Look into Goofy Gold. I think it is a incredible collection of pre-80s novelty songs that include several of the ones on this list. "Ohhhh .... you know what I like..."
Fun fact: the only reason Harlem Shake hit number 1 was because Billboard decided to count YT views in 2013, so they don’t have a “Gangnam Style not hitting number 1” situation. Problem was, in typical billboard fashion, they put this rule in while the Harlem Shake just got hella viral, so it debuted at number 1 immediately
Harlem Shake also debuted with more than twice the points of the number 2 song (which was Thrift Shop) resulting in a point gap of over 800. Harlem Shake is among the biggest number 1 hits just by points alone in Billboard history, joining Candle in the Wind, Hello, Old Town Road and LWYMMD which is insane to think about.
Which is a shame, cause Harlem Shake really doesn't have much variety in its structure. It's just the exact part you hear in the meme videos just repeated... over... and over... and over...
remember folks: Paul Stanley of KISS said making disco was easy, and when told to back up his word, he made I was made for loving you, and it ended up being one of their most popular songs.
That's the thing with a lot of music. If you're an objectively talented musician/composer/songwriter, it's not very challenging to write different genres because of how the fundamentals of what makes a song good are often somewhat universal.
"Harlem Shake" hit the perfect storm of early 2010s trends: EDM (especially dubstep), "lol i'm so random" humor, and social media challenges. As a teenager at the time, I'd consider it a quintessential piece of pop culture for its time."
It also basically hit when the largest segment of Millennials were finishing up college. Millennials between 1989 and 1991 are the largest single cohort of people in America currently, and in Spring 2013 about half of them would've been college seniors. And the dance is exactly the kind of dumb thing you'd do with your college friends.
Yes, the "lol, I'm so random" humar and memes were big factors. When I think about Harlem Shake, I also think about Gangnam Style by Psy. Same thing. If it is meme-able, then it has potential.
@@spimbles that's what I was wondering lol. With how personal the anecdote at the end is, the identity of who the quote's coming from is kind of important
Best weird chipmunks fact is that they once were the most successful act in grammy history because they were the same year the grammy started and won a quite a few technical awards
Alvin and the Chimpkuns were "influented" by the jpop (japanese pop "kid girls idols"that was emerging in the late 70s and more sucessfully in the late 90s and 00s thanks to Hello Project Agency who made famous to Morning Musume and Berryz Koubou !!!!
For what it's worth, Disco Duck was the kind of song that came on the radio and your parents would laugh while you quietly cringed. I was there. It was rough.
@@pinehawk9600 Well, the Chicago White Sox disco demolition night debacle and Rick Dees involvement with this song (and white dudes who couldn't dance) were truly why disco died.
I have fond memories of it but only because I never had to experience it in that way. My dad is in the generation that would’ve been forced to listen to it with their parents, but he would play it to me and my sisters when we were young. We would frequently request the funny duck song 😂
I was a student at a Job Corps when "Old Town Road" got big. That song was the bane of my existence, everybody on campus had it blaring on their phones and whatever else had a speaker
As a kid, my audio processing was so bad that I thought I just couldn't understand the lyrics of Rock Me Amedeus because I couldn't understand the lyrics to half the music my parents listened to. Can't believe I didn't realize it was in GERMAN
Haha i don’t think I ever realized it was German either, I just never knew what any of the verses were saying and just wind up belting out “Amadeus Amadeus” when the chorus comes up
@@noth1ng5id Well Falco was quite popular in Austria (as an Austrian artist). His singing was a mixture between english and german (austrian with viennese slang).
Macarena is a great song. This is nothing but thinly veiled racism. It's a great song. It's a great dance, that almost anybody can do. You can even do it seated. So it's very inclusive. And if you translate the lyrics, it actually tells a compelling enough story.
@@joeybaseball7352the point is that macarena had no business getting as popular as it did. there are plenty of catchy songs that go unnoticed due to being from a no name band or not being a part of some larger movement or moment. take Not Like Us by Kendrick Lamar. Kendrick is the biggest hip hop artist ever, and the song itself was released as part of a beef between another massive artist, and there was NO COPYRIGHT on it for a little over a month after its release. it came from a popular artist during a cultural event and had no copyright around it, leading it to be played constantly. macarena is from a no name band, that wasn’t part of some cultural phenomenon, it just happened to catch on. it is a catchy song, it got to number 1 for 14 weeks for a reason, that being said it by all means should have flown under the radar.
Falco also did the original version of “Der Kommissar”, which was later made famous in an English language cover by After the Fire. Falco’s original version slaps (even though it’s performed in German) and the music video is so incredibly low-budget and cheesy, but that just adds to the song’s charm.
@@bsquared4604 you mean this one? "Amadeus, Amadeus, A-madeus Amadeus, Amaseus, A-madeus Amadeus, Amaseus, oh oh oh Amadeus"? (ok fair enough in the second half of the song they add a "rock me amadeus" but I found it kind of funny because the actual chorus is not in any particular language it's literally just singing the name 9 times"
I can add a bit to the Harlem Shake conversation. The reason it went to number 1 is because billboard decided to start counting RUclips views towards a songs overall popularity in mid 2013. However, they counted views from not only the official videos, but also people using the snippets of the song in their videos. That means the majority of the points came from the Harlem Shake challenge videos instead of the official recordings.
Alvin and the Chipmunks have always been a bizarre anomaly of a franchise. They have this cycle where they suddenly materialize out of nowhere, get REALLY popular for a while, then slowly fade away into obscurity and hide out for a few decades before starting the process all over again. They almost feel like an SCP in that regard. That being said, Witch Doctor is the catchiest song in existence.
@@edwardblair4096 Witch Doctor was made by David Seville, who went on to create the Chipmunks directly because Witch Doctor took off. The Chipmunks had their own cover song versions of it later on, so you're not that far off here.
@@felixdaniels37 Did The Cartoon's version ever take off in the US or was that a UK/Europe thing (the band was Danish, it was the late '90's, the music video was full of dubious animated imagery, and I absolutely love it for no rational reason whatsoever. Honestly, this video has ruined my playlist for tomorrow at work...)
Even funnier is that the whole Harlem Shake trend was started by Filthy Frank of all people. I wonder if most people in the music industry know that Joji was the one to start that trend.
It's crazy when you try explaining to zoomer girls that their joji started as papa Franku. I'm pretty sure that the whole joji shtick is papa's biggest trolling attempt, and he's winning so hard. people like him don't suddenly make such changes
The most absurd thing about Disco Duck wasn't even the fact that it hit number one, it was the fact that Paul McCartney said on live TV that it was the one song he wished he had written. Paul McCartney, the man who wrote Blackbird.
Fun fact: in 2005, Crazy Frog's "Axel F", reached the no.1 spot in Turkey, New Zealand, Australia and most of Europe. Crazy. fucking. frog. Also the bob the builder theme song knocked eminem off the no.1 spot in the uk at the end of 2000. I wish i was making this up.
Immediately reminded of Seth Everman's video where his parody(?) of _bad guy_ by Billie Eilish ended with the chorus of _We Are Number One._ PS: that one works so easily because both songs are in a Harmonic Minor scale. _We Are Number One_ is in F HarM, while _bad guy_ is in G HarM.
@@LukeMillnerthere’s some absolutely mad ones in the uk 😭 Mr Blobby and Bob the Builder both have Christmas number 1s, Teletubbies we’re no1 December 97 as well. It’s also wild that Macarena never hit no1 here because of Wannabe by Spice Girls but Saturday Night by Whigfield was a huge success and the first artist to hit uk no1 with their debut and Axel F by Crazy Frog hit no1 beating Coldplay (it sold 4 copies for every copy of the Coldplay song at the time)
Just a small bit of lore: Snow is actually from a Jamaican neighborhood the way he sings is not just a bit for the song, he is very much part of that subculture and grew up speaking like that. Heck that's why his nickname is Snow, he was the white boy in a black neighbourhood. Oh and he could not cash in his one time hit because the song went off while he was in prison. He stabbed someone. Just like he said he would in the song. And yes this is what the song is about.
Snow's backstory is one of my favourite "absurd real life" bits, plus how he appears in the music video with a puffy coat and rimmy glasses while the lyrics are saying, "I know who ratted on me, and once I'm out you're next"
Yeah, and he didn't really stand a chance because of the false claims Vanilla Ice made about *his* life were still burned into everyone's memories (e.g., being a champion motocross rider), so another white rapper trying to claim some crazy shit as his backstory just didn't fly. But yeah, Snow grew up in a mostly Black Jamaican neighborhood with a LOT of reggae music and was in jail for stabbing someone at the time Informer hit #1 and couldn't even enter the US to promote it. Todd In The Shadows did a great One Hit Wonderland on it.
