The five best-selling novelty songs of all time
When you think of the biggest-selling artists of all time, your mind probably doesn’t go straight to artists like Village People or Los del Río. You probably don’t think of people like ‘Weird Al’ Jankovic, but with 12 million albums sold, it’s clear that there is a big market out there for him.
In fact, there has always been a big market out there for novelty songs. Just ask Bob Merrill and Patti Page how much money they made from ‘How Much is That Doggy in the Window?’ to find out.
When it comes to other art forms, there are huge markets and high demand for comedy movies and television series, humorous books and stand-up comic acts, so why not laugh a little when it comes to music as well? Even serious artists like Leonard Cohen, Tom Waits and Bob Dylan like to slip a joke or two into their lyrics from time to time. And who can forget Johnny Cash singing about ‘The Chicken in Black?’ in 1984? Well, Johnny Cash would have liked to, for one, despite the fact that the song was far better than it had any right to be.
You can trace a lineage of humorous songs and poems of parody with laugh-filled lyrics all the way back through time, when court jesters and roving troubadours would sing silly versions of real-world events to keep a crowd in stitches through song, so it’s no wonder that the tradition continued into the modern day in the form of the Novelty number.
The writers of Tin Pan Alley often displayed their wit with their words, and were happy to add a helping of humour to serious subjects as well as writing some straight-up silly songs like ‘Yes! We Have No Bananas’ and ‘Yakety Yak’, or injecting jokes into otherwise straight-pan songs like ‘Love Is Just Around the Corner’ (“Venus de Milo was noted for her charms, but strictly between us, you’re cuter than Venus and what’s more, you’ve got arms!”). Though some have made an art form out of the comedic format, others have taken the whole enterprise a lot less seriously and were just out to have as much fun as possible.
Often, that sense of fun is infectious. Though we all know that songs like ‘The Monster Mash’, ‘Maxwell’s Silver Hammer’, ‘Witch Doctor’ or something like ‘Werewolves of London’ are less serious or ambitious attempts at art than say, Beethoven’s Fifth, ‘Blackbird’ or ‘Murder Most Foul’, they’re no less likely to stick with you. Sometimes, they even stick with an audience so much that they’re catapulted up the charts and into the unlikely upper echelons of commercial success and cement their place in music history. Just ask Bobby “Boris” Pickett & the Crypt-Kickers, CW McCall, The Chipmunks or Crazy Frog.
The five best-selling novelty songs of all time:
‘Monster Mash’ – Over 4 Million copies sold
One of the rare novelty songs that has crossed over into bonafide classic status, the ‘Monster Mash’ spawned a whole genre of Halloween anthems that now includes songs like ‘The Purple People Eater’, ‘Werewolves of London’ and ‘He’s Back (The Man Behind the Mask)’, though none have ever captured the same campy or spooky magic that Bobby “Boris” Pickett managed to bottle up whilst working in the lab late one night in 1962.
A perennial party favourite at late-October get-togethers and go-to track to invoke the spirit of Halloween by music supervisors the world around, the song actually topped the charts in the year it came out, but had relinquished the number one spot by the time Halloween rolled around. Bobby Pickett might do his best Boris Karloff impression at the start of the song and go on to sing about familiar names like Dracula and Frankenstein as the track goes on, but there was actually another familiar face in the lineup of his crypt-kicking band, as well. That’s Leon Russell, you can hear on piano.
‘Shaddap You Face’ – Over 6 million copies sold
Bobby “Boris” Pickett was far from the last person to find novelty success through the simple trick of assuming an accent and playing up a role on a song. American-Australian singer Joe Dolce, born and raised in Painesville, Ohio, had an even bigger hit than the ‘Monster Mash’ by donning an Italian accent and playing a polka rhythm on his signature hit ‘Shaddap You Face’.
What’s the matter you, hey? Got-a no respect for this kind of music? It’s not so bad, it’s a catchy song after all, and songs like these have always had their place. You don’t think so? Don’t agree? Oh, shaddap-a you face.
‘Convoy’ – Over 7 Million copies sold
How many songs sell so many copies and get so popular that they end up getting turned into a movie? Not many, but this one certainly did. And how many songs are written from the perspective of a freight-hauling trucker and using almost exclusively lyrics made up of CB slang? Maybe only this one.
Judging by the popularity and success of this song, maybe some other songwriters should give it a go, as well. ‘Convoy’ spent six weeks riding high in the Number 1 spot on the Country charts, crossed over for a week at the top of the Pop charts as well, and before long was adapted into a movie starring Kris Kristofferson in the lead role. 10-4, Rubber Duck.
‘Macarena (Bayside Boys Remix)’ – Over 11 million copies sold
The soundtrack to a million school discos at the turn of the century and the song that spawned one of the most well-known and oft-attempted dance routines, there is no shortage of versions of the ‘Macarena’.
Originally recorded by the Spanish pop duo Los del Río, who first started singing together thirty years earlier, in 1993, the song has a feel of an old Latin folk song that had been brought into modern times, sort of like an updated version of ‘La Bamba’, and it’s many versions only went to cement itself further into the public consciousness.
Fangoria were the first to spot the remix potential in the track, but it was the Bayside Boys who brought the song into a wider Western market by adding a few verses in English and turning the song into a worldwide hit.
‘The Chipmunk Song (Christmas Don’t Be Late)’ – Over 12 Million Copies Sold<br>
Not content with just releasing novelty songs, Ross Bagdasarian (better known under the pseudonym David Seville) wanted to go one further when he created the novelty act The Chipmunks.
In fact, he’d already had a hit with the novelty song ‘Witch Doctor’ in 1958 (good luck getting “ooh, ee, ooh, ah-ah” out of your head now, by the way). The song was so successful that the heads of his Liberty label, Alvin Bennett, Simon Waronker and Theodore Keep, asked him to come up with another comical song to plug once the novelty of ‘Witch Doctor’ had worn off.
Bagdasarian obliged and, after playing around with the effects of speeding up and slowing down tape during recording, came up with the concept of the singing chipmunks named Alvin, Simon and Theodore. He’d been asked to come up with a hit, but nobody in their right mind would have ever guessed just how big the song would go on to become or what a franchise it would spawn.
Though Bagdasarian passed away way back in 1972, The Chipmunks live on. Alongside their music—they have 38 studio albums to their name!—the fictional rodents have had their own TV show, starred in movies and even been out on tour. With all that hard work, it’s only fair that they’ve sold so many records.
