Funny / Todd In The Shadows One Hit Wonderland 2018

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Specials

Kyper - "Tic Tac Toe" (1990)

• Todd straight-up playing the Sampled Up "Owner of a Lonely Heart" in the intro.
  Todd: Yes, it samples Yes.
  • Not to mention the discordant strokes across the keys doing the trill sounds.
• Todd's various attempts at mimicking DJ scratching, pop-and-lock and the robot seated at his keyboard.
• Getting excited about Kyper's repeated (coincidental?) references to XTC.
• With Kyper's attempt to join the mainstreaming of hip-hop, Todd originally thought he was trying to be MC Hammer. Upon further analysis, he thinks Kyper was trying to be Tone Lōc. He briefly compares "Tic Tac Toe" to "Wild Thing".
• Todd's extended break-down of the Unusual Euphemism in the title:
  • When getting into the sexual politics of the metaphor, Todd spares the viewers a think-piece titled:
  "Why Sex Is Not a Game: A Thought-Provoking Essay About The Importance Of Treating Oh God You've Already Stopped Reading Haven't You"
  • "Ugh, I hate these blurred lines."
  • Todd saying it would make more sense if you made the song about Hungry Hungry Hippos.
• Todd admits that the "Owner of a Lonely Heart" sample was great, prompting:
  ♪ Owner of a single hit! Much better than the owner of noooo hits! ♪
• The later song "My Name is Kyper (And I Am Hyper)" doesn't just sample Prince. It's just short of being a straight-up cover of the song "My Name is Prince".
  • Todd says its video looks like "two random guys with a SoundCloud and a camcorder."

Haddaway - "What Is Love" (1993)

• Todd is interrupted by the song during his opening speech, so he just shrugs and starts bopping his head in time with the song until his neck starts to hurt.
  Todd: "Baby, don't hurt me", indeed.
• Todd Waxing Lyrical on the question posed by the song.
  Todd: "I've listened to a lot of music and I've heard so many different possible answers to this question - love is all around; love is a battlefield; love is an open door; love is all you need; a billion different ideas that never came together.
  • He then goes further when he gets to the big hit.
  Todd: As we all know, love makes the world go round. But also, love hurts, and love stinks. So why do we do it? Why do we even bother? We can't even answer that question 'cause we don't even know what we're talking about!
• Todd compares early 90s House Music to Cathedral music or music played in an opera house, and how it conveys a huge amount of space and Gothic architectural majesty. Then, proceeds to play a Phantom of the Opera clip mashup with "What is Love?"
  Todd: Seamless. I can't even tell the difference.
• After discussing the big hit, Todd gets to the follow-up single, "Life".
  Todd: Man, he doesn't shy away from the deep subject matter, huh? I'm sure he's got a song for the universe and everything, also.
  • Upon seeing the video...
  Todd: [chuckling] Oh, he's a mad scientist now. That's great. Haddaway is by far my favorite Halloween costume-based dance singer...after, of course, Dr. Re-Animator.
• Todd notes that his two biggest hits since "What is Love", were remixes of "What is Love". One for The Matrix Reloaded in 2003, and another in 2009.
  Todd: Having delved into the topic so deeply, he probably at this point finally has discovered the meaning of love.

Butthole Surfers - "Pepper" (1996)