The one I’ll always remember was in 2009 when Owl City’s Fireflies hit number 1. I was an avid radio listener at the time and unless you were also tuned in with what was popular around then it’s hard to describe just how different from everything else on the top 40 stations Fireflies was. It was like nothing else on the radio both musically and lyrically, and I remember that stuck with me.
I was starting middle school back in late 2009 and it was also when I discovered music on my own on the radio for the first time. Fireflies was one of the first songs I ever heard on the top 40 station. I’ll always cherish it for that alone. ❤
I just remember my elementary school made all the kids sing it at the yearly chorus performance EVERY YEAR. 6 years of Fireflies by Owl Cities, I swear my fight or flight kicks in whenever I hear it
I remember listening to owl city on MySpace music literal years before it hit the radio when the first time it played I was like no way this is making a come back! Same thing with lmfao and metro station
20:15 What makes Winchester Cathedral’s grammy win even funnier is that it’s competition was Eleanor Rigby by The Beatles, Good Vibrations by The Beach Boys, and Monday Monday by The Mamas & The Papas… how in the hell did it win?
I would argue that Eleanor Rigby although a great song isn't really rock & roll either since it has orchestral instrumentation and no rock instruments. It's kind of weird that's the Beatles song they picked but I also get it because its lyrics and string section made it one of the first Beatles songs the adult squares could take seriously, and the Grammies always go to the current music middle-age white people love. Here's a laugh. Best new artists for 1966-69: 1966 - Tom Jones 1967 - no award 1968 - Bobbie Gentry 1969 - Jose Feliciano
I think you could make an argument for "I'm Too Sexy" being the first "meme" song. There had been novelty hits before, and weird dance fads, but in hindsight the way "I'm Too Sexy" got plastered on every piece of media and merchandise in 1991-92 feels very contemporary.
@@luriankosovo8767 There were others. *points to Disco Duck* Most of these weird ones were just so bad they're great, aka memes. Most just didn't hit number one.
got an uncle who's a big music enthusiast. He's got a big lp collection. When I was about 18 or 19, I remember visiting him after some time and he decided to share some of his favorite records. One of them was Disco Duck. I really couldn't understand why that existed, or why it was so popular that he just loved it. I still don't understand to this day, but I had forgotten all about that strange memory until today.
This is nothing compared with some of the stuff that was #1 in the UK. There's a song called Doop that topped the charts in 1994 and playing it should be a violation of the Geneva convention.
For real, there is some wild shit that made #1 over here. Ernie (The Fastest Milkman In The West), Mouldy Old Dough, Eye Level (Theme from Van Der Valk), Teletubbies Say Eh-Oh, and oh so many more.
Let me say something. I am a hardcore Beatles fan who has learned practically everything about them and counting. I have never heard of Stars of 45 before today. Nobody in the Beatles community talks about it. That’s how obscure it is.
The success of Stars On 45 led Weird Al Yankovic to record Polkas On 45 for his album In 3-D. Without that, we may never have been graced with so many beautiful polka medleys!
That's a strange one, as a huge Beatles fan myself I've heard it plenty, Stars of 45 still gets airplay here in Australia on some of the classic radio stations, I've heard it ever since I was a kid. My Dad, (also a big Beatles fan) once told me he remembered when it came out, and how cool it was to hear a melody of Beatles tunes mixed in with other sixties pop songs.
Fun fact: David Seville's The Witch Doctor was his FIRST foray into "Variable Speed Recording". It was only AFTER it had big success did David go on to get serious with Variable Speed, which then led to the creation of The Chipmunks.
To show "Macarena's" influence: In Germany you have the Abistreich, a well-meaning prank graduates do at their school. Our director had the whole school dance to it, THIS YEAR, to justify it being a sporting event so that he could let everyone leave. Then, at our prom THIS YEAR of sorts, guess what was the second song played to get everyone to dance? And it worked. Macarena will NEVER die. Never.
You should see wat gets to No. 1 at Christmas in the UK. Mr Blobby, a singing turkey, a meme song about sausage rolls, a song parodying other Christmas songs, Bob the Builder, a song about a milkman sleeping with everyone's wives. And somewhat more normally, the Pokemon theme tune in the early 2010s.
@@temmieinnit it’s about how police worked with the “ghosts” in the 50s and how people should question why the listen to authority (the last part is important to what they did on BBC
This video is honestly a masterpiece, I have rewatched it so many times, it has such good writing, amazing editing, and tells what it needs to tell in a funny and entertaining way. Definitely my all time favorite RUclips video
First - some background info RE: me. * I'm a 70 year old woman who's been listening to music since 1954. About a month after I was born, I heard Chet Atkins on the car radio singing "Jambalaya" with my dad. * Both sides of my family (grandparents and parents) LOVED music and could get very emotional upon hearing certain songs that had really affected them. And, they wouldn't listen to songs that they couldn't stand. When that happened they would tell me to turn the radio/TV/record volume down to zero. I inherited all of these characteristics. With that, I'm going to text about just 3 songs that you covered in this video. 1. Winchester Cathedral. This song became popular when I was in junior high. It sounded like 1920 English Cockney musicals so it was new and nostalgic at the same time. And, the girls at parties and school dances could dance to it with different steps and rhythm - and it did not require a partner. We girls could get out on the dance floor by ourselves and not feel "funny" not having a partner. 2. Volare - PLEASE pronounce it as the Italians did and still do: VO-la-ray, where the "o" is pronounced just like the English-speaking alphabet letter of "o". This song was covered by just about every Italian-American male singer. If you would like to hear a different version of this blockbuster hit, I recommend listening to the recording done by the singer that my family and I loved the most - Dean Martin. 3. Macarena. This song gained immense popularity in the mid 1990's. Why? Danceability. In that time period divorces were running about 50%. That meant that there were many women who were divorced after 20+- years of being married. We found ourselves being single, not having a husband who would dance with us. We ladies weren't dead yet but the 40+ year old single available men didn't really want to dance to that song. Plus, particularly in certain cities, a 40+ divorced man could find and marry a 20 year old woman. The Macarena was played at locations that had a large clientele of single/divorced/widowed 40+ ladies. It gave us the ability to dance by ourselves, remember happy events, and have a fun time without the guys. Most of the songs that were popular between the mid 1960's through NOW became the soundtrack of our lives.
7:14 he hated disco. He created disco duck to prove how stupid disco was and anything with that beat could be a hit. This is the song that literally destroyed disco.
Disco Duck hit in 1976, one full year before the Bee Gees' "Saturday Night Fever" soundtrack singles, arguably the peak of disco. It didn't destroy disco - it was assimilated into it, the intended satire getting lost in the noise.
@@ospero7681 At the time SNF was being made, most of the people in the industry thought that disco was on the decline, but after the movie came out, there was a massive spike in its popularity. The filmmakers at the time thought they were making a movie about a brief minor trend in music and dance clubs.
The reason why Heatwaves got popular never fails to make me laugh 😂😂 (You can also see via the google search volume when the fanfiction got updated and also the listeners went up)
I love this. Some kid doing the Macarena in his mom's kitchen, filmed with a webcam from 1999, a pencil sharpener is the main prop, and the fancy graphics ... well, the white board, is great. And the thing is, the writing is excellent. If the writing is good, you can do anything. Bravo!
I remember walking through the gymnasium to go to lunch in middle school, my PE teacher was playing Disco Duck on the loudspeaker, I was like wtf is going on?
AMADEUS the movie had come out in 1984 and movies took about a year to get to videotape back then. So the ROCK ME AMADEUS song, which was INSPIRED BY THE MOVIE (but not officially linked to it), still had "AMADEUS - MANIA" to ride on when it came out in 85.
The story behind Kyu Sakamoto's "Sukiyaki"-the actual title of which "Ue wo Muite Arukou", literally "I Look Up As I Walk"-is actually really, really interesting. The lyricist, Rokusuke Ei, actually wrote the lyrics back in 1960 while walking home from the Anpo protests against the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty; he intended it as an elegy for Zengakuren, the radical left-wing student movement which sought to resist the swing back to right-wing rule in Japan after the American occupation only to be crushed by both the Japanese government and the American military, but he kept the lyrics subtle and universal enough to be interpreted as being about any lost love. If you actually read the lyrics with this in mind, knowing *why* Ei was walking home crying in the rain, it's really powerful and sad. Honestly one of my favourite hit songs ever.
