Should music be funny?

Chris Duffy on the case for laughing at songs

Does humor belong in music? Frank Zappa asked the question in 1986, and nearly four decades later, the jury is still out. Funny songs are often dismissed as novelty. And yet, the tradition goes back further than you’d think. Even Mozart wasn’t above a great punchline. His vocal piece “Leck mich im Arsch” translates to exactly what you think it does. He was a child prodigy after all.

Comedian Chris Duffy joined us for his third appearance on the show, this time bringing insights from his new book Humor Me: How Laughing More Can Make You Present, Creative, Connected, and Happy. His answer: Humor doesn't just belong in music. Humor is music. There's a musicality to the fundamental elements of comedy — timing, rhythm, surprise, and most importantly: Always save the punchline for last. Zappa knew this when he famously sang, “Watch out where the huskies go / And don’t you eat that yellow snow.” A useful tip!

But aside from Mozart and Zappa’s more juvenile tropes, not all comedy in music has to be quite so base. Weird Al Yankovic, of course, has spent four decades proving that the dumbest jokes can make brilliant parodies. Chris gave us plenty of other more surprising examples during the episode, and then, because there’s never enough of the Duff, he kept texting us more after he left.

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Chris Duffy humors us with more songs

Here are the songs that have come into my head since we recorded and I thought, “Oh yeah! I can’t believe I forgot this.”

Loudon Wainwright III came to mind as a songwriter who has humor baked into all his songs. “Attempted Mustache” has to be one of the funniest album titles out there. “The Swimming Song” is one of my all-time favorite songs and also where I discovered one of my favorite ways of describing skinny-dipping, which is going “informal” vs “wearing your suit.” But then Wainwright is probably the only musician to ever have a hit song talking about a dead skunk in the middle of the road.

Another big oversight on my part is not bringing up the band Vulfpeck! They are clearly a musical act, not comedians, but humor and absurdity is a big part of their identity. One of the ways they first became a big-name band is by realizing that they could make money by putting out an album of just silence and encouraging their fans to stream it on repeat while they slept. I believe they then picked tour locations based on which cities had the most people sleeping to their silence and called it the Sleepify tour. I believe it directly led to Spotify changing it’s policy. But then even their non-stunt music has a great sense of humor like Christmas in LA, and all their music videos are hilarious.

And another fun one is “April in Paris by Thad Jones” from the album The Magnificent Thad Jones. It’s a fully instrumental jazz song, no lyrics at all, but at one point (1:36) in the middle of an otherwise serious song, Thad Jones just plays the riff from “Pop Goes the Weasel” and I think it’s genuinely laugh-out-loud funny! He then goes right back into cool, sexy jazz. A purely musical joke!

More briefly, I didn’t talk at all about The Lonely Island which seems like a huge oversight! They really took comedy songs to the next level. Relatedly, SNL also gave birth to Adam Sandler’s “The Chanukah Song,” which my family truly sings like a hymn each year after lighting the candles. And then I also skipped over all the musical theater comedies out there, which have killer jokes as well. Like pretty much every song in Little Shop of Horrors or Avenue Q or The Producers!

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The fact that Chris texted us so many songs he didn’t mention on the show feels like proof of the episode's thesis: Humor in music is everywhere once you start listening for it. Don’t for get to buy his book Humor Me, listen to his podcast How to Be a Better Human from TED and subscribe to his newsletter Bright Spots for a weekly dose of good news and laughter.