• Todd on the mid-90s alternative-rock sound:
  "Too weird to live, too rare to kill", as they say.
• Turning the band's name and the fact that "they do not give a fuck what you think" into a Running Gag.
• Delivering a Shout-Out to the one who requested the song: his title card artist, Krin, next to a drawing reading "Finally after 8 yrs one of my suggestions!"
• The very first "Before the Hit" clip, which Todd states was the best way to "accurately convey what the band was about": Them rioting.
  Todd: That's them at Lollapalooza trashing their trailer. No, no, excuse me. They're not trashing their trailer. That's actually Nine Inch Nails' trailer. This is why Trent Reznor always sounds so angry and depressed all the time. Texas nut jobs keep smashing up his shit!
• "They're from San Antonio and I think they were the ones who originally made Austin weird, from... about 80 miles away."
• The band's unintelligible "Hurdy-Gurdy Man" cover.
• Searching for clips of their concerts, Todd comes across a clip with Gibby Haynes onstage naked.
• Todd pointedly remarks that there was no way this band was going to become a hit. Cut to:
  Kurt Cobain: ♪ With the lights out, it's less dangerous! ♪
  Todd: Oh, right. Man, it's nice to cover a band on One Hit Wonderland who was launched by Nirvana rather than ended.
• Amydog finally getting an on-camera cameo! (Set up by the fact that the "failed followup" single was titled "Jingle of a Dog's Collar")
  Todd: Who's a butthole sniffer?
• On later single "The Shame of Life" (where the hook was written by, of all people, Kid Rock):
  Todd: Money and girls. That's just basic. What are we, Mötley Crüe over here?
• Did they deserve better?
  Todd: "Did they deserve better"... Ya know, you ask that question like they wanted better. They demonstrably did not.
  • "'Did they deserve better?' Fuck you!"

Scatman John - "Scatman (Ski-ba-bop-ba-dop-bop)" (1994)

• The opening of the review:
  Todd: (claps hands together) So. Here's a major life event that happened to me recently!
  "REENACTMENT" clip: [the Blues Brothers' car falling apart in a heap]
• He reopened requests on his Patreon to cover expenses from car repair, but he points out that even at double the price, he still got bombarded with requests and should've put a limit on it.
  I don't learn very fast.
• "Yes, I know that 'scat' has picked up a second meaning." (picture of a bowl of chocolate ice cream) "I'm gonna need you all to be grown-ups on this one. I can't promise I won't make a couple cheap jokes, but if we giggle every time I say the word 'scat', we're not gonna get anywhere. Get it out of your system now."
• The first piece of footage of the Scatman before the hit Todd shows is of John Larkin playing a mean jazz piano.
  Todd: I...can...totally do that.
  • In response to another clip of Larkin's piano skills from his jazz album, Todd pretty much drops any pretense...
    Todd: Jesus Christ, thank God this wasn't the hit, I'd never get through my intro.
• Todd splicing in clips of him flapping his lips, Porky Pig's "Th-th-th-th-that's all folks!" and Popeye's muttering into the big hit's intro.
  "You're here for rapid-fire, incomprehensible nonsense. Now you can get that from sports radio, obviously, but it's more fun this way."
• When pointing out what genres Eurodance has cross-pollinated with:
  Todd: Old soft-rock hits? Yeah. ("Please Don't Go" by KWS) Cuban jazz? Sure. ("Magic Carpet Ride" by Mighty Dub Katz) The Charleston? Absolutely. ("Doop" by Doop) Old American folk songs?" ("Cotton Eye Joe" by Rednex) Ugh, not that you should, but yes, you can.
• Todd trying to sing scat and failing.
  '"This is like the speed metal of scatting. Even if I learned to scat sing, I couldn't sing it that fast. I can barely hear it that fast. In fact, are we sure this isn't just the Micro Machines guy in a different hat?"
• "Yes, 'Scatman's World'. Not to be confused with the other '90s artifact Beakman's World, which taught you about science and got entirely forgotten because it wasn't as good as Bill Nye."
• Todd on fellow German techno artist Captain Jack:
  Todd: If you don't know who that is, well, you didn't play a lot of DDR.
  • He then imagines Captain Jack leading a military assault on Scatland.
• On how Scatman John was Big in Japan:
  Todd: He sold pudding. I think we can all agree: between Japan and America, Japan got the better pudding salesman.
  [picture of Bill Cosby selling Jello pudding pops, with his face covered by a "redacted" Censor Box]

Everything but the Girl - "Missing" (1994)