If I'm not mistaken, it was because they didn't start counting youtube views for the charts yet, and since it became the most watched video on RUclips for awhile it was decided to count them. Quite literally, gangnam style sprinted so the Harlem shake could fly to the moon the following year
@@realyungjoe The worst thing was, it spent several weeks trailing a rather obscure Maroon 5's song, One Night which topped the chart for 9 weeks. Talk about strange No.1, which One Night should be one of them actually.
@@kennywong4239One More Night wasn't obscure tho, it was everywhere back then. But it was wild that that song was #1 instead of Payphone from the same album (Payphone is definitely more popular lol)
'Somebody That I Used to Know' was at #1 for 8 consecutive weeks in the US, and was #1 in more than 23 countries. It was SO HUGE for Gotye ( a previously unknown Australian artist ), it likely ended his career. He has not released ANY music since.
Shame. Making Mirrors was a fantastic album and I really wish we could’ve heard more from him. I don’t believe he wanted to be famous though, so stepping back makes sense.
My Dingaling was loved by my father's generation while I hated it. However, It has warmed up to me in recent years but not as much as it did my father and his friends who, when drunk, would blast the song and sing it or try to.
Fun fact: streaming is what’s causing old songs to re-chart. Before the advent of streaming, it would have been near impossible for an older song to re-chart, as requesting an old song on the radio or buying albums years after release was quite difficult.
I was out of the loop on all that stuff, but my friend was not, hearing Heatwaves a while back was her favorite song I thought nothing of it, hilarious how that aged, and no she has not recovered after that time in her life lmao.
I bought Disco Duck. I was a kid. I still like it. Those were the days where you had to wait for it to come on the radio. I think it went to number 1 because it was popular with kids. You Light of My Life. You HAD to be there. It was from a movie of the same name sung by Debbie Boone, daughter of famous singer Pat Boone. It had religious overtones. It meant different things to a very wide audience.
1:54 for us in Germany (or Austria) this was insane. Falco did something that was never done before and it never happened again. He was a legend. R.I.P Falco :(
@@richardmackinnon611 Without "Der Komissar," I am sure that "Rock Me Amadeus" would have never hit big. The first was a smaller hit but established him. It was also a much better and more complex song. "Rock Me Amadeus" was a novelty hit, playing on the single-note or octave sound as in Safety Dance or Da Da Da,
Dominique from The Singing Nun was partially so popular because its release coincided with the Kennedy assassination. So it was driven by real life events, even if not directly associated.
There's a bit more context to Falco. German popular music in the 1980s was very innovative and internationally popular. A number of artists hit the charts in North America: Nina Hagen, Nena (99 Red Balloons #2), Peter Schilling, and AHA. An Austrian rapper was unusual but there was an audience for German Pop in the USA.
@@mal2ksc Nice try, but the song that broke them into the US (to the extent that they're considered a one-hit wonder there) definitely rode on the synthpop wave.
Probably because, back in the 90s and even the 2000s, you could only buy the song once and it counted as one unity sold, now with the streaming era, you can listen to a song as many times as you want and each stream count as one sale
I wouldn't be surprised if they reinstate it. Old Christmas songs now clog the charts so much from Thanksgiving to New Years that hardly anybody releases new singles during the last 2 months of the year unless it's holiday related.
Pet theory: nostalgia runs on 20 year cycles. Adults don't get nostalgic about something that happened in the last 10 years, that's too recent. Has to be 15+, and the peak is probably somewhere around 20 years, give or take. Also coincides with right around the time the people who were kids back then might start having kids of their own
yo dude you already hit the algorithm i just got recommended this outta nowhere and i gotta say the production quality is amazing for the number of subs you got right now. i bet this one gonna hit 500k views by this august. The editing is top notch, and i see you working with what you got seems like a laptop camera or sumn. Anyway cheers im definitely giving you a sub.
If you could have heard how loud and how hard I laughed when you said “Disco Duck”. I had tears in my eyes because i recently added it to one of my playlist!!…🤣
I was getting scared you weren’t going to mention Harlem Shake. To this day, I cannot figure out how it kept Gangnam Style, a song that would’ve fit quite nicely with the Macarena and one of the biggest phenomena of the early 2010s out of the 1 spot. Also, I’m baffled by Sukiyaki, even though thats a good tune.
I think Harlem Shake was the next year and someone else said HS only got on there because Billboard started counting RUclips views right as it got popular
HS was the following year and was a direct result of Gangnam Style. As others have put, the issue with Gangnam style was criteria for the Top 100 at the time. RUclips wasn't taken all that seriously back in 2011. Gangnam Style changed that and in 2012 I believe they started using RUclips as a metric. As a result, Harlem Shake shot up the charts and took #1.
I'm old enough to remember "You Light Up My Life" on the radio. For a while it had the record for the longest run on the chart. To this day I can't listen to it without wanting to turn the radio off, because at the time, it played so much on some stations that it felt like it was "All Debbie All The Time!"
This is why no one has heard it since. Anybody who was alive when it was a hit would throw themselves off a building if they heard it again today. It was driven. in. to. the. GROUND. That entire generation is going to have to die before a younger generation can re-discover it and go, "oh, this isn't bad..." If we are still alive, we will use our whole body to stop them from playing Debbie Boone!!
I have done a parody of this song (entitled "You Darken My Door") and sent it to a friend who grew up in Texas and was old enough to have "been there", and he had no recollection of Debby Boone or _You Light Up My Life_ whatsoever. I was kinda sorry I had destroyed his blissful ignorance.
I was super young, but I remember it literally being everywhere constantly. Also it reminded me of a movie theme song for some reason. I always just assumed it was from a movie.
Also Rock Me Amadeus had MTV coverage, exploding its popularity in the US. tbh I never actually learned Macarena, I'm too busy knowing that it's just a jump to the left and a step to the ri-i-ight I have one thing to say about movie songs: It gave us Tom Lehrer's Oedipus Rex, so there's that. I mean... Ghostbusters is more or less a catchier version of I Want a New Drug, and they admitted that, so... "Pretty avant-garde, even by Prince's standards" is that actually possible? Besides, the Batusi isn't in there.
"Ice Ice Baby" was slammed at the time, but you should listen to the lyrics. It's actually much more profound than you think. It tells the story of a young Robert Van Winkle who was at a party or a cipher or something, in one of the beachfront parts of Miami. Someone who was clearly high started shooting, and Mr Van Winkle grabbed his own gun (because of course he brought one, it was that kind of party) and got the hell out of there as police were showing up. The police paid him no attention, but only because he was white. That's... shockingly still relevant today.
People give him tons of crap for this song... But, he used his good business sense to capitalize on it! And started a few other business with his own money!
It was irrelevant then just as much as it was today. White people commit absurdly less violent crime than all other races. It simply makes sense not to pay attention to that demographic because they suspecting them to be the cause of a violent crime is just like suspecting 80-year-old grandmas or 4-year-old toddlers - sure they can occasionally do something, but it is rare and out of the ordinary.
You light up my life has spent more than 40 years on Country and Soft Rock stations on constant rotation. I myself do not listen to these stations, but I have spent the last 30 years going from office to office where these stations are playing in the background, and hear it at least once a week.
My guess for why a Japanese or French song would be popular in the 60s is that American troops heard songs where they were stationed and then brought them home. In Canada, the Macarena was popular for the dance, but we didn't get the version with English words on the radio. For some reason the English one seems to be the only version available now. Also, Snow isn't particularly strange if you look up his story.
Fun fact: Right Said Fred didn't reach #1 in their native UK with I'm Too Sexy (it was blocked out of the top spot by Bryan Adams's Everything I Do), but they did reach #1 there with their third single Deeply Dippy.
I blame the rise of The Macarena to the entertainment personnel of every hotel/resort by the Mediterranean Sea because it was on the daily schedule that you had to learn the "dance"
The only other Eurovision song to top Billboard was "L'amour est bleu" by Vicky Leandros, which represented Luxembourg in 1967 and finished 4th. Except it was a cover in English and sung by a man.
I really liked this video. When it was on my recommend I thought this was a bigger channel. Everything is very nice. Keep going this is so fun - a new subscriber
Ive never watched you before and probably never will, but this video got recommended to me and i seen macklemore in the thrift shop music video in the thumbnail and i just need to inform you that i am a habitual thrift shopper that goes to every loacal store atleast once a week and while im driving i will play that song on repeat. Also i Refer to thrift shopping as "macklemoring" i will consistently tell people im going macklemoring when heading to goodwill. Have a good day.
i was reading the said fanfiction when i was released. it got so popular, it broke the most popular fanfiction website because a new chapter released. so many people were storming the website, that it was out for multiple days. it was my number one song on spotify in 2021 because of that. truly, what a time.
