24 February, 2008

The funniest song I ever heard

The university's radio station plays a lot of interesting music. Today, as I returned home from Mass, the them was "songs that make you remember what you were doing when you first heard them," or something to that effect. One of the songs was, "It's a rainy day in Georgia", which was okay I guess. But the best one was quite possibly the funniest song I have ever heard, and I don't think it's being funny intentionally.

Someone left the cake out in the rain
and I don't think I should take it
'cause it took so long to bake it
and I'll never have that recipe again
Imagine this played to the sappiest, most sentimental strings imaginable and you might understand why I burst out laughing when I heard it.

The story gets stranger. Wikipedia says that ten years after it was first performed, the song made #1 on the Billboard top 100 singles in 1978! That isn't the version I heard, though; I think I heard the original, 1968 version. Donna Summer was definitely not singing it.
After all the loves of my life
I'll be thinking of you and asking
"Why?"
I don't know what's stranger:
  1. someone thought such words might make for a great song;
  2. he was right, at least if Billboard charts and number of covers are to be believed;
  3. I've never heard this song before; or
  4. I am so out of step with society that I still can't help guffawing when I think of the lyrics.
Either way, I won't forget what I was doing when I first heard the song.

2 comments:

Clemens said...

It was sung by King Arthur - the one in "Camelot." I liked it back in 1968, though I thought the lyrics were weird, even then.

jack perry said...

I followed some links in subsequent days & found out that the singer was Richard Harristhe Richard Harris, the awesome British actor who pulled an Alec Guiness and acted the part of Dumbledore in the Harry Potter movies. Whoah.

The songwriter is also famous; when I looked at the songs he had written I was startled to see some familiar tunes such as "Up, up and away."