koganbot | Hip-hop marmalade spic and span

Just posted this on Dave's tumblr, my disagreeing with his designating LFO's "Summer Girls" a novelty song and with his contention that LFO are trying to be really stupid:

The song doesn't feel like a novelty to me, but rather just what it seems to be, a summertime song that's steeped in a haze of free-associative nostalgia. And none of the lyrics come across as stupid or strange in that context, since their premise is that a particular time and place, and friendships with particular people, will call forth particular associations. So New Kids had a bunch of hits (yeah, OK, a summer ten years earlier, more or less), Chinese food makes him sick (a reference to a particular incident, you can see it happening among him and his friends), Shakespeare and Paul Revere (not as clear a picture, maybe Will S. is assigned summer reading; LFO are from Massachusetts where Paul Revere's ride is part of official local history, the Boston Marathon run each year on the ride's anniversary), the mixture of references we understand and those we don't making perfect sense given this premise. Rather skillful, I think, more effectively dreamy than it would be without the idiosyncrasies. But not a novelty, given that summer songs are something you get every summer.

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I'm still not entirely sure what I'd define as a 'novelty' song, because I can always find a counter example in each definition/category that I would not class as 'novelty':

- Charity songs? [half the Children In Need singles seem to be charitable as an afterthought - cf Spice Girls comeback single]
- One-hit wonders? [any number of anonymous chart-topping bosh DJs that are never heard of again eg Tomcraft]
- Stuff for kids? [would hardly call the Disney juggernaut novelty given its ongoing & total success]
- Songs sung by people who were famous for doing something else before they took up singing? [This is more like it, the only counter-eg I can think of is Lily Allen who wasn't really *that* famous as a celeb sprog before her pop career started - well outweighed by awful comedians/Jamster ringtones/Bob the bluddy Builder]
- Doing something *novel*? [HAHAHAHAHA no-one these days wastes a good new idea on a novelty tune]

Probably a combination of two or more categories above is needed. I think I'll go back to Dave's original list and see just how many of them I'd let through my novelty filter...

Yes, "novelty" is something we have a feel for but can't necessarily define. Family resemblance: not every novelty has the features of *all* novelties. Rolf Harris had only one hit in the U.S. but a lot in Britain, right? But I had the impression that everything he did was a novelty. Ray Stevens, who did "Ahab the Arab" and "The Streak" only hit with novelties early on but then he became a somewhat serious country singer. Shel Silverstein would write novelty songs - Dr. Hook had a couple of hits with his material - but also wrote serious tracks, "One's On The Way" for Loretta Lynn and "The Ballad Of Lucy Jordan" for Marianne Faithfull.

i can confirm that everything rolf did was a novelty, yes... ;)

Would Johnny Cash's "A Boy Named Sue" (by Silverstein) be a novelty, or is it something else? (Cash obviously not a one-hit wonder.)

What about "Where's The Dress?"? (I'd say definitely.) Not as sure about Phil Vassar's "Bobbi With An i," which doesn't sound like a novelty (and will probably make my country top 30 this year).

Dunno about J. Cash - if he had teamed up with T-Pain for the remix I'd reconsider (see Dave's journal where I have expanded on the above)

But saying that I can think of a couple of country tracks I'd label 'novelty' - Kendal Carson's 'I Like Trucks', for example. My lack of country knowledge may render this inaccurate however: I'm basing this judgement on the fact that:

- it's a v silly song
- I don't know any of her other songs (so assumed 'one-hit wonder')
- audience participation (might as well have a dance routine)
- actual novelty value = I don't know any other songs about trucks apart from 'I Like Trucking' which is a comedy sketch in itself...

It seems like country has had what mainstream pop seems to have now much longer -- an appreciation for novelty that has no real barrier for entry on the charts. Toby Keith's entire career has been based on what you might (but probably shouldn't) argue are a series of novelties. But again the context kind of makes the bar for novelty entry higher, so you really need some extra kick or hook.

Hip-hop marmalade spic and span

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