Maybe he misspoke while recording it? Because you’re right, that make much more sense.
Every Gilbert and Sullivan comic opera had one of these (I think Ruddigore might have had two, but I’m not interested enough to check); they are called patter songs. They were not intended to be silly per se, they were written for a particular performer (who was copied by his successors in those roles) to showcase his ability to enunciate lyrics rapidly but clearly so the audience could catch every word (Gilbert insisted on that). They often contain deep and important themes from the show (“My eyes are fully open to my awful situation” or “When you’re lying awake with a dismal headache and repose is taboo’d by anxiety”) and only occasionally have jokes (“This particularly rapid unintelligible patter isn’t generally heard and if it is it doesn’t matter.”)
There, more than you ever wanted to know.
Why do you think this song is silly?
30,000 Pounds of Bananas. In real life, the fatal truck crash was no laughing matter–but the song made it sound silly. ETA–not sure if Chapin was kidding about this, or serious.
Well, I think people don’t question because they’re afraid they’ll sound ignorant. “What, you didn’t get it?” No one will ever admit that they don;t understand a Dylan (or whatever) piece because they’ll lose face. But sometimes, even living legends, geniusses and Nobel Prize winners make bad songs.
Dylan? Make sense?
In 1979 this song was a breath of fresh air for a kid who hated disco and punk:
Girl of My Dreams by bram Tchaikovsky
Two decades later I realized it’s about a sex doll.
Still sounds great though!
I watched that, just to see if they’d sing “MacArthur’s Park”.
I read long ago that after every take, Richard Harris, reprimanded, would say “I did that? Every single time? Huh… Well, maybe I won’t next time.”
And then he did.
So Jimmy Webb gave up and left it in.
So, like every other Frank Zappa song?
I’m missing it—left what in?
This song wasn’t recorded in a studio for some big record, it was recorded in the basement at Woodstock, just fooling around. “Cup of meat” makes perfect sense when another song recorded at the same time talked about a bottle of bread.
Plus, if you’ve heard as many versions of songs as I have, you know he changes lyrics all the time. He also makes mistakes, which get left in if the version is good enough. There is a mistake in “Hard Rain” and one in “Like a Rolling Stone” if you listen hard enough.
While reading the big, fat book from the Dylan archives, I found that the way he writes is to write verse after verse and then pick the best ones for a song. Which must be how the verses in “All Along the Watchtower” got gloriously out of order.
Probably none of us could write this way, which is why we aren’t Dylan.
So true.
Judy in Disguise!
Nice one!
ETA: When John Fred misheard the Beatles’ Sergeant Pepper album track of “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” — he thought Paul McCartney was singing “Lucy in disguise with diamonds” — he decided to create a send-up of the Fab Four’s work.
It’s a parody!
I was thinking about starting a silly songs thread, but then I found this one. Why was I thinking about that? Because today I somehow came upon this:
Annette Funicello had a minor hit with “Pineapple Princess”, and I suppose we would call it a novelty song. I’m not sure why, but the style, the beat and the lyrics struck me as so funny I listened to it three times while continuously laughing. It’s so sweet and fun I can’t really mock it.
What about, “Coconut,” by Nilsson?
Considering the songwriters’ wider oeuvre, catchy and silly is to be expected.
You mean it’s not a traditional song of Hawaii? That album cover lied to me.
Hey, that came out while I was in junior high. It was deep, man.
I submit The M.T.A. Song. Serious and deliberately silly.
What I came to post. Was written as a mayoral campaign song protesting “exit fares” on the Boston transit system, where in certain circumstances (crossing transit zones) you had to pay to get off the train. I got stuck with one in the 80s taking the Red Line to Quincy. Fortunately I was able to come up with the necessary change, which is why I am no longer on the train.
Silly in the reductio ad absurdum sense.