Hello, Hit Parade listeners. It's Chris. The month of August means we at Hit Parade are taking our much-deserved annual break. We'll be back with a brand-new episode in September. But in the meantime, we're bringing you an encore episode from the Hit Parade Archives. This show, on the chart history of novelty hits,

was originally released in January 2020. We're bringing it back in 2025 because I was inspired

by this year's tour by Comedy Genius and National Treasure Weird Al Yankovic. I caught Al at Madison Square Garden in July,

and it was a delight. What you're about to hear is part one of this episode. Part two will

arrive in your podcast feed at the end of the month. Would you like to hear every episode all at once

the day it drops? Sign up for Slate Plus.

It supports not only this show, but all of Slate's acclaimed journalism and podcasts. Just go to

slate.com slash hit parade plus. You'll get to hear every hit parade episode in full the day it arrives. Plus, Hit Parade The Bridge, our bonus episodes, with guest interviews, deeper dives on our episode topics, and pop chart trivia. Once again, to join, that's slate.com slash hit parade plus. Thanks. And now, please enjoy part one of this

encore hit parade episode. Welcome to Hit Parade, a podcast of Popchart History from Slate magazine,

about the hits from coast to coast.

I'm Chris Malanfitt, chart analyst, pop critic, and writer of Slate's Why Is This Song Number One series? On today's show, in our December 2019 episode of Hit Parade, I talked about the

improbable smash that was sitting on top of Billboard's Hot 100.

Mariah Carey's holiday classic, All I Want for Christmas is You.

The first Christmas song to top Billboard's Hot 100 in 61 years.

That compelled us to play you the prior Christmas song to hit number one, which reached the top all the way back in 1958.

As I noted, David Seville's The Chipmunk Song is less a Christmas song than a novelty record.

It was still on the Hot 100 for weeks into 1959, long after the holidays were over.

And in a way, this wasn't surprising, because in the early rock era, novelty records were chart dominators.

This was the golden era for goofy hits, a time when comical records would not only make the Hot 100 regularly, but quite frequently top the chart.

Right to the jungle tearing limbs off of trees. A time when live comics and veteran stand-ups won Grammys, sold piles of albums, and even got on the radio.

Hello, mutter. piles of albums, and even got on the radio.

Hello, mutter, hello father.

...