Unless you have been on Mars for the last decade, in a cave, with your eyes shut and your fingers in your ears, you shouldn’t protest too much when I say that the creep of music into other media has become more prevalent and popular. As proof, sirs and madams, I present the examples of Idols and High School Musical. But is there something more – something better – to be had from this trend? I say, yes. Comedy!
Weird Al’s been around for ages, but his style’s been to spoof directly. When you take an existing song and replace the lyrics with something funny, you’re creating a way for yourself to be a comedian but you’re not creating a genre. Imagine a Weird Al section of your music store and how its bands would compete: they’d have to fight for unspoiled songs, pounce on ripe music first, or go head-to-head with someone else’s spoof. Impossible, it’s a niche, very unmarketplacey.
Musical feature films from a few years ago like Chicago, The Phantom of the Opera and Sweeney Todd proved that modern humans could actually follow musicals even if they weren’t avid theatregoers. I’d even hazard that South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut and Team America: World Police demonstrated that if you don’t have enough material to fill ninety minutes you can actually improve the quality of a movie by adding hilarious songs like Pearl Harbour. As crazy as it sounds, people of today might have learnt that to get value from some songs they should listen to the lyrics. And once you open Pandora’s music box of not just humming and mumbling along to a tune, then bands like Flight of the Conchords and The Lonely Island have a helluva lot to offer.
Ideally, a comedy band provides three things… It churns out good-quality, catchy songs (complete with videos born of a reasonable production budget), slap-your-grandmother funny lyrics (even if they’re absurd), and a bit o’ satire. Absurdity and serious satire make charming bedfellows, as in The Lonely Island’s “Like a Boss” or Dr Horrible’s “With My Freeze Ray”. …Or that’s what I tell people to convince them that I still have class when they ask me why I find Andy Samberg having rough sex with a giant fish so entertaining.
Frank Zappa and Captain Beefheart were doing comedy songs 40 years ago.
I think i’ve seen this somewhere before…but it’s not bad at all
Too true… And the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band came out with “I’m the Urban Spaceman” over 50 years ago. I don’t think one can say though that comedy songs have been that popular this century, but I do think they’re on the up and up. Which is cool. Most of my friends have gone from never listening to stuff like this to being pretty plugged into when the next episode of Flight of the Conchords appears on HBO.