Hit Parade | Music History and Music Trivia - The White and Nerdy Edition Part 2
Hit Parade | Music History and Music Trivia
Slate Podcasts
4.8 • 2.2K Ratings
🗓️ 29 August 2025
⏱️ 47 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 the second part of 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.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Why are businesses like HelloVet choosing Apple products and services? |
| 0:04.8 | So we started the business two years ago. |
| 0:07.2 | We had a few people who were used to PCs and this was their first foray into Macs. |
| 0:12.5 | But it's been super smooth getting everyone onto those devices and everyone seems really, really happy. |
| 0:18.0 | Find out how Mac can help you run and grow your business at Apple.com forward slash hello vet. |
| 0:49.0 | Welcome back to Hit Parade, a podcast of Pop Chart History from Slate magazine about the hits from coast to coast. I'm Chris Malanfi, chart analyst, pop critic, and writer of Slate's Why Is This Song Number One series? |
| 0:56.7 | On our last episode, we walked through the chart history of novelty songs. |
| 1:03.0 | These comical ditties were hits even before the dawn of rock and roll, and they enjoyed |
| 1:09.5 | major success through the 1950s, 60s, and 70s. But as radio |
| 1:16.2 | playlists became more formatted, funny records were gradually sidelined. However, at the dawn of |
| 1:24.1 | the 80s, a certain accordion-playing weird guy, is about to reinvent the business model for parody songs. |
| 1:33.8 | In the summer of 1979, 19-year-old Alfred Yankovic, a student at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo, California, |
| 1:48.4 | noticed that there was this punchy song dominating the radio. |
| 1:57.7 | It was My Sharona, the top hit of 1979, recorded by New Wave rock band The NAC. |
| 2:06.8 | And one thing Al knew right away, this would be a funny song to parody. |
| 2:12.8 | Al Yankovic had already spent years listening to the Dr. Demento show and home recording his own comical songs, |
| 2:21.4 | played on accordion. Al had even passed a tape of some of his songs to Demento when the radio |
| 2:28.5 | host visited Al's high school in 1976. Demento played a couple of Al's songs on the show. Now at Cal Poly, |
| 2:38.6 | Yankevick took his accordion into a bathroom across from the college radio station and recorded |
| 2:44.9 | his own version of the NAC's hit. |
| 3:10.6 | My Bilona, an homage to lunchmeet, an homage to lunchmeet would not only launch Al Yankovic's recording career, it typified several trends for him. For one thing, it was a smash on the Dr. Demento show. Demento claimed |
| 3:17.3 | My Bologna was his most requested song of 1979. For another thing, Al's parody charmed the artist behind the original song. |
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