@@noum5971this story reminds me of when someone made an edit on TikTok of Wednesday dancing to Bloody Mary by Lady Gaga and it became one of her biggest hits (it wasn’t number one but the song was massive, specially on RUclips Shorts and on Wednesday related stuff)
It makes sense though why it was successful though. It's a bop, Donna Summer already had a decent amount of success and fame, it was disco (which corporations were still trying to profit off at the time), and people were most likely familiar with the original.
“MacArthur Park” is one of those songs where the Weird Al parody is much better than the original. (It’s called “Jurassic Park”, if you want to check it out.) Admittedly, though, Donna Summer sang the heck out of her version. Part of me would love to see someone cover “Jurassic Park” but sing it like Donna Summer’s version of “MacArthur Park”.
Honestly the Harlem Shake was such an interesting period of the internet, I really wish we had something like that again where everyone just got together to do something insanely goofy in unison
That is bananas to think about the fact that Macklemore was your introduction to rappers. lolol. That made me laugh the most. Also "You Light Up My Life" is a true banger. I wanted to sing the LeAnn Rimes version of it for my 8th grade talent show back in 2000.
Fun fact about Stars on 45: it holds the record for the longest titled song to ever appear on any Billboard chart because in order to use The Beatles’ songs, they had to put the name of every single song that was used in the track in the official title, which is as follows: “Medley: Intro 'Venus' / Sugar Sugar / No Reply / I'll Be Back / Drive My Car / Do You Want to Know a Secret / We Can Work It Out / I Should Have Known Better / Nowhere Man / You're Going to Lose That Girl / Stars on 45”
"Oh, thats a choice" Best quote ive heard from a stranger in ages. 👏🏽😆 I will be thinking about this phrase for the rest of eternity due to my current work enviornent and the absolute winners who work there. Thank you for this!
“Monster Mash also hit #1 but that’s not a surprise. It was a graveyard smash!”
💀💀💀
yeah, it caught on in a flash
Monster Mash charted twice more 91 in 1970 and 10 in 1973. Twice in the Top 10, 11 years apart.
Look into Goofy Gold. I think it is a incredible collection of pre-80s novelty songs that include several of the ones on this list. "Ohhhh .... you know what I like..."
What ever happened to the Transylvania Twist?
Too bad we will never hear the Monster Mash. Just the song about it.
Fun fact: the only reason Harlem Shake hit number 1 was because Billboard decided to count YT views in 2013, so they don’t have a “Gangnam Style not hitting number 1” situation. Problem was, in typical billboard fashion, they put this rule in while the Harlem Shake just got hella viral, so it debuted at number 1 immediately
Harlem Shake also debuted with more than twice the points of the number 2 song (which was Thrift Shop) resulting in a point gap of over 800.
Harlem Shake is among the biggest number 1 hits just by points alone in Billboard history, joining Candle in the Wind, Hello, Old Town Road and LWYMMD which is insane to think about.
I didn't see your post before stating the same thing.
Where exactly is the "fun" in that fun fact?
@@joeybaseball7352 258 people agreed it was fun enough 🤷
Which is a shame, cause Harlem Shake really doesn't have much variety in its structure. It's just the exact part you hear in the meme videos just repeated... over... and over... and over...
remember folks: Paul Stanley of KISS said making disco was easy, and when told to back up his word, he made I was made for loving you, and it ended up being one of their most popular songs.
True
"Beth" was their most popular song, but their awesome disco hit did hit the top 10.
@@BillGraper oh dang i forgot to add "one o their"
i must've made this when i was tired
That's the thing with a lot of music. If you're an objectively talented musician/composer/songwriter, it's not very challenging to write different genres because of how the fundamentals of what makes a song good are often somewhat universal.
The Who, the Rolling Stones, Rod Stewart, they all made a disco record.
"Harlem Shake" hit the perfect storm of early 2010s trends: EDM (especially dubstep), "lol i'm so random" humor, and social media challenges. As a teenager at the time, I'd consider it a quintessential piece of pop culture for its time."
It also basically hit when the largest segment of Millennials were finishing up college. Millennials between 1989 and 1991 are the largest single cohort of people in America currently, and in Spring 2013 about half of them would've been college seniors. And the dance is exactly the kind of dumb thing you'd do with your college friends.
Yes, the "lol, I'm so random" humar and memes were big factors. When I think about Harlem Shake, I also think about Gangnam Style by Psy. Same thing. If it is meme-able, then it has potential.
did you quote your whole comment from yourself
@@spimbles that's what I was wondering lol. With how personal the anecdote at the end is, the identity of who the quote's coming from is kind of important
@@spimbles I think it was just an accidental punctuation mark due to writing two quotes in the comment. A natural reaction no doubt.
“When things still went viral, and the internet still had a sense of joy and community”
I lol’d. Felt that.
Best weird chipmunks fact is that they once were the most successful act in grammy history because they were the same year the grammy started and won a quite a few technical awards
Alvin and the Chimpkuns were "influented" by the jpop (japanese pop "kid girls idols"that was emerging in the late 70s and more sucessfully in the late 90s and 00s thanks to Hello Project Agency who made famous to Morning Musume and Berryz Koubou !!!!
I meant chimpmunks😂
I meant chipmunks😂😂😂😂😂
i loved the chipmunks!
@@geraldblu3229 Sorry but NO! The Chipmunks were a thing in the late 50's long before the Jpop crap started. Get your facts straight or stop posting.
Barenaked Ladies' "One Week" was number one for one week. Taylor Swift's "Fortnight" was also number one for a fortnight.
fortnite lmao
@@embrixcandray6073are you stupid
@@embrixcandray6073 no.
FORTNITE??
@@EpicManaphyDude no.
For what it's worth, Disco Duck was the kind of song that came on the radio and your parents would laugh while you quietly cringed. I was there. It was rough.
That song killed disco
@@pinehawk9600 Well, the Chicago White Sox disco demolition night debacle and Rick Dees involvement with this song (and white dudes who couldn't dance) were truly why disco died.
@@pinehawk9600 I don't think it killed it but it was a parody of disco.
I have fond memories of it but only because I never had to experience it in that way. My dad is in the generation that would’ve been forced to listen to it with their parents, but he would play it to me and my sisters when we were young. We would frequently request the funny duck song 😂
@@pinehawk9600 so how did September by Earth, Wind, and Fire make it to number 1?
I cracked up at "Oh they're cowboys now! That's...thats a choice."
Star Wars is a western set in space. So yeah quite obvious from an art standpoint.
I was a student at a Job Corps when "Old Town Road" got big. That song was the bane of my existence, everybody on campus had it blaring on their phones and whatever else had a speaker
Dayton Job Corps 2019 here. Best moments of my life when it was that and Ambjaay - Uno.
I managed to avoid that song for several months, the double benefit being that I'm still able to enjoy it and all it's irony :)
As a teen during that time I can relate
I can enjoy the cover by Caleb Hyles
As a kid, my audio processing was so bad that I thought I just couldn't understand the lyrics of Rock Me Amedeus because I couldn't understand the lyrics to half the music my parents listened to. Can't believe I didn't realize it was in GERMAN
I was pretty young when that song was popular and I never realized that it was sung in German either!
Haha i don’t think I ever realized it was German either, I just never knew what any of the verses were saying and just wind up belting out “Amadeus Amadeus” when the chorus comes up
Tfw English is mostly a Germanic language so understandable
He's singing strangely too
@@noth1ng5id Well Falco was quite popular in Austria (as an Austrian artist). His singing was a mixture between english and german (austrian with viennese slang).
The explaining while doing the macarena really feels like American Psycho lol
i like how stiff he dances just like batemen
"Christie, get down on your knees so Sabrina can see your asshole."
Macarena is a great song. This is nothing but thinly veiled racism. It's a great song. It's a great dance, that almost anybody can do. You can even do it seated. So it's very inclusive. And if you translate the lyrics, it actually tells a compelling enough story.
Thats my first thought seeing that too lol
@@joeybaseball7352the point is that macarena had no business getting as popular as it did. there are plenty of catchy songs that go unnoticed due to being from a no name band or not being a part of some larger movement or moment. take Not Like Us by Kendrick Lamar. Kendrick is the biggest hip hop artist ever, and the song itself was released as part of a beef between another massive artist, and there was NO COPYRIGHT on it for a little over a month after its release. it came from a popular artist during a cultural event and had no copyright around it, leading it to be played constantly. macarena is from a no name band, that wasn’t part of some cultural phenomenon, it just happened to catch on. it is a catchy song, it got to number 1 for 14 weeks for a reason, that being said it by all means should have flown under the radar.
