| Novelty songs | |
|---|---|
| Stylistic origins | Popular music |
| Cultural origins | 1910s, United States |
| Derivative forms | Wizard rock |
| Other topics | |
A novelty song is a type of song built upon some form of novel concept, such as a gimmick, a piece of humor, or a sample of popular culture. Novelty songs partially overlap with comedy songs, which are more explicitly based on humor, and with musical parody, especially when the novel gimmick is another popular song. Novelty songs achieved great popularity during the 1920s and 1930s.[1][2] They had a resurgence of interest in the 1950s and 1960s.[3] The term arose in Tin Pan Alley to describe one of the major divisions of popular music; the other two divisions were ballads and dance music.[4] Humorous songs, or those containing humorous elements, are not necessarily novelty songs.
Novelty songs are often a parody or humor song, and may apply to a current event such as a holiday or a fad such as a dance or TV program. Many use unusual lyrics, subjects, sounds, or instrumentation, and may not even be musical. For example, the 1966 novelty song "They're Coming to Take Me Away, Ha-Haaa!", by Napoleon XIV, has little music and is set to a rhythm tapped out on a snare drum, a tambourine, and the bare sides of the musicians' legs.
A book on achieving an attention-grabbing novelty single is The Manual (How to Have a Number One the Easy Way), written by The KLF. It is based on their achievement of a UK number-one single with "Doctorin' the Tardis", a 1988 dance remix mashup of the Doctor Who theme music released under the name of 'The Timelords'. It argued that (at the time) achieving a number one single could be achieved less by musical talent than through market research, sampling and gimmicks matched to an underlying danceable groove.[5][6]
- ^ Axford, Song Sheets to Software, p. 20: "As sentimental songs were the mainstay of Tin Pan Alley, novelty and comical songs helped to break the monotony, developing in the twenties and thirties as signs of the times."
- ^ Tawa, Supremely American, p. 55: "... in the 1920s, novelty songs offset the intensely serious and lachrymose ballads. nonsensical novelty songs, reproducing the irrational and meaningless side of the twenties, made frequent appearances."
- ^ "Way Back Attack – Top 100 Novelty Hits of the '50s and '60s". Waybackattack.com. Retrieved December 22, 2017.
- ^ Hamm, Irving Berlin Early Songs, p. xxxiv: "The text of a novelty song sketches a vignette or a brief story of an amusing or provocative nature. ... noted for portraying characters of specific ethnicity or those finding themselves in certain comic or melodramatic situations, ..."
- ^ "Words and Music: Our 60 Favorite Music Books". Pitchfork Music. July 11, 2011. Retrieved October 21, 2015.
- ^ The KLF (1988). The Manual (how to have a number one the easy way). [Great Britain]: KLF. ISBN 0-86359-616-9.