I've earned the right to be like this

Mix 26: Novelty week ends in Crazy Frog, plus free Kesha, K-pop, P-rap, indie funkxors, and beguiling eclecto-pop from all over

Wh-wh-wh-wh-what’s going on?

Second half of my novelty top ten from last week last week commences…now! The full countdown:

10. INSTASAMKA: Juicy (2021)

9. Das Racist & Wallpaper.: Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell (Wallpaper. remix) (2009)

8. Rachel Bloom: You Stupid Bitch (2016)

7. Phil Harris: The Thing (1950)

6. Crash Test Dummies: Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm (1993)

5. Barnes & Barnes: Fish Heads (1978)

“Fish Heads” tormented me as a child, so I used it to torment everyone else. It was every jingle, every cloying pop hook, every nursery rhyme, every random phrase I might get lodged in my head like a popcorn kernel in the roof of your mouth. I hated it; I loved it.

Category: I'm not touching you I'm not touching you I'm not touching you

Other contenders: Toy-Box: “Tarzan & Jane”; Lonnie Donegan: “Does Your Chewing Gum Lose Its Flavour (On the Bedpost Overnight)?”; Louis Prima: “Yes, We Have No Bananas”; Sheb Wooley: “Purple People Eater”; Ray Stevens and the Henhouse Five Plus Two: “In the Mood”; Ween: “Push Th’ Little Daisies”; Kay Kyser: Three Little Fishies

4. Margaret Berger: Robot Song (2006)

This lane, of questionable “novelty” fidelity, overlaps with what I call my heart songs or “moon songs” — talismans of earnest sentimental value. This silly song about a taboo robot relationship imagines an end of the world when true love can finally prevail through annihilation. Laugh, cry, etc. (Wrote about “Robot Song” previously here.)

Category: Novelties of the heart

Other contenders: Keke Palmer: “Music Box”; Shelley Duvall: “He Needs Me”; Melissa Carper: “Christian Girlfriend”; Kermit the Frog: “Rainbow Connection”; Vitas: “Opera #2”; Mike Posner: “I Took a Pill in Ibiza (Seeb remix)”

3. Lil Nas X: Old Town Road (2018/2019)

Some songs come in as novelties but end up changing something about the world, or your world, that explodes your sense of containment (#3 category), safety (#2 category), or mental landscape (#1 category). Those three things aren't mutually exclusive, but I think they’re distinct ideas. So, containment: this utterly joyous song also created a rift in the timestream. Lots of things probably do that (arguably everything does), but you can't always track the butterfly → typhoon trajectory like you could with “Old Town Road,” a small song that was too big to fail in this universe. (Wrote about this song when it came out at the Singles Jukebox. It’s a [10].)

Category: Butterfly typhoons

Other contenders: Black Eyed Peas: “My Humps”; Soulja Boy: “Crank That”; Big & Rich: “Save a Horse, Ride a Cowboy”; The Beatles: “I Want to Hold Your Hand”; Backstreet Boys: “Everybody (Backstreet’s Back)”; Eminem: “My Name Is”

2. Napoleon XIV: They’re Coming to Take Me Away, Ha-Haaa! (1966)

Next, exploding your sense of safety. Napoleon XIV scared me as a kid; I wanted to hide from this song. The militant stomping iambic tetrameter makes the time signature sound like it’s in ONE. A nightmare you laugh at as you recall. A cartoon smashes your head with a mallet and you bleed.

Category: Funny ha-haaa!

Other contenders: The Trashmen: “Surfin’ Bird”; The Fools: “Psycho Chicken”; Nervous Norvus: “Transfusion”; The Stooges: “I Wanna Be Your Dog”; Geto Boys: “Mind Playing Tricks on Me”; Offspring: “Bad Habit”

1. Crazy Frog: Axel F (2005)

Last one: explodes your world. Every song can change you, and everything on this list changed me in some way, but this is the rarefied air wherein you boggle at the mental energy necessary to even describe a before and after. Just try to explain to someone why this stupid fucking frog changed your life!!!!

Category: New me who dis

Other Contenders: Scatman John: “Scatman (ski-ba-bop-ba-dop-bop)”; Rednex: “Cotton Eye Joe”; Harry Belafonte: “Banana Boat (Day-O)”; Wang Rong Rollin: “Chick Chick”; Skye Sweetnam: “Billy S”; Britney Spears: “Work Bitch”; Azealia Banks: “212”; Tag Team: “Whoomp! There It Is”; Immortals: “Techno Syndrome (Mortal Kombat)”

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Mix 1 // Mix 2 // Mix 3 // Mix 4 // Mix 5 // Mix 6 // Mix 7 // Mix 8 // Mix 9 // Mix 10 // Mix 11 // Mix 12 // Mix 13 // Mix 14 // Mix 15 // Mix 16 // Mix 17 // Mix 18 // Mix 19 // Mix 20 // Mix 21 // Mix 22 // Mix 23 // Mix 24 // Mix 25

MIX 26: I’VE EARNED THE RIGHT TO BE LIKE THIS

1. Kesha: Joyride

Get in, losers, Kesha’s free and she brought an accordion.

2. NewJeans: Right Now

Not only is this not the best NewJeans song of the year, it’s maybe not even the best NewJeans song on this record, whose A-side(-ish) “Supernatural” is a pre-oiled Tin Man trying to get down to new jack swing, but the song just didn’t fit in this slot. I like how smooth this remains over the frenetic dnb tapdance happening underneath.