• "This is Tracey Thorne, the girl in Everything But The Girl, and this is Ben Watt, the everything in Everything But The Girl, I guess."
• The band's name, according to Todd, came from a weak joke in a furniture ad.
  Todd: And then they decontextualised that joke into something disquietingly poetic and sad. They seem to be good at that.
• Describing Tracey's voice as "a crushing gravity well of emotion".
• "I think all British indie bands had this haircut in the mid-80s."
• One thing Todd makes sure to tell us is that the British are bad at rap and hip-hop, but very good at turning hip-hop into other genres like Trip Hop (of which only three songs have apparently reached the US: this, Sneaker Pimps, and the House theme).
• When he's describing the big hit:
  Todd: It became absolutely not big at all. But then there was a remix!
• According to Todd, every song that relates to the phrase "miss you" or "missing you" is heartrendingly sad. Except The Rolling Stones' "Miss You".
• Todd repeatedly brings up the "deserts miss the rain" lyric in various contexts, including snarking that they used it as the title of their Greatest Hits album because it was the only phrase anyone would immediately remember, describing the desert as a "biome of sheer misery", and working other words into it.
  Todd: So yes, they deserved better. They deserved more success like the deserts deserve the rain. Does a desert deserve rain? I don't know if that makes sense."
• Everything But The Girl's creative direction, as set by "Missing": "Well, I guess we're an electronic band now."
• Todd talks about how he doesn't get people who go into show business, but keep very important facts about themselves under wraps - such as the fact that they were romantically involved during their entire career.^note Tracey Thorn and Ben Watt became a couple in 1981, and had two children together by the time they got married in 2008. Then someone turns on the light and he freaks out at the possibility of someone seeing his face.
• Related to the above, he mentions that they're still married.
  Todd: But ya know what? Who can tell! Maybe they're divorced now and they didn't bother to tell anyone that either!

The Cardigans - "Lovefool" (1996)

• Todd starts off by introducing "Lovefool" as a hit from 1996... at which point he gets distracted by the fact that this is the third mid-90s dance song request in a row.
• Todd's choice of music upon saying that the Cardigans were Swedish: the intro music to the Swedish Chef segments on The Muppet Show.
• After pointing out how Sweden often exports their poppiest artists, cue a moody Cardigans song.
• Todd points out how the song was closely tied to William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet and how it played in several iconic scenes... only to learn that it never appeared in them. He finally finds the song playing in the background of an otherwise sedate scene, and acknowledges that he had less memory of the movie than he thought.
  Leonardo DiCaprio: I AM FORTUNE'S FOOL!
• Todd's opinion of their single "My Favourite Game":
  Todd: To me, this sounds like garbage.
  Shirley Manson: ♪I'm only happy when it rains♫
  Todd: The band Garbage, I mean.
• Todd notes The Cardigans with their later soft covers of Black Sabbath. While listening, he does devil horns and headbangs.
• Todd claims The Cardigans started a new project with Cardi B - The Cardi-B-gans ^note interestingly, if you start typing the band's name on YouTube, Spotify or most search engines, but omit the "the", Cardi usually shows up as the top suggestion... So Todd might have had that joke just fall in his lap while trying to do research
• Regarding their later hit "I Need Some Fine Wine and You, You Need to Be Nicer":
  Todd: I think they picked that title so that Fall Out Boy couldn't get to it first.

Thomas Dolby - "She Blinded Me With Science" (1982)

