SOAP

Maybe even better than re-living all my favorite novelty songs from my childhood on Spotify was discovering some songs I had never heard before by some of my favorite artists - many long dead and gone.

Allan Sherman died young - 48, I think. You might not recognize the name but maybe you remember his most famous song - the one about an unhappy boy at summer camp: Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah. (If you haven't heard of it, where have you been? It's got its own Wikipedia page!) It made it to #2 on the Billboard Hot 100 List in 1963 - only kept from the #1 spot by Stevie Wonder. 

Anyway, on Spotify I came across one of Sherman's songs I had never heard before. It was set to the tune of Chim Chim Chiree and it reminded me of something else I always appreciated about novelty music as a genre...

Novelty music has always been a great place for social commentary. I appreciate humorists who can get me laughing while also getting across an important truth.

Sherman's Chim Chim Chiree is about advertising and how easily we fall for what the world is selling us. The last stanza was my favorite*:

I've lived all my life

In this weird wonderland -

I keep buying things

That I don't understand,

Cause they promise me miracles,

Magic and hope,

But somehow it always 

Turns out to be soap.

More relevant today than ever! 

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* It's even better if you conjure up the melody as you read the lyrics - especially the way the tune puts an emphasis on the word "soap". Brilliant!