Another reason why “come and rock me Amadeus” was #1 is because it was a tie in with the Oscar’s winning movie “Amadeus” a movie about Mozart
Also the catchy chorus is in english.
it’s also just an absolute banger
The song freaking slaps
Falco also did the original version of “Der Kommissar”, which was later made famous in an English language cover by After the Fire. Falco’s original version slaps (even though it’s performed in German) and the music video is so incredibly low-budget and cheesy, but that just adds to the song’s charm.
@@bsquared4604 you mean this one?
"Amadeus, Amadeus, A-madeus
Amadeus, Amaseus, A-madeus
Amadeus, Amaseus, oh oh oh Amadeus"?
(ok fair enough in the second half of the song they add a "rock me amadeus" but I found it kind of funny because the actual chorus is not in any particular language it's literally just singing the name 9 times"
For the record, "Witch Doctor" predates Alvin and the Chipmunks, and was in fact what inspired the idea in the first place. Also, is a great song.
I can add a bit to the Harlem Shake conversation. The reason it went to number 1 is because billboard decided to start counting RUclips views towards a songs overall popularity in mid 2013. However, they counted views from not only the official videos, but also people using the snippets of the song in their videos. That means the majority of the points came from the Harlem Shake challenge videos instead of the official recordings.
Alvin and the Chipmunks have always been a bizarre anomaly of a franchise. They have this cycle where they suddenly materialize out of nowhere, get REALLY popular for a while, then slowly fade away into obscurity and hide out for a few decades before starting the process all over again. They almost feel like an SCP in that regard.
That being said, Witch Doctor is the catchiest song in existence.
I'm pretty sure that Witch Doctor is not an original chipmunks song, but a cover of an existing song.
@@edwardblair4096
Thought the person meant that song. It does not exist as a Chipmunks version. It just doesn't. OKAY?!
@@edwardblair4096
Witch Doctor was made by David Seville, who went on to create the Chipmunks directly because Witch Doctor took off. The Chipmunks had their own cover song versions of it later on, so you're not that far off here.
theyre super popular again rn lmao
@@felixdaniels37 Did The Cartoon's version ever take off in the US or was that a UK/Europe thing (the band was Danish, it was the late '90's, the music video was full of dubious animated imagery, and I absolutely love it for no rational reason whatsoever. Honestly, this video has ruined my playlist for tomorrow at work...)
Even funnier is that the whole Harlem Shake trend was started by Filthy Frank of all people. I wonder if most people in the music industry know that Joji was the one to start that trend.
I love filthy frank lol
I love Filthy Frank too lol
i'd assume so, it's not uncommon knowledge any more lolol
It's crazy when you try explaining to zoomer girls that their joji started as papa Franku. I'm pretty sure that the whole joji shtick is papa's biggest trolling attempt, and he's winning so hard. people like him don't suddenly make such changes
The funniest part is how it got referenced in an ace attorney game *before* that trend. Biggest twist of the whole franchise.
"I'm too sexy" was a hit for 2 reasons. The beat was solid and the song was funny.
In terms of peak position, it's not even their biggest hit in the UK, it was #2. Their #1 here was Deeply Dippy.
@@dcarbs2979 Even their album "UP" was pretty good. No i didn't buy it.............honest i didn't lol
The most absurd thing about Disco Duck wasn't even the fact that it hit number one, it was the fact that Paul McCartney said on live TV that it was the one song he wished he had written.
Paul McCartney, the man who wrote Blackbird.
Fun fact: in 2005, Crazy Frog's "Axel F", reached the no.1 spot in Turkey, New Zealand, Australia and most of Europe. Crazy. fucking. frog.
Also the bob the builder theme song knocked eminem off the no.1 spot in the uk at the end of 2000. I wish i was making this up.
I was wondering why Crazy Frog wasn't mentioned in the list, but I guess there's one victory for America (I bought the album when I was a kid)
"Bob the Builder" you said. What, could he do it ? YES HE CAN !
I read this title really wrong, and I thought this was about the trend of turning every song into "We Are Number One"
I'd watch that video!
Immediately reminded of Seth Everman's video where his parody(?) of _bad guy_ by Billie Eilish ended with the chorus of _We Are Number One._
PS: that one works so easily because both songs are in a Harmonic Minor scale. _We Are Number One_ is in F HarM, while _bad guy_ is in G HarM.
now i wish it was.
The U.K. charts have some really weird stuff like “Amazing Grace” played on bagpipes.
Fuck it and Fuck You Right Back anyone?
If I even attempted to go over what was happening in the UK this video would have been two hours lol
Bob The Builder has 2 number 1 songs on the UK charts, and one of them is a cover of Mambo No. 5. Let that sink in.
Wasn't Spitting Image's Chicken Song number 1 in the UK for a bit?
@@LukeMillnerthere’s some absolutely mad ones in the uk 😭 Mr Blobby and Bob the Builder both have Christmas number 1s, Teletubbies we’re no1 December 97 as well. It’s also wild that Macarena never hit no1 here because of Wannabe by Spice Girls but Saturday Night by Whigfield was a huge success and the first artist to hit uk no1 with their debut and Axel F by Crazy Frog hit no1 beating Coldplay (it sold 4 copies for every copy of the Coldplay song at the time)
Just a small bit of lore:
Snow is actually from a Jamaican neighborhood the way he sings is not just a bit for the song, he is very much part of that subculture and grew up speaking like that. Heck that's why his nickname is Snow, he was the white boy in a black neighbourhood.
Oh and he could not cash in his one time hit because the song went off while he was in prison. He stabbed someone. Just like he said he would in the song. And yes this is what the song is about.
wow didn't know that lol
Snow's backstory is one of my favourite "absurd real life" bits, plus how he appears in the music video with a puffy coat and rimmy glasses while the lyrics are saying, "I know who ratted on me, and once I'm out you're next"
Yeah, and he didn't really stand a chance because of the false claims Vanilla Ice made about *his* life were still burned into everyone's memories (e.g., being a champion motocross rider), so another white rapper trying to claim some crazy shit as his backstory just didn't fly.
But yeah, Snow grew up in a mostly Black Jamaican neighborhood with a LOT of reggae music and was in jail for stabbing someone at the time Informer hit #1 and couldn't even enter the US to promote it. Todd In The Shadows did a great One Hit Wonderland on it.
I absolutely love telling ppl this. Opposite Vanilla Ice fr
21:55 "it was acceptable for the kids to do a mini moshpit"
12:06 that song started and i instinctively went "oh no..."
urotsuki cube
sent it back into the capsule!!!
The one I’ll always remember was in 2009 when Owl City’s Fireflies hit number 1. I was an avid radio listener at the time and unless you were also tuned in with what was popular around then it’s hard to describe just how different from everything else on the top 40 stations Fireflies was. It was like nothing else on the radio both musically and lyrically, and I remember that stuck with me.
I was starting middle school back in late 2009 and it was also when I discovered music on my own on the radio for the first time. Fireflies was one of the first songs I ever heard on the top 40 station. I’ll always cherish it for that alone. ❤
God, I love that song.
I just remember my elementary school made all the kids sing it at the yearly chorus performance EVERY YEAR. 6 years of Fireflies by Owl Cities, I swear my fight or flight kicks in whenever I hear it
Great tune!
I remember listening to owl city on MySpace music literal years before it hit the radio when the first time it played I was like no way this is making a come back! Same thing with lmfao and metro station
20:15 What makes Winchester Cathedral’s grammy win even funnier is that it’s competition was Eleanor Rigby by The Beatles, Good Vibrations by The Beach Boys, and Monday Monday by The Mamas & The Papas… how in the hell did it win?
Incredible.
grammys gonna grammy
That’s about as good as when Jethro Tull beat Metallica for a Hard Rock Grammy.
Well, the best explanation is... the Grammys.
I would argue that Eleanor Rigby although a great song isn't really rock & roll either since it has orchestral instrumentation and no rock instruments. It's kind of weird that's the Beatles song they picked but I also get it because its lyrics and string section made it one of the first Beatles songs the adult squares could take seriously, and the Grammies always go to the current music middle-age white people love.
Here's a laugh. Best new artists for 1966-69:
1966 - Tom Jones
1967 - no award
1968 - Bobbie Gentry
1969 - Jose Feliciano
I think you could make an argument for "I'm Too Sexy" being the first "meme" song. There had been novelty hits before, and weird dance fads, but in hindsight the way "I'm Too Sexy" got plastered on every piece of media and merchandise in 1991-92 feels very contemporary.
Exactly. It still makes me laugh because it was so purposefully cringe.