3. LISA: Rockstar

Better than BLACKPINK is a low bar for me (my kids went through a BLACKPINK phase last year but have thankfully moved on) but this solo attempt has the same transnational crossover approach and it works well enough. I think the synth switch-ups are more impressive than the flow switch-ups.

4. Young Leosia f. Jacuś: Sobota Wieczór

5. PASSKI: Pokochaj Siebie

Two pop-rap entries from Poland, the first from the artist who put Poland on my radar screen several years ago — Young Leosia, with the effervescent “Szlanki” — and continues to provide diminishing returns that underline just how high the original return was. After that, Polish artists Bosski and P.A.F.F., as PASSKI, with some effortless hip-house.

6. DJ Ws da Igrejinha, Dj Scar, Mc Rodrigo do CN: Sentada da Novinha

This motherfucker salvaged “Young Folks.” I need fMRIs of his brain.

7. Dj VN Maestro, MC G DS: Eu So Comi Ela uma Vez

But my funk pick of the week is this one, which restlessly changes up the rhythmic palette every five seconds, eventually peppering in what sound like sound effects from a video game but sound a bit like someone retching, all anchored with minor-key oompah piano spelling out the clave.

8. Sangre X Sangre, Joe Parra: Nada Me Va Cambiar

Thought to myself “huh, there’s something about the EDM blending with corrido that makes this work for me” only to find that it’s already called electro corrido.

9. Peso Pluma f. Cardi B: Put Em in the Fridge

Meanwhile the big regional Mexican music crossover of the past year or two is all over the map on his new album (figuratively and literally), which is a double-disc deluge of styles and collaborations. Here the association is probably helping Cardi out more than Cardi is helping Peso Pluma — if she’s going to scrap her album (again) she should just do an all-Spanish-language one.

10. DJ Lag f. Thobeka: Yebo

The rare South African track that didn’t cleanly map on to various dance and pop zeitgeists in the region on first listen — mostly gqom in the instrumentation, but it also reminds me more of something that might come out of Uganda from Nyege Nyege Tapes.

11. DJ Lycox: Dança Pra Ti Dar

A track from the new DJ Lycox album, which sees Lycox pushing toward pop, though arguably it pulls back a bit from “Dia 14” from earlier this year (still not sure how to characterize that one, which sounds both desperate to find a path to crossover but also hopelessly unable to find a direct route).

12. Paula Koops: Los Chicos No Lloran

Spanish pop-rock with a huge chorus, courtesy Jel Bugle’s recommendation for Tom Ewing’s crowd-sourced midyear pop roundup on Blueksy.

13. Allegra Krieger: Never Arriving

Singer-songwriter with an alt-country bent that did not fade into the background, for reasons I haven’t quite parsed (I still can’t glom on to any lyrics). Must be that scraggly guitar line throughout.

14. Reyna Tropical: Cartagena

And so starts the eclecto-pop suite, with a comspolitan group “investigating landscapes of the tropical diaspora” and who named their latest album after a Manu Chao song.

15. Klô Pelgag: Libre

Next, over to Montreal, keeping my aughts-centric indie flame burning at a rate of about one song per week.

16. Ravyn Lenae, Ty Dolla $ign: Dream Girl

An unexpected eclecto-pop pit stop in R&B, where Ravyn Lenae — a former Singles Jukebox fave who as far as I can tell never really broke through to the big time — spreads her recessive soprano thin over a samba that reminds me of Harry Nilsson’s version of “Everybody’s Talkin’.” Ty Dolla $ign’s tonal mismatch is charming, flesh and blood trying to duet with a spectral fantasy.

17. Lalah Hathaway f. Willow: Tunnels

Willow lends blink-and-you-missed-‘em vocals to an otherwise wordless neo-soul groove from longtime A-list-adjacent singer Lalah Hathaway (daughter of Donny).

18. Mabe Fratti: Enfrente

An album highlight from a Guatamalan alt-pop singer and cellist based in Mexico. She’s got the energy, if not always the tunes, I was looking for in Angélica Garcia’s new album, which was half a downer (though I need to relisten to it).

19. Raphael Roginski, Indrė Jurgelevičiūtė: Šilinis Viržis

An end to dreamy eclecto-pop, from a Polish guitarist and Lithuanian composer, respectively. The latter claims inspiration from the “quiet minimalism of Lithuanian folklore.”

20. Linda Sikhakhane: Ukukhushulwa

The title made me think it was maybe amapiano, but no — South African jazz. Sounded nice as a cool down leading in to…

21. Terry Riley, Kronos Quartet: Kiss Yo Ass Goodbye

…Whatever this project between Terry Riley and Kronos Quartet was supposed to be. As the sample kicked in I had the nagging sense that I’d heard it before, many times, and eventually I had to google to figure out it’s Sun Ra’s “Nuclear War.” (This minor embarrassment felt like losing New York Times Connections.) It’s those drums that ultimately kick things into high gear—well, third gear; it still sticks to residential roads—which feels a bit like cheating. But I had room for it this week and not enough room for the 15-minute amapiano song I’ve been itching to stick on the end of a mix for over a month now.

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That’s it! Until next time, keep your frogs crazy and your enemies crazier.

—Dave Moore (the other one)

Title from Kesha’s “Joyride.”