve sorted my playlist by time… I’ve found a number of good tracks under 30 seconds, but none of them really stand alone - they’re intros, between track chatter, bits of score from TV and video game soundtracks, parts of longer complete works that are simply broken up on the CD, that sort of thing.
Ahah!
I’m not Wearing Underwear Today (from Avenue Q), clocking in at 28.
And sub 1:00, but more than 30:
Voltaire - Oweee (0:33)
MIA - Banana Boat Skit (0:36)
Oingo Boingo - Tender Lumplings (0:37) (And again, the live version is very good at 0:47)
Alice Cooper - Sick Things (0:59)
1:00 exactly, or close enough:
A TV theme: The Cybersix theme
The Beatles - Wild Honey Pie
Polysics - Sunnymaster (mostly for the last 10 seconds)
The Brilliant Green - The Winter Album intro
And here we’re crossing the 1:05 boundry, which is as far as I’m willing to round it…
Oh, hell, I have to stretch to 1:06 to get in
The Beatles - Mean Mr Mustard
So, let’s call that my top 10 tiny songs, but don’t ask me to rank them.
Sub 2 minutes, however, is a much easier list. So easy in fact, I won’t do it, because it’d be too long.
Wikipedia lists the length for this one as 1:27. Looks like the only track on The Wall that’s truly under one minute is “Stop”, but there are several others that are under two: “The Happiest Days of Our Lives” (1:46), “Another Brick in the Wall (Part 3)” (1:14), "Goodbye Cruel World (1:13), “Vera” (1:34), “The Show Must Go On” (1:36), and “Outside the Wall” (1:44). I wouldn’t be surprised if some of those tracks were only a minute or less of actual song, though.
**The Austin Lounge Lizards: **Mama Don’t Allow - 45 seconds.
Pearl Jam has several songs at right around one minute, although it looks like “Wasted Reprise” (off the untitled “Avocado” album) is the only one under a minute – it clocks in at 53 seconds.
It’s barely a song at all, but “Pry, To” off Vitalogy is 1:03. There’s also “Lukin’” off No Code (1:02), the “Red Dot” song off Yield (1:06), “Soon Forget” off Binaural (1:46), and “Arc” off Riot Act (1:05).
I came in to list “Bookends” by Simon & Garfunkel, but it clocks in at 1:19. So ignore this.
I was going to nominate Elvis Costello’s Welcome to the Working Week (best ever 1st track/1st album combo?) but I see it’s 1:22. There is a YouTube of it live from 2007 at 1:10, damn close …
Oddly, my copy of The Wall has “Goodbye Cruel World” listed as 0:48 on the back cover, though the track actually runs 1:15.
Does the Windows 95 startup music composed by Brian Eno have a title? That’s around 3 seconds, and pretty good given the time constraint.
The comedian/actor Peter Sellers (of the Goons) once released an album called “Peter Sellers sings George Gershwin”. It was a comedy album with no songs by Gershwin, but the last track which runs for 18 seconds (I got that duration from a Google search, so it may or may not be accurate) is Sellers singing the name “George Gershwin”. Given the set-up with the album name, I’d consider that a contender for a great short “song”, but of course my opinion is probably biased since that sort of humor appeals to me.
I once contributed a song that was exactly one second long for a project that was to consist entirely of one-second sounds. I’m sure most of the submissions were burps, farts, and shrieks, but I wanted to do an actual song. The lyrics were, in their entirety, “I smell a rat!”* The live recording (piano and vocal) timed out at 1.2 seconds, so I sped it up to fit the brief (so to speak).
*©2006 Elephant Shrew Music
Most of my highest rated under a minute songs are TV themes or short songs from musicals:
From musicals:
Bad Horse’s Call, Bad Horse’s Letter (Dr Horrible), Life Support - Rent, Everything’s Alright Reprise - JCS
TV Themes:
Hey Beautiful (TV version) - HIMYM, Absolut Unveil - Q Department, Futurama theme, If the Sky is Falling (Three Moons Over Milford), Doctor Who theme, IT Crowd theme, Gary Shandling’s Show, Malcom in the Middle - TMBG, Everwood, Angel, Earth Final Conflict, I Know, You Know - Pysch, United States of Tara, TMNT
Even the actual songs tend to be from soundtracks or are novelty songs:
Spam Song - Monty Python, Apogee - K D Lang, The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly (Polka Version) - Madagascar 2, Tiny Doctors - TMBG, Poppler song and XMas song from Futurama, Butter’s song from South Park
I’m surprised at the lack of real standard songs under a minute in my library given it’s size. I’ll have to check out some of you’all’s examples!
By the German “Fun Punk” band Wizo.