NOVELTY RECORDS

You’d think that by now the novelty record was a thing of the past, left to rot in an era where it was okay to be wacky, and radio DJs weren’t concerned with irony. But, let’s face it, would some of these godawful rap record sell half as well if it they aren’t based around deliberately kitsch samples from Oliver or Knight Rider? And now Harry Enfield, who previously had a late-eighties novelty hit as Loadsamoney (co-written with uber-producer William Orbit – sample lyric: “Loadsa, Loadsa, Loadsa, Money, Money, Money – I’ve got Loadsamoney!”), is, perhaps unwisely, attempting to return to the charts on the back of his Kevin And Perry film.

So, the novelty record may still be around, but it has changed form (note Enfield’s teaming with bona-fide DJs for the Kevin And Perry song), and possibly for the better. The heyday of the novelty single was the 1980s, though the phenomenon ran from the 1950s onwards right up until the mid-90s, when it burst in a shower of pink and yellow unpleasantness. You can, perhaps, blame The Beatles and their Yellow Submarine or Octopus’s Garden for popularising (but by no means pioneering) the template of daft lyrics and naïve music, and encouraging every stand-up comedian or comedy group from Jasper Carrot to Rory Bremner to The Goodies to The Young Ones to have a go.

Musical qualifications mattered naught. Likewise comedic sensibilities. Carrot’s humourless Funky Moped was a hit. So was The Young Ones’ Living Doll, The Goodies’ Funky Gibbon, and Bremner’s absurd, theoretically appeal-free Paul Hardcastle cricketing spoof N-N-N-Nineteen (Not Out). All to a song laugh-free, tune-lacking efforts. At least South Park’s Chocolate Salty Balls had a rhythm.

But it’s not always laughs that define a novelty record. Observe the mawkishly sentimental Grandma by The St. Winifred’s School Choir, or Clive Dunn’s appalling Grandad We Love You. Then there are the chicken-in-a-basket party records, characterised by The Birdie Song, The Okey-Cokey, or Black Lace’s Agadoo (needlessly spoofed by Spitting Image with The Chicken Song, penned by the two blokes responsible for Red Dwarf).

However, the undoubtedly nadir was Noel Edmond’s Mr Blobby song – the  inevitable spin-off from Britain’s “wacky” answer to Barney. Without merit, this an unjust assault on the ears and brain nevertheless became a 1993 Christmas number one. Let both the creation and the creator be forever loathed.

And lest we forget a few, let’s doff our caps to the following musical abominations; Monster Mash (“I was working in the lab late one night…”), Ernie The Fastest Milkman In The West (courtesy of Michael Jackson’s favourite,Benny Hill), I Want To Spend My Christmas With A Dalek (boasting the inexplicable lyric, “I want to kiss him on his big red toe”), the repellent Timmy Mallett’s cover version of Itsy-Bitsy, Teenie-Weenie, Yellow Polka-Dot Bikini, Father Abraham’s Smurfs record (“Father Abraham” being, of course, wonky-gobbed pop guru Jonathan King), anything by the allegedly “Weird” Al Yankovic (most recently his Star-Wars themed American Pie take-off), Leonard Nimoy’s outlandish Ballad Of Bilbo Baggins, T.U.R.T.L.E. Power, the early-90s wave of Game Boy-inspired tunes, plus, whether they like it or not, Blur’s Parklife and The Prodigy’s Charly.

---

Pop-O-Quiz
Pick the correct answers by using the drop down menus.
When you're done click submit to see your score.
If you get any wrong you will have a tick against the question
then you can try again.