• Todd noting that this is not the best song by a guy that looks like the Re-Animator, so he can bring up "Move Your Dead Bones" by Dr. ReAnimator, which he states he will do "at every opportunity."
• Getting ready to listen to the "geek-tastic synthpop" this guy made Before the Hit, only for Todd to bring up his work for Foreigner.
  Todd: This guy's a real jukebox hero.
• Todd playing up the rise of technology in the late-70s/early-80s.
  My watch has a calculator on it!
• "Did he ever do anything else? Did he ever perform at the Grammys with Herbie Hancock and Stevie Wonder?? Yeah, yeah he did.
• Aside from scoring films (most notably FernGully: The Last Rainforest), Dolby dabbled in a little acting, resulting in Todd describing his only notable film credit, 1990 Cult Classic horror-comedy Rockula. If you've never seen this movie, and scenes weren't playing over his description, you'd never believe this was an actual, real movie. Todd sounds like he can't even believe what's coming out of his mouth.
  Todd: You may have heard of a little film- well, no, you probably haven't ever heard of a little film called Rockula, a truly bugshit movie about a loser nerd vampire who starts a rock band to court his reincarnated lost love. I meant to watch this for the Toni Basil episode, because she plays Rockula's mom. And Bo Diddley is Rockula's lead guitarist, and Thomas Dolby is the villain. He owns, like... a cryogenic coffin store, and here he is wearing a pirate outfit and attacking Rockula with a hambone, for... reasons I cannot even begin to explain.
• "Did he deserve better?" gets one of Todd's most dumbfounded answers ever:
  Todd: Umm... ye—...almost?
  • The best distillation of Todd's ultimate conclusion on Thomas Dolby is that he's a little too unique, and just isn't for everybody, which is exactly his charm.

Loreena McKennitt - "The Mummers' Dance" (1997)

• Todd acknowledges that Loreena McKennitt is a superstar of her genre, and that "fans of her I talked to confirmed that if I treat her with any less than the respect she deserves, they'll string me up with mandolin strings and beat me like a pinata."
• Confirming that a long-haired redheaded harpist is exactly what he pictured when he first got this request.
• Todd points out that the only reason anyone knows what "mummer" means is A Song of Ice and Fire and/or Game of Thrones.
• When discussing one of McKennitt's earlier songs, "The Bonny Swans", he starts by mocking the old-timey language and the "hey-nonny-nonny" song style. Then he learns that the song is about a cold-blooded murder and that the swan in the title is actually the victim's corpse floating down the river, and he is forced to admit that the song is "fucking metal".
  Loreena: "He made a harp from her breastbone....."
  Todd: Bahahaha, what the fuck?! Okay, I totally forgot medieval literature is dark and gross as hell.

The Calling - "Wherever You Will Go" (2001)

• “There is one real noteworthy thing about [The Calling]; something that makes them very compelling to me, and I hope for you, too. And that thing is that I fucking hate them.”
• Todd tries to pass off lead singer Alex Band's father Charles Band as a 'big-time studio director' as an example of nepotism in Hollywood... only to discover his speciality is schlocky horror B-movies.
  Todd: You know, I might have oversold how important this guy is.
  • In a Double Subversion of Screw the Rules, I Have Connections!, it turns out Alex Band did actually get a head start of a record deal through his next-door neighbor, veteran music executive Ron Fair.
• Together with the aforementioned background of Charles Band's work, when Todd reaches the Twilight-esque music video of Alex Band's "Tonight" bemusedly suggests this episode as this year's "One-Hit Wonderland Spooktacular Edition"
• Once learning the inspiration for the song was a cousin losing her husband, Todd finds it more sincere... And also "jealous of Jesus", not to mean awkward in the "or down low" line.
• After asking why Alex replaced Chad Kroeger in Santana's "Why Don't You And I", Todd states a better change would be Alex singing all of Nickelback's other songs, and saying his legacy is as "the Mexican, non-union equivalent of Chad Kroeger".
• "I'm really disappointed he didn't start a second band called The Alex Band Band."
• "Did they deserve better?"
  Todd: Come on.
  • He says The Calling lacked the ambition to do any better than any of the other early-2000s alt rock bands which mostly lasted "between one and zero songs".
    Todd: I don't know what to say. There's no reason it should've been a hit, and yet there it is. I will never understand music.

