Hit Parade | Music History and Music Trivia - The White and Nerdy Edition Part 1
Hit Parade | Music History and Music Trivia
Slate Podcasts
4.8 • 2.2K Ratings
🗓️ 15 August 2025
⏱️ 50 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Sped-up voices. Wacky instruments. Songs about cavemen, bathtubs, bikinis, and mothers-in-law. From the dawn of rock ‘n’ roll through the 1970s—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 hits on regimented radio playlists. Until one perm-headed, mustachioed, accordion-playing parodist who called himself “Weird” rebooted novelty hits for the new millennium.
In this encore episode of Hit Parade, Chris Molanphy explores the history of novelty hits on the charts.
Podcast production by Justin D. Wright and Kevin Bendis.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
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| 0:30.2 | Hello, Hit Parade listeners. It's Chris. The month of August means we at Hit Parade are taking |
| 0:37.3 | our much-deserved annual break. |
| 0:39.7 | We'll be back with a brand-new episode in September. |
| 0:43.2 | But, in the meantime, we're bringing you an encore episode from the Hit Parade Archives. |
| 0:48.8 | This show, on the chart history of novelty hits, was originally released in January 2020. We're bringing it back |
| 0:58.2 | in 2025 because I was inspired by this year's tour by comedy genius and national treasure, Weird Al Yankovic. |
| 1:07.9 | I caught Al at Madison Square Garden in July, and it was a delight. |
| 1:13.2 | What you're about to hear is part one of this episode. Part two will arrive in your podcast |
| 1:18.9 | feed at the end of the month. Would you like to hear every episode all at once the day it drops? |
| 1:25.3 | Sign up for Slate Plus. It supports not only this show, but all of Slate's |
| 1:30.8 | acclaimed journalism and podcasts. Just go to slate.com slash hit parade plus. You'll get to hear |
| 1:38.7 | every hit parade episode in full the day it arrives. Plus, hit parade The Bridge, our bonus episodes, |
| 1:46.8 | with guest interviews, deeper dives on our episode topics, and pop chart trivia. Once again, |
| 1:52.9 | to join, that's slate.com slash hit parade plus. Thanks. And now, please enjoy part one of this Encore Hit Parade episode. |
| 2:09.3 | Welcome to Hit Parade, a podcast of Pop Chart History from Slate magazine, about the hits from |
| 2:15.5 | coast to coast. I'm Chris Malanfi, chart analyst, pop critic, and writer of Slate's about the hits from coast to coast. I'm Chris Milanfitt, chart analyst, pop critic, |
| 2:19.7 | and writer of Slate's Why Is This Song Number One series? On today's show, in our December |
... |
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