Does eat oats?
I think Short People is pretty well known to be sarcastic rather than silly.
Except that there actually are people prejudiced against short people; at least, against short men.
(and the inoffensiveness of a group has nothing to do with whether there’s prejudice against them.)
Everything Is Beautiful
My Girl Bill
Modern Major-General’s Song
Chick-a-Boom (Don’t You Just Love It) by Daddy Dewdrop
Rosie by Jackson Browne.
Silly double entendre, sure, but I doubt he was joking about the actual point of the song: that, even as a famous musician, he ended up settling for spending the night with Rosie every now and then.
Surfin’ Bird is typical of many dance songs that don’t have to worry about being serious.
Undercover Angel, Alan O’Day
I first heard the song Tempted, by Squeeze, while playing Grand Theft Auto (it was part of the playlist of one of the in-game radio stations).
The lyrics were pretty silly so I thought the song was a joke, like all those “Maibatsu” car commercials they played on those stations. Then I found out it was a “real” song.
I felt the same way the first time I heard Don’t Worry, Be Happy.
Steve Fisk - “Donna Summer on the Radio”
I dunno, maybe it’s an experimental joke.
I always thought the Crash Test Dummies song “Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm” sounded kind of silly. In fact what I heard it for the first time I wasn’t sure it wasn’t a Weird Al song.
I heard (but of course can’t find a cite) that Mac Davis wrote this song because someone told him that a song needed a “good hook” to be successful. So he wrote a song about being hooked.
Back in 1998 Marillion released a song called “Costa del Slough/Under the Sun.” It’s a more sarcastic than silly take on climate change.
The polar ice is melting
'Suits me fine
We go to the beach
On the Northern Line
We watch the sea
Comin’ up the street
Under the sun
I can believe that, but I’m just checking to make sure it wasn’t actually Weird Al’s version that you heard.
It wasn’t. I’ve heard both songs. I was aware of Weird Al’s version when I first heard the Crash Test Dummies version, which is exactly why I was confused. Then I slowly came to the realization that the song I was hearing wasn’t the joke version.
Lou Reed did a lot of songs that could fall into that category. I was thinking of The Power of Positive Drinking*, but there’s plenty on Transformer that is in a similar vein - New York Telephone Conversation, Vicious and debatably several others. It goes back to Velvet Underground days as well.
j
Ahem. Ooops.
The * was - “When I exit I’ll go out gracefully, shot in my hand” - which was, broadly speaking, what he did.
j
Werewolves of London by Warren Zevon
Tequila by The Champs
Dirty Water by The Standells