Funny / Todd In The Shadows One Hit Wonderland 2020

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Specials

Young MC - "Bust a Move" (1989)

• Todd noticing the cameo from Flea in the music video.
  Todd: The Red Hot Chili Peppers were not superstars in 1989. They did become superstars shortly after that. Was it the momentum from this song that launched them into the stratosphere?
  Caption: No.
  Todd: It's worth thinking about.
  Caption: Also no.
• Todd ponders Young MC's odd metaphor of a "celibate rope", imagining it as some kind of cursed artifact:
  Todd: Beware, all those who come near, of the celibate rope! It curses thee with involuntary celibacy!
• One particularly forced rhyme ("Your best friend Harry has a brother Larry / In five days from now he's gonna marry") prompts Todd to speculate on the fraught relationship between Harry and his brother Larry, and what sort of situation would lead to you being Larry's best man.
• Todd gives high praise to Young MC's failed followup from the following year. It's an ad for Taco Bell.
  Todd: Thirty seconds ago, that did not exist in your life, and now it does. You're welcome.
  • Young MC also did a commercial for Pepsi around the same time- since the Pepsi ad was promoting a new can design and the Taco Bell one was promoting reusable plastic cups, Todd refers to the ads collectively as Young MC's work in "the promotional beverage container genre".
• Todd talks about Young MC's "Principal's Office" follow-up, and when he hears it, all he can say is...
  Todd: This is just "Parents Just Don't Understand" in high school.
• Todd acknowledges that "Principal's Office", made the top 40. So by what criteria does he continue to call Young MC a one-hit wonder? The fact that Young MC called himself that when releasing his 1997 album Return of the 1-Hit Wonder.
• Surprisingly unremarked upon by Todd, but the clip of "Keep It In Your Pants" he shows includes Young MC rhyming "Harry" with "Larry" again, and it doesn't even seem to be a deliberate Call-Back.
• Todd calling Young MC's cameo appearance on the 2009 film Up in the Air a perfect fit, not only because he's the only plausible choice to perform at a party attended by office workers in their fourties, but said party also happens to be "the greatest date ever".
  Todd: He's playing "Bust a Move"! WOOOOO!!!
• The ending clip? The William Shatner version. From the Priceline ad campaign.

Lipps Inc. - "Funkytown" (1979)

• Todd's impression of the last man on Earth, "long after the entire concept of funk or towns has lost all meaning," still humming the synth line to himself:
  Todd: [wearily] ♪ Doo doo doo doo, I wish that food still existed. ♪
• Todd finds an interview where songwriter/producer Steve Greenberg was asked to recount how he came up with the song, and decides to leave the "Before the Hit" portion of the video to him.
  Greenberg: "Well I'm a songwriter, and I, uh, wrote the song."
  Todd: ...great story bro, tell it again.
• While discussing how vocalist Cynthia Johnson was not originally in any of the song's music videos, Todd reaches the one made for the European market, where the band's "frontwoman" was a random, lip-syncing white woman (Johnson is black) in the vein of Milli Vanilli, which immediately bewilders Todd.
• Paralleling how Johnson left Flyte Time just before they got big as Morris Day and the Time, Todd points out that Greenberg left Minneapolis in favor of New York just as funk was about to blow up in the Twin Cities in a major way, and in fact his desire to leave was the whole lyrical subtext of "Funkytown". Supposedly, Prince hated the fact that the biggest funk/disco track on the charts at the time was written by a balding white guy, so in a way Steve Greenberg helped create his own antithesis.
  Todd: Without "Funkytown", maybe we don't have Purple Rain. Think about that.

Yello - "Oh Yeah" (1985)

• "[Yello's] work is so wild and varied across multiple media that several books have been published about their works. Those books are very expensive and in German, so I didn't read them."
• Because Yello is a Swiss act, Todd breaks out plenty of jokes.
  Todd: The land of yodelling, incomplete cheese, a largely-unused but still intense civilian army; a nation of no artistic importance, if you believe Orson Welles.
  • When discussing member Dieter Meier's many hobbies and exploits, Todd notes that he expected Meier to own an eccentric chocolate factory, though he begins to wonder if his long list of talents is at least partially bullshit. When he comes across an interview of Meier discussing his actual chocolate-making business''...
    Todd: Your dad was a banker, you make chocolate. Is it possible to be too Swiss?
    • Adding onto this, from the comments:
      HidingAllAway: 5:18 "He's not too Swiss, for that he would also need to make watches."
      17:39 "Nevermind, carry on."
  • At one point, Todd says that, along with Deiter Meier's actual professions of music video director, tech entrepreneur, watch designer, restaurateur, and chocolatier, he assumes Meier's also an international art thief and ninja warrior.
• When talking about how sleazy the song sounds, Todd points out that the lyrics include the phrase "Bow Chicka Wow Wow", albeit not in the right order: he demonstrates by doing Manipulative Editing to the video so that these separate bits of scatting are now next to each other.