S Club 7 - "Never Had A Dream Come True" (2000)

• Todd listing off the various S Club 7 TV series.
  Todd: If you're an American and of the right age, you might remember them from their TV show, which ran on the Fox Family Channel for many years: S Club 7 in Miami, S Club 7 in Hollywood, then I think it was S Club 7 Criminal Intent, I don't remember.
• "Do you remember this one? Because I do not. I was in high school, I was way too good for that teeny-bopper TRL crap by that point. I was not too good for Matchbox Twenty, but I was way too good for S Club 7."
• After revealing that the band's founder, Simon Fuller, was also responsible for The Spice Girls, and was subsequently fired by them, Todd puts forth his theory that Spice World was the reason.
• The group confirmed that the "S" in S Club 7 stood for Simon.
  Todd: He slapped his initials on that band like a pair of designer underwear.
• "[The show] is about being a struggling English band trying to make it in America, which is funny because they mostly didn't."
• Todd describing how indistinguishable the members of S Club 7 were.
  Todd: Let me introduce you to Rachel, Bradley, Hannah, Paul, Jo, Jon, and Tina. Or actually, let me introduce you to them by the character archetypes they played on the show: the "Dumb One" (Rachel), the "Dumb One" (Bradley), the "Dumb One" (Hannah), the "Dumb One" (Paul), the "Dumb One" (Jo), the "Dumb One" (Jon), and the "Dumb One" (Tina). I'm sorry, but this show rotted my brain. You know how you can watch Saved by the Bell and know who the different characters are or how you can look at the names of each Spice Girl or just look at their outfits and figure out what they represented. I could not do that at all for S Club 7.
• Todd calls S Club 7 "too kiddie for Radio Disney" and something that'd get played on "Nick Jr., Jr.", but...
  Todd: Every now and then, they'll dip into something more adult than they should be, and it hits such a weird note.
  S Club Girls: ♪ Ghetto boys, make some noise! Woo! ♪
  S Club Guys: ♪ Hoochie mamas, show your na-nas! ♪ [S Club Girls shake their asses]
  [Todd is dumbfounded]
  • Elaborating on the "Hoochie mamas" line...
    Todd: The mere fact that you call [vaginas] "na-nas" tells me that you're not ready to be talking about them!
  • And elaborating on the preceding "Ghetto boys" line...
    Todd: Bushwick Bill hiding in the background?
  • He notes that they also had more risqué jokes on their own TV show.
    Todd: I think I caught a joke about Rachel having giant boobs.
    Hannah: [to Rachel] Yeah, you're just like Ally McBeal, except when she looks down, she can see her feet.
    Todd: I'm gonna guess that never happened on Victorious. ^note As some fans pointed out in the comments, jokes about Jade having a large chest did happen on Victorious.
• In a clip from the show about the band trying to learn how to be American, the band takes a jab at Hanson. This compels a furious, visceral response from Todd.
  Tina: [points to a drawing of an elevator on a whiteboard] This is a lift; over here, they call it an "elevator". [points to a drawing of three long haired teen-aged boys] This is Hanson; over here, they call them "talented".
  Todd: FUCK YOU! FUCK! YOU! HOW DARE YOU! [restraining himself] Hanson became a really good band when they got older! Yeah, I know it was the 90s and everyone clowned on Hanson, me included, but if there's one group of people who weren't allowed to diss them...
  [shows S Club 7 singing one of their teeny-bopper songs, "Reach"]
  Todd: I'm just saying.
  [shows caption covering most of the screen saying "Hanson rules!"]
• The "big hit" and "failed follow-up" bumpers are done in the style of the bumpers from S Club 7's actual show, which is... really bizarre.
  Todd: [after the "failed follow-up" bumper] ... I'd like that to stop.
• Halfway through the feature on "Never Had A Dream Come True" we get the single best use of a Bo Burnham quote ever:
  Bo: Y'ALL DUMB MOTHERFUCKERS WANT A KEY CHANGE?!
  ["Never Had A Dream Come True" changes keys]
• "There is nothing that could ever give them any kind of edge. They could sing Megadeth, and it would still sound like The Wiggles."
• Given S Club 7's continued massive popularity and franchise mutation in Britain after dropping off the charts in America, Todd has to really struggle to find a moment when their UK dominance started to decline: the reality show... that created a junior version of the band named "S Club 8"... that had an unsuccessful second album... while the main band was still cranking out hit after hit. He settles for this being the moment S Club as an industry-stranglehold franchise broke down instead.

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