Americans live in their own world, in the UK and Europe there are thousands like this long before
@@luriankosovo8767 There were others. *points to Disco Duck* Most of these weird ones were just so bad they're great, aka memes. Most just didn't hit number one.
got an uncle who's a big music enthusiast. He's got a big lp collection. When I was about 18 or 19, I remember visiting him after some time and he decided to share some of his favorite records. One of them was Disco Duck. I really couldn't understand why that existed, or why it was so popular that he just loved it. I still don't understand to this day, but I had forgotten all about that strange memory until today.
“There’s no holiday charm here, just a dysfunctional family” brotha came out of nowhere 💀
This is nothing compared with some of the stuff that was #1 in the UK.
There's a song called Doop that topped the charts in 1994 and playing it should be a violation of the Geneva convention.
shoutout to amazing grace played on the bagpipes
For real, there is some wild shit that made #1 over here. Ernie (The Fastest Milkman In The West), Mouldy Old Dough, Eye Level (Theme from Van Der Valk), Teletubbies Say Eh-Oh, and oh so many more.
@@vurogjBob the builder, a three time UK number 1 holder
@@kostajovanovic3711
He got the Christmas 2000 number 1 and the 9/11 number 1.
@@thatoneguy9582that hit the top 15 in the US
Let me say something. I am a hardcore Beatles fan who has learned practically everything about them and counting. I have never heard of Stars of 45 before today. Nobody in the Beatles community
talks about it. That’s how obscure it is.
As a Dutchman, I can tell you Stars on 45 were HUGE here.
I think I've heard of stars on 45 once when I was singing to Google AI if it could recognize beatles songs....
The success of Stars On 45 led Weird Al Yankovic to record Polkas On 45 for his album In 3-D. Without that, we may never have been graced with so many beautiful polka medleys!
SAME I was like what the hell is this????
That's a strange one, as a huge Beatles fan myself I've heard it plenty, Stars of 45 still gets airplay here in Australia on some of the classic radio stations, I've heard it ever since I was a kid.
My Dad, (also a big Beatles fan) once told me he remembered when it came out, and how cool it was to hear a melody of Beatles tunes mixed in with other sixties pop songs.
I could've happily died without hearing Alvin the Chipmunk quote Kendrick but here we are I guess
i was looking for a comment about this!! hello friend with goated taste
Explanation 1: Children
Explanation 2: Drugs
Fun fact: David Seville's The Witch Doctor was his FIRST foray into "Variable Speed Recording". It was only AFTER it had big success did David go on to get serious with Variable Speed, which then led to the creation of The Chipmunks.
Years of watching Todd in the Shadows' 'One Hit Wonderland' has given me context to more of these song than I expected.
To show "Macarena's" influence: In Germany you have the Abistreich, a well-meaning prank graduates do at their school. Our director had the whole school dance to it, THIS YEAR, to justify it being a sporting event so that he could let everyone leave. Then, at our prom THIS YEAR of sorts, guess what was the second song played to get everyone to dance? And it worked. Macarena will NEVER die. Never.
You should see wat gets to No. 1 at Christmas in the UK.
Mr Blobby, a singing turkey, a meme song about sausage rolls, a song parodying other Christmas songs, Bob the Builder, a song about a milkman sleeping with everyone's wives.
And somewhat more normally, the Pokemon theme tune in the early 2010s.
Could go on about daft uk hits all day
killing in the name in 2009 was hilarious after the bbc radio performance 😭😭
@@temmieinnitI love rage against the machine. What was BBC expecting though? Like did they not know what the song was about
@@MagicMonkey96 the song is about police killings i believe
@@temmieinnit it’s about how police worked with the “ghosts” in the 50s and how people should question why the listen to authority (the last part is important to what they did on BBC
This video is honestly a masterpiece, I have rewatched it so many times, it has such good writing, amazing editing, and tells what it needs to tell in a funny and entertaining way. Definitely my all time favorite RUclips video
First - some background info RE: me.
* I'm a 70 year old woman who's been listening to music since 1954. About a month after I was born, I heard Chet Atkins on the car radio singing "Jambalaya" with my dad.
* Both sides of my family (grandparents and parents) LOVED music and could get very emotional upon hearing certain songs that had really affected them. And, they wouldn't listen to songs that they couldn't stand. When that happened they would tell me to turn the radio/TV/record volume down to zero. I inherited all of these characteristics.
With that, I'm going to text about just 3 songs that you covered in this video.
1. Winchester Cathedral. This song became popular when I was in junior high. It sounded like 1920 English Cockney musicals so it was new and nostalgic at the same time. And, the girls at parties and school dances could dance to it with different steps and rhythm - and it did not require a partner. We girls could get out on the dance floor by ourselves and not feel "funny" not having a partner.
2. Volare - PLEASE pronounce it as the Italians did and still do: VO-la-ray, where the "o" is pronounced just like the English-speaking alphabet letter of "o".
This song was covered by just about every Italian-American male singer. If you would like to hear a different version of this blockbuster hit, I recommend listening to the recording done by the singer that my family and I loved the most - Dean Martin.
3. Macarena. This song gained immense popularity in the mid 1990's. Why? Danceability. In that time period divorces were running about 50%. That meant that there were many women who were divorced after 20+- years of being married. We found ourselves being single, not having a husband who would dance with us.
We ladies weren't dead yet but the 40+ year old single available men didn't really want to dance to that song. Plus, particularly in certain cities, a 40+ divorced man could find and marry a 20 year old woman.
The Macarena was played at locations that had a large clientele of single/divorced/widowed 40+ ladies. It gave us the ability to dance by ourselves, remember happy events, and have a fun time without the guys.
Most of the songs that were popular between the mid 1960's through NOW became the soundtrack of our lives.
My mom is your age, and the macarena explanation really makes sense now.
@@juliacervantes7621I hope you and your mom are doing well!
7:14 he hated disco. He created disco duck to prove how stupid disco was and anything with that beat could be a hit. This is the song that literally destroyed disco.
I don’t remember ever actually hearing the song, but I’ve heard OF IT a lot!
Disco Duck hit in 1976, one full year before the Bee Gees' "Saturday Night Fever" soundtrack singles, arguably the peak of disco. It didn't destroy disco - it was assimilated into it, the intended satire getting lost in the noise.
@@ospero7681 At the time SNF was being made, most of the people in the industry thought that disco was on the decline, but after the movie came out, there was a massive spike in its popularity. The filmmakers at the time thought they were making a movie about a brief minor trend in music and dance clubs.
I don’t think it could have, considering Disco Demolition Derby took another 3 years to happen.
@@wildfire9280this wasn't even the thing that ended disco, it just naturally fell off as synth pop and house took over
The reason why Heatwaves got popular never fails to make me laugh 😂😂
(You can also see via the google search volume when the fanfiction got updated and also the listeners went up)
I need more info
I love this. Some kid doing the Macarena in his mom's kitchen, filmed with a webcam from 1999, a pencil sharpener is the main prop, and the fancy graphics ... well, the white board, is great.
And the thing is, the writing is excellent. If the writing is good, you can do anything.
Bravo!
I remember walking through the gymnasium to go to lunch in middle school, my PE teacher was playing Disco Duck on the loudspeaker, I was like wtf is going on?
If you didn't dance to the macarena in gym class in elementary school did you even grow up in America?
In America, very few people grow up.
@@falcychead8198 why's that?
RUclips suggesting a hidden gem of a channel with less than 1k subs was not on my bingo card
Now almost 5k subs
@@thedubstepdogeI was just gonna say this, this vid should honestly get him to 100k! It must be a shock going from 4000 in a single vid
Great essay too!
Right now hes on the road to 10k! Yippee!!
8:40 i feel like a sleeper agent and that was my wake up call wtffff 😭😭😭
An image of Biggie Smalls flashed in my head
I started going uhhh involuntarily and got freaked out before hearing the bass and realizing
NO LIKE GENUINELY😭😭
I instantly became the Leonardo Dicaprio point meme
i got jumpscared
"Don't Worry be Happy" is unusual because the singer is mainly associated with acceplla. Not regular music.
accapella you mean?
The whole song was a cappella.
He, Bobby McFerrin, was mainly jazz composer and musician and singer... That kind of pop was not his area, but made him worldwide star overnight.
Don't Worry Be Happy is entirely done in a cappela. His voice imitated many instruments.
He also did the theme to The Cosby Show...
@@chrisjohnson7929thank you for spelling it correctly! Two words, two “p’s,” 2 “l’s.”