Corona - "The Rhythm of the Night" (1993)

• Before the video was even made publicly available (outside of Patreon), it managed to pull a fast one with its title card, featuring some darkly humorous wordplay on the artist's name.
  • And of course, there's a Running Gag on why it's so timely to make a video about Corona.
    Todd: We know why this is in everyone's minds... The Black Eyed Peas sampled this song! Yeah, 2020 is the worst.
  • Once Todd gives up and mentions the pandemic, he makes sure to note the hilarious comments on the song's music video (i.e. "Today, Corona is the most popular group of the year #1 trend in China, Italy and America and goes viral in Europe, Iran, Arab countries, Brazil, Turkey, Argentina, Chile and East Asia").
  • Once House Music hit Italy, "this infectious craze feverishly overtook the entire nation!" Yeah, I probably need to rephrase that...
  • "Corona couldn't last forever... fingers crossed..."
  • "I don't think this is the time to say 'Yes, we needed more Corona!'"
• Todd accidentally singing De Barge's "Rhythm of the Night".
• As soon as Lee Marrow's first semi-successful song appears, its East Asian stereotypes makes Todd uncomfortably laugh and say "This has not aged well!" And then his second semi-hit goes the same way.
  Todd: Stick with what you know, I guess. Even if "what you know" is "places you don't know anything about".
• Todd mocking and imitating Olga Souza's dance moves.

Jimmy Ray - "Are You Jimmy Ray" (1997)

• "Sir, would you please confirm your identity for the viewers?"
• Describing the "I'm Here, Bitch" single (related to the "I'm Back, Bitch" single, but for an artist who's debuting).
  Todd: Hello universe, check me out, you're gonna like me, you're gonna love me.
  • He goes on to note that, for obvious reasons, artists rarely put out these songs (and, if so, usually not as their first single but as one of many songs on the album), because it's a hard thing for someone without any existing clout to pull off, and being associated with one can actually fizzle out your career before it starts. Sure enough, Jimmy Ray's subsequent singles barely charted, and the lone album he made as a pop megastar was largely due to the popularity of "Are You Jimmy Ray".
• Todd re-contextualizing the music video as a viral marketing campaign.
• Introducing his third single, "I Got Rolled" with a Rickroll.
• "Did he ever do anything else?"
  Todd: No, no... That was easy! Guess I can go back to my quarantine regiment of beer & video games.
  • While it's not acknowledged in the video itself, Todd theorizes, with very little information to go on about Jimmy Ray's post-stardom life, that perhaps James Edwards went back to his old dream profession: working with chimpanzees. His actual job? Primary school teacher.

Modern English - "I Melt With You" (1982)

• Noting that some supposed "one-hit wonders" have had other hits that have been forgotten, Todd notes that Modern English is indeed not a One-Hit Wonder at all; they're a No-Hit Wonder. However, Todd counts them, noting that more than half of their top ten songs on Spotify are different versions of "I Melt With You".
  Todd: Here are all your favorite Modern English songs, like "I Melt With You", "I Melt With You Live", "I Melt With You Remix"!
  • When describing Modern English's failure to chart in their native UK, he notes that part of it was due to the massive success of other indie acts there, such as New Order, Depeche Mode, and... Pigbag. Todd is audibly confused by that last one.
• Todd is excited to check out Modern English's first entry into the "silly and magical world of Synth-Pop", only to find out their first album is much less pop-friendly Post-Punk. As in, the song Todd plays opens with a dissonant, atonal screeching noise and off-key singing, making for some heavy whiplash compared to "I Melt With You".
  Todd: Punk Rock: Selling out since 1979!
• Todd portraying the band realizing they had single-ready songs as genuine surprise.
• Todd is positively ecstatic that the band's success can be traced to the Nicolas Cage film Valley Girl.
• Editing the NBC chimes (which he calls the NBC "jingle") to match up with the song's riff.
  Todd: That must be why I like it so much, it gives me fond memories of "Must See TV".
• Noting that it's not even a four-chord song, it's a two-chord song!
  Todd [on the piano]: ♪ Play the C chord than the F chord's next
  ♪ Then you play the C again then it's right back down to F

The Buoys - "Timothy" (1970)

• When introducing the infamous hit's songwriter, Rupert