Novelty songs are rarely written to be actual, functional pieces of music. Even when they are, though, the humorous nature and silliness of the song takes over, and you forget that sometimes, there’s actually a kernel of true awesomeness there. These novelty songs outlived the flash-in-the-pan beginnings they come from and turned into jams that we rock out to on a regular basis.
6) The Hardest Part of Breaking Up… – 2Gether
During the height of the boy band craze, MTV produced perhaps their greatest programming achievement to date, a mockumentary of the fake boy band 2gether. There were a lot of spectacular moments and songs, but nothing rings quite as true as this break up anthem. No lies, friends, I absolutely blast this on a regular basis and feel no shame. Shout out to “U + Me= Us (Calculus)”, a song that’s better than 100% of what 98 Degrees released.
5) Every Sperm is Sacred – Monty Python
No one would even be on this list with out this song. Shut up and listen.
4) I’m On A Boat – The Lonely Island
This is one of the many bands on this list whose entire catalog would fit in perfectly, but we have to go with the most infinitely quotable and playable of their songs. How many times have you hummed this to yourself? How many times have you actually put it on to listen to as you walk down the street? It’s hilarious, self aware and damn catchy — the pinnacle of what novelty-pop songs should be.
3) Freedom Isn’t Free – Team America World Police
Novelty songs are brilliant because of the elements of pastiche and satire that they bring to a genre. No songwriting team is better at perfectly skewering genres (or skewering anything really) than Trey Parker and Matt Stone. While basically every song they’ve ever written for any of their various entertainments, from actual musicals to South Park, is pretty much uniformly amazing, very little beats the perfection of their jingoistic country songs taken straight from the Toby Keith method of “angry American” songwriting. It hits all the notes of those songs so perfectly, you can miss the joke if you aren’t looking close enough.
2) Amish Paradise – Weird Al
I endeavor to live in a world where children will one day hear “Gangstas Paradise” and ask their parents, “Mommy, why is that man covering a Weird Al song but it’s not funny, and actually incredibly sad?”
1) Bowie – Flight of the Concords
Me listening to an entire FotC album on the way to work is what inspired this list, so let’s just listen to some of these perfect songs. Seriously, they’re spectacularly written and hilarious. You can work later — listen to these now.