This just in: Boy makes least monitizable video
AMADEUS the movie had come out in 1984 and movies took about a year to get to videotape back then. So the ROCK ME AMADEUS song, which was INSPIRED BY THE MOVIE (but not officially linked to it), still had "AMADEUS - MANIA" to ride on when it came out in 85.
The story behind Kyu Sakamoto's "Sukiyaki"-the actual title of which "Ue wo Muite Arukou", literally "I Look Up As I Walk"-is actually really, really interesting. The lyricist, Rokusuke Ei, actually wrote the lyrics back in 1960 while walking home from the Anpo protests against the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty; he intended it as an elegy for Zengakuren, the radical left-wing student movement which sought to resist the swing back to right-wing rule in Japan after the American occupation only to be crushed by both the Japanese government and the American military, but he kept the lyrics subtle and universal enough to be interpreted as being about any lost love. If you actually read the lyrics with this in mind, knowing *why* Ei was walking home crying in the rain, it's really powerful and sad. Honestly one of my favourite hit songs ever.
One of my teachers told me about the song last year and it's since been one of my favorite japanese songs. There's just something about it
I also love this song.
Crazy how Gangnam Style never peaked at the top spot. It’s the quintessential modern novelty song lol.
Great video. I love these billboard videos. 😊
If I'm not mistaken, it was because they didn't start counting youtube views for the charts yet, and since it became the most watched video on RUclips for awhile it was decided to count them. Quite literally, gangnam style sprinted so the Harlem shake could fly to the moon the following year
@@realyungjoe The worst thing was, it spent several weeks trailing a rather obscure Maroon 5's song, One Night which topped the chart for 9 weeks. Talk about strange No.1, which One Night should be one of them actually.
It did in the UK
@@livwake what a ridiculous time. People doing the fuckin' dance at the pub if someone put it on the jukebox.
@@kennywong4239One More Night wasn't obscure tho, it was everywhere back then. But it was wild that that song was #1 instead of Payphone from the same album (Payphone is definitely more popular lol)
'Somebody That I Used to Know' was at #1 for 8 consecutive weeks in the US, and was #1 in more than 23 countries. It was SO HUGE for Gotye ( a previously unknown Australian artist ), it likely ended his career. He has not released ANY music since.
I remember when stations started playing that all the time. I'm like why? Who is this? Haha
Shame. Making Mirrors was a fantastic album and I really wish we could’ve heard more from him. I don’t believe he wanted to be famous though, so stepping back makes sense.
There were several singles he released after. But none charted in Australia or anywhere else.
Likely because the song was a plagiarism. And it cost him 45% off profits from the song.
@@lIlCitanul what song does it plagiarize?
My Dingaling was loved by my father's generation while I hated it. However, It has warmed up to me in recent years but not as much as it did my father and his friends who, when drunk, would blast the song and sing it or try to.
Fun fact: streaming is what’s causing old songs to re-chart. Before the advent of streaming, it would have been near impossible for an older song to re-chart, as requesting an old song on the radio or buying albums years after release was quite difficult.
As a previously cringey minecraft teenager, I got physically whiplashed suddenly hearing heatwaves
I was out of the loop on all that stuff, but my friend was not, hearing Heatwaves a while back was her favorite song I thought nothing of it, hilarious how that aged, and no she has not recovered after that time in her life lmao.
No because same
Still insane that one of the biggest hits of all time has THAT backstory
As soon as I heard it I had to pause and take off my headphones to cringe. Hoping he wouldn't mention that
I could've gone my whole life without knowing this:(
I bought Disco Duck. I was a kid. I still like it. Those were the days where you had to wait for it to come on the radio. I think it went to number 1 because it was popular with kids. You Light of My Life. You HAD to be there. It was from a movie of the same name sung by Debbie Boone, daughter of famous singer Pat Boone. It had religious overtones. It meant different things to a very wide audience.
I loved Disco Duck as a kid. I was 5 when it came out.
Yes DD was just a fun stupis song.
A bit sad so many try hard try and make it deep and meaningful.
Spot on on both counts
1:54 for us in Germany (or Austria) this was insane. Falco did something that was never done before and it never happened again. He was a legend. R.I.P Falco :(
Twice, if you count "Der Kommissar".
@@richardmackinnon611 ohh right. And it also was Falco :D
Real! He's an absolute legend
Don't turn around.
@@richardmackinnon611 Without "Der Komissar," I am sure that "Rock Me Amadeus" would have never hit big. The first was a smaller hit but established him. It was also a much better and more complex song. "Rock Me Amadeus" was a novelty hit, playing on the single-note or octave sound as in Safety Dance or Da Da Da,
I hope this channel continues to grow, as the editing is well done, the writing is funny, and the presentation is spot on.
Dominique from The Singing Nun was partially so popular because its release coincided with the Kennedy assassination. So it was driven by real life events, even if not directly associated.
I might be wrong but the Flying Nun might have been on TV about that time.
Dominique also had its numbers padded in order to keep Louie, Louie by the Kingsmen from going to #1
There's a bit more context to Falco.
German popular music in the 1980s was very innovative and internationally popular. A number of artists hit the charts in North America: Nina Hagen, Nena (99 Red Balloons #2), Peter Schilling, and AHA. An Austrian rapper was unusual but there was an audience for German Pop in the USA.
But a-ha is a Norwegian band, and they sing in English.
@@Itcouldbebunnies And they're mostly a rock and roll band, not a synth pop band.
@@mal2ksc
No, a-ha is definitely synthpop.
@@mal2ksc Nice try, but the song that broke them into the US (to the extent that they're considered a one-hit wonder there) definitely rode on the synthpop wave.
It's interesting how it took so long for All I Want For Christmas to chart, considering it was already a classic Xmas song up to that point
I'm pretty sure a large part was because of the rules over holiday songs on the Hot 100
@@Ethan-en2ij Makes sense lol
Probably because, back in the 90s and even the 2000s, you could only buy the song once and it counted as one unity sold, now with the streaming era, you can listen to a song as many times as you want and each stream count as one sale
I wouldn't be surprised if they reinstate it. Old Christmas songs now clog the charts so much from Thanksgiving to New Years that hardly anybody releases new singles during the last 2 months of the year unless it's holiday related.
Pet theory: nostalgia runs on 20 year cycles. Adults don't get nostalgic about something that happened in the last 10 years, that's too recent. Has to be 15+, and the peak is probably somewhere around 20 years, give or take. Also coincides with right around the time the people who were kids back then might start having kids of their own
Well, now I have a playlist for the next time it's my turn to drive.
11:31 🎀 ✨✨𝒷𝒶𝓉𝒹𝒶𝓃𝒸𝑒✨✨ 🎀
“Monster Mash also hit #1, but that’s not a surprise; It was a graveyard smash!” said in such a dead serious tone absolutely sent me
"Oh they're cowboys now" I lost it lmao
yo dude you already hit the algorithm i just got recommended this outta nowhere and i gotta say the production quality is amazing for the number of subs you got right now. i bet this one gonna hit 500k views by this august. The editing is top notch, and i see you working with what you got seems like a laptop camera or sumn. Anyway cheers im definitely giving you a sub.
Got it as a recommendation next to a Todd In The Shadows video
@@Ramboost007
I got recommended this guy last summer after his "worst movie" video. I think I was on a Drew and Danny binge
The music parts are too quiet but that's nitpicking
🎉500k🎉
@@Ramboost007 guessing he got some inspiration from Todd
If you could have heard how loud and how hard I laughed when you said “Disco Duck”. I had tears in my eyes because i recently added it to one of my playlist!!…🤣
I’m not even kidding when I say this, but this might be my favourite video on all of RUclips. Such an entertaining video. Your humour is awesome.
I was getting scared you weren’t going to mention Harlem Shake. To this day, I cannot figure out how it kept Gangnam Style, a song that would’ve fit quite nicely with the Macarena and one of the biggest phenomena of the early 2010s out of the 1 spot.
Also, I’m baffled by Sukiyaki, even though thats a good tune.
I think Harlem Shake was the next year and someone else said HS only got on there because Billboard started counting RUclips views right as it got popular
HS was the following year and was a direct result of Gangnam Style.
As others have put, the issue with Gangnam style was criteria for the Top 100 at the time. RUclips wasn't taken all that seriously back in 2011. Gangnam Style changed that and in 2012 I believe they started using RUclips as a metric. As a result, Harlem Shake shot up the charts and took #1.
I must admit I’ve unironically listened to ghostbusters and Alvin and the chipmunks
Ghostbusters is an actual bop, it’s literally a big song since the time it was released
The whole soundtrack for ghostbusters is great tbh
@@MagicMonkey96 full of bops!
