11/9/2023 0 Comments Im on a boat lonley island![]() The group’s collaborations - they have performed with Akon, worked with the esteemed reggae producers Sly & Robbie and used beats by T-Minus, a producer for Nicki Minaj - also help smooth the racial politics of their music. (The auto-tuned refrain by a guest star, T-Pain, is, no joke, among his finest work.) The humorist Andy Borowitz compares the Lonely Island to the mock-metal band Spinal Tap, in that “the best Spinal Tap songs also work as lumbering heavy-metal songs.” And if the boasts in “I’m on a Boat” are intentionally funny - has there ever been a better yachting-based taunt than “I got my swim trunks/And my flippy-floppies/I’m flipping burgers/You at Kinko’s, straight flipping copies”? - the song itself could pass as the best track in the Hot 97 rotation. ![]() A novelty hit like “Eat It” was really only funny if you were familiar with “Beat It,” but a song like “I’m on a Boat,” which features Samberg and Schaffer rapping aboard a yacht, lovingly spoofs every over-the-top hip-hop video. ![]() “We are so excited by the idea of songs being funny,” Taccone told me, “but it adds to the joke if they also sound good.” To that end, the Lonely Island’s songs aren’t punning parodies, but keen dissections of a genre’s cliches. They make novelty songs you can laugh at and also bob your head to. The group, consisting of Andy Samberg, Akiva Schaffer and Jorma Taccone, who are familiar from their “Digital Shorts” on “Saturday Night Live,” has not only revived the novelty song, but they’ve done the unthinkable: they’ve made it cool. This might help explain why the era of the novelty song seemed to end right around the time that hip-hop came of age: the greatness of Weird Al’s “Straight Outta Lynwood” notwithstanding, the average funny-song singer was not cut out to spoof N.W.A. The novelty song was an outlet for nerds, morning-show shock jocks and the kind of guys who put the word “weird” in front of their names. There were exceptions, of course, like the cerebral, political Tom Lehrer - but let’s just say that, in general, Lenny Bruce and George Carlin did not sing. Whether it was Allan Sherman making his 1963 hit “Hello Mudduh! Hello Fadduh!” or Weird Al Yankovic parodying Michael Jackson with “Eat It” in 1984, the comedian who made singalong spoofs was like the hip stand-up comic’s embarrassing country cousin. You can watch the trailer below, and listen to two songs that The Lonely Island released ahead of the film.The novelty song used to be popular, but it has never, ever been cool. ![]() Why are we getting this treat? The Lonely Island was on The Tonight Show to promote their new movie, Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping, which promises to hilariously parody music documentaries and Justin Bieber. There’s also Jorma Taccone in a DUNCE cap reading something called The Joy Of Land, which is really really cute. Now the Lonely Island has recreated this song with Jimmy Fallon and The Roots, this time using classroom instruments, including a xylophone, a rubber ducky maraca, a kazoo, a block that you can hit with a small mallet (don’t know the technical name, sorry), and Andy Samberg hitting a pair of flip-flops together. Their 2009 single “I’m On A Boat” is one of their best examples, with exaggeratedly aggressive and profane lyrics about the most mundane aspects of partying on a yacht. The Lonely Island is well known for parodying rap cliches with songs that sound almost as good as the real thing. ![]()
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