Riverside Ford 8887143673

While some musicians – like Weird Al Yankovic, Tenacious D and The Lonely Island – work hard to make their songs come across as jokes, sometimes more mainstream bands will test the comedic waters. Usually these attempts are tucked away in vaults somewhere never to be heard from again, but a few end up making music history. 

 

Think of the Beastie Boys’ quintessential party anthem, (You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (to Party). The song established the Boys’ 1986 Licensed to Ill as the go-to album for bad kids looking for a good time, but it was that very good time that the Beastie Boys were mocking when they started to integrate the song into their live performances. Sick of the debauchery displayed by much of the late 80s rock royalty, the song was meant as a satire of the day’s hair band party anthems – their answer to Motley Crue’s Smoking in the Boy’s Room.

 

The band and their producer, Rick Rubin, found the track amusing and decided to record the song, as well as an equally funny video. However, the song and video began to catch on with no one realizing its true intention. The song became an anthem for the very people it was mocking. In 1987, the band publicly denounced the song and refused to perform it live ever again.

 

In 2004, readers of Total Guitar magazine voted Guns N’ Roses’ Sweet Child O’ Mine as having the “greatest guitar riff ever.” What perhaps they didn’t realize was that the famous riff and the rest of the song’s music were written in a grand total of five minutes. Speaking to Guitar for the Practicing Musician, band member Slash said, “‘Sweet Child O' Mine’ was a joke. It was a fluke. I was sitting around making funny faces and acting like an idiot and played that riff. Izzy started playing the chords that I was playing, strumming them, and all of a sudden, Axl really liked it. I hated that song because it was so stupid at first. I hated the guitar part."

The song went on to hit number one on the charts and cement the Guns N' Roses album Appetite for Destruction as one of the greatest of its time.

 

The song that came in number two behind Sweet Child O' Mine on Total Guitar’s greatest guitar riff poll was Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit. The song is considered by many to be the song that single-handedly ushered in the grunge era, but it was actually inspired by a joke made at singer/songwriter Kurt Cobain’s expense.

 

Cobain’s friend Kathleen Hanna, of the band Bikini Kill, spray-painted “Kurt smells like Teen Spirit” on the singer’s wall. Unaware that Teen Spirit was not only a brand of women’s deodorant, but also the brand that his then-girlfriend wore, he thought Hanna was anointing him some sort of revolutionary. In fact, she was simply making fun of him for smelling like a girl. Little did either of them know that what started out as mocking was actually a prediction.

 

Once Kurt found out he was simply the butt of a joke, he lamented that it was quite apropos as he found the song itself to be a joke as well. In 1994, he told Rolling Stone magazine, “I was basically trying to rip off the Pixies.” While Kurt, and Nirvana as a whole, thought the song sounded like garbage, what the world heard was entirely different. The song became an expression of teen angst worthy of a musical and a cultural revolution. On the heels of the single, Nirvana’s Nevermind would go on to sell 30 million copies and become one of the best-selling albums of all time.

 

While sometimes it seems like the radio is filled with songs that sound as though they were written as jokes, it appears that, in actuality, it is the seemingly most sincere and oftentimes revolutionary songs that were not meant to be taken seriously. Makes you think, if these songs were meant to mean nothing, maybe the reverse is true. Maybe, there is some deep, underlying meaning behind Lou Bega’s Mambo No. 5…but on second thought, probably not.