Ghostbusters had to pay royalties to Huey Lewis, (I want a new Drug)
I'm old enough to remember "You Light Up My Life" on the radio. For a while it had the record for the longest run on the chart. To this day I can't listen to it without wanting to turn the radio off, because at the time, it played so much on some stations that it felt like it was "All Debbie All The Time!"
It was *EVERYWHERE*!
My mother had it on 8-track and played it in the house quite a bit.
Do you remember the tv movie it spawned?
This is why no one has heard it since. Anybody who was alive when it was a hit would throw themselves off a building if they heard it again today. It was driven. in. to. the. GROUND. That entire generation is going to have to die before a younger generation can re-discover it and go, "oh, this isn't bad..." If we are still alive, we will use our whole body to stop them from playing Debbie Boone!!
I have done a parody of this song (entitled "You Darken My Door") and sent it to a friend who grew up in Texas and was old enough to have "been there", and he had no recollection of Debby Boone or _You Light Up My Life_ whatsoever. I was kinda sorry I had destroyed his blissful ignorance.
@@mal2ksc You ended his hysterical amnesia over the song. *laugh* I wish I could forget the damned thing.
I was super young, but I remember it literally being everywhere constantly. Also it reminded me of a movie theme song for some reason. I always just assumed it was from a movie.
Also Rock Me Amadeus had MTV coverage, exploding its popularity in the US.
tbh I never actually learned Macarena, I'm too busy knowing that it's just a jump to the left and a step to the ri-i-ight
I have one thing to say about movie songs: It gave us Tom Lehrer's Oedipus Rex, so there's that.
I mean... Ghostbusters is more or less a catchier version of I Want a New Drug, and they admitted that, so...
"Pretty avant-garde, even by Prince's standards" is that actually possible? Besides, the Batusi isn't in there.
I'm surprised Gangnam Style wasn't mentioned, especially in the foreign language tier
Gangnam Style peaked at #2
You saying you were in 5th grade when Harlem Shake happened made me feel ancient. I was graduating high school.
Unc Status 🥶
I remember you was conflicted - misusing your influence to sign three chipmunks to your record label.
"Ice Ice Baby" was slammed at the time, but you should listen to the lyrics. It's actually much more profound than you think.
It tells the story of a young Robert Van Winkle who was at a party or a cipher or something, in one of the beachfront parts of Miami. Someone who was clearly high started shooting, and Mr Van Winkle grabbed his own gun (because of course he brought one, it was that kind of party) and got the hell out of there as police were showing up. The police paid him no attention, but only because he was white.
That's... shockingly still relevant today.
People give him tons of crap for this song... But, he used his good business sense to capitalize on it! And started a few other business with his own money!
@@OldsmobileCutlass1969Va Too bad he stole the bassline from one of the most recognizable and critically acclaimed rock acts ever
It was irrelevant then just as much as it was today. White people commit absurdly less violent crime than all other races. It simply makes sense not to pay attention to that demographic because they suspecting them to be the cause of a violent crime is just like suspecting 80-year-old grandmas or 4-year-old toddlers - sure they can occasionally do something, but it is rare and out of the ordinary.
@@MontySlython Under Pressure goes dun nuh nuh nuh nuh nuh. his goes dun nuh nuh nuh nuh nuh NUH. 🤣 im kidding but THAT was his explanation
You light up my life has spent more than 40 years on Country and Soft Rock stations on constant rotation. I myself do not listen to these stations, but I have spent the last 30 years going from office to office where these stations are playing in the background, and hear it at least once a week.
didnt leave a like up until the "I remember you was conflicted"
My guess for why a Japanese or French song would be popular in the 60s is that American troops heard songs where they were stationed and then brought them home.
In Canada, the Macarena was popular for the dance, but we didn't get the version with English words on the radio. For some reason the English one seems to be the only version available now.
Also, Snow isn't particularly strange if you look up his story.
A better and more plausible explanation? Exoticism in the early 60s.
Fun fact: Right Said Fred didn't reach #1 in their native UK with I'm Too Sexy (it was blocked out of the top spot by Bryan Adams's Everything I Do), but they did reach #1 there with their third single Deeply Dippy.
Which is also a good song.
@@PendelSteven
Even though it ripped off Happy Together by The Turtles
I blame the rise of The Macarena to the entertainment personnel of every hotel/resort by the Mediterranean Sea because it was on the daily schedule that you had to learn the "dance"
5:52 "the MOVEMENT" with the tiniest little hip shimmy got me laughing for a good minute, impeccable timing
My mom hated the Chipmunks Christmas song. Mainly because I didn’t stop singing it multiple times a day until July.
The only other Eurovision song to top Billboard was "L'amour est bleu" by Vicky Leandros, which represented Luxembourg in 1967 and finished 4th.
Except it was a cover in English and sung by a man.
Almost included that one! It was one of the last orchestral instrumentals to go #1. Didn't know it was in Eurovision!
Man DISCO was great, It was like I was in some sort of ELYSIUM
I really liked this video. When it was on my recommend I thought this was a bigger channel. Everything is very nice. Keep going this is so fun - a new subscriber
I got surprised it’s his first video in almost a year and that he has only 11 videos, as I thought he had like thousands of other videos
Who let the dogs out is a certified banger that deserved at least a mention
Not in a video about #1 hits in the US. Who Let the Dogs Out peaked at #40.
Ive never watched you before and probably never will, but this video got recommended to me and i seen macklemore in the thrift shop music video in the thumbnail and i just need to inform you that i am a habitual thrift shopper that goes to every loacal store atleast once a week and while im driving i will play that song on repeat.
Also i Refer to thrift shopping as "macklemoring" i will consistently tell people im going macklemoring when heading to goodwill.
Have a good day.
I feel like one of the reasons Heat Waves got popular was due it being included in FIFA 21
i was reading the said fanfiction when i was released. it got so popular, it broke the most popular fanfiction website because a new chapter released. so many people were storming the website, that it was out for multiple days. it was my number one song on spotify in 2021 because of that. truly, what a time.
@@noum5971this story reminds me of when someone made an edit on TikTok of Wednesday dancing to Bloody Mary by Lady Gaga and it became one of her biggest hits (it wasn’t number one but the song was massive, specially on RUclips Shorts and on Wednesday related stuff)
Oh boy.
Got recommended this out of nowhere. Wasn't disappointed. Great work!
Under disco, there's Donna Summer's cover of "MacArthur Park"; the Richard Harris (yes, the actor) original only made it to #2.
It makes sense though why it was successful though. It's a bop, Donna Summer already had a decent amount of success and fame, it was disco (which corporations were still trying to profit off at the time), and people were most likely familiar with the original.
“MacArthur Park” is one of those songs where the Weird Al parody is much better than the original. (It’s called “Jurassic Park”, if you want to check it out.)
Admittedly, though, Donna Summer sang the heck out of her version. Part of me would love to see someone cover “Jurassic Park” but sing it like Donna Summer’s version of “MacArthur Park”.
I'll never get that recipe again :(
Macarthur park (the Donna version) is AMAZING though??
“My ding-a-ling” walked so “CPR” could run.
Honestly the Harlem Shake was such an interesting period of the internet, I really wish we had something like that again where everyone just got together to do something insanely goofy in unison
it's really hard to make viral stuff now that viral content isn't *really* a thing bc everyone's watching something different :(
That is bananas to think about the fact that Macklemore was your introduction to rappers. lolol. That made me laugh the most. Also "You Light Up My Life" is a true banger. I wanted to sing the LeAnn Rimes version of it for my 8th grade talent show back in 2000.
My mom used to sing "Mr. Custar" every time she would get up in the morning to go to work. (I am not kidding.)
I've definitely found occasions to say "hey Charlie duck your head"!
@@seannolan9857 You were a little bit late on that one, Charlie! Cracks me up every time.
I don't know for sure but I remember hearing that Filthy Frank aka Joji was the one who started the Harlem Shake trend.
Fun fact about Stars on 45: it holds the record for the longest titled song to ever appear on any Billboard chart because in order to use The Beatles’ songs, they had to put the name of every single song that was used in the track in the official title, which is as follows: “Medley: Intro 'Venus' / Sugar Sugar / No Reply / I'll Be Back / Drive My Car / Do You Want to Know a Secret / We Can Work It Out / I Should Have Known Better / Nowhere Man / You're Going to Lose That Girl / Stars on 45”
Brilliant. And the list of off-the-rails, strange songs will never come to an end.
"Oh, thats a choice"
Best quote ive heard from a stranger in ages. 👏🏽😆
I will be thinking about this phrase for the rest of eternity due to my current work enviornent and the absolute winners who work there.
Thank you for this!