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Hit Parade: The White and Nerdy Edition

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Manage episode 252055525 series 76
Content provided by Slate Podcasts. All podcast content including episodes, graphics, and podcast descriptions are uploaded and provided directly by Slate Podcasts or their podcast platform partner. If you believe someone is using your copyrighted work without your permission, you can follow the process outlined here https://player.fm/legal.

Sped-up voices. Wacky instruments. Songs about cavemen, bathtubs, bikinis and mothers-in-law. From the very birth of rock-and-roll, novelty songs were essential elements of the hit parade. Right through the ’70s—the age of streaking, CB radios, disco and King Tut—novelty songs could be chart-topping hits. But by the corporate ’80s, it was harder for goofballs to score round-the-clock hits on regimented radio playlists.

Until one perm-headed, mustachioed, accordion-playing parodist who called himself “Weird” rebooted novelty hits for the new millennium. A video jokester before YouTube, he just might have ushered in the age of the meme. So join Hit Parade this month as we walk through the history of novelty hits on the charts—most especially if M.C. Escher is your favorite M.C.

Podcast production by Justin D. Wright.

Follow @cmolanphy on Twitter

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

  continue reading

2369 episodes

Artwork

Hit Parade: The White and Nerdy Edition

Slate Culture

283,610 subscribers

published

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Manage episode 252055525 series 76
Content provided by Slate Podcasts. All podcast content including episodes, graphics, and podcast descriptions are uploaded and provided directly by Slate Podcasts or their podcast platform partner. If you believe someone is using your copyrighted work without your permission, you can follow the process outlined here https://player.fm/legal.

Sped-up voices. Wacky instruments. Songs about cavemen, bathtubs, bikinis and mothers-in-law. From the very birth of rock-and-roll, novelty songs were essential elements of the hit parade. Right through the ’70s—the age of streaking, CB radios, disco and King Tut—novelty songs could be chart-topping hits. But by the corporate ’80s, it was harder for goofballs to score round-the-clock hits on regimented radio playlists.

Until one perm-headed, mustachioed, accordion-playing parodist who called himself “Weird” rebooted novelty hits for the new millennium. A video jokester before YouTube, he just might have ushered in the age of the meme. So join Hit Parade this month as we walk through the history of novelty hits on the charts—most especially if M.C. Escher is your favorite M.C.

Podcast production by Justin D. Wright.

Follow @cmolanphy on Twitter

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

  continue reading

2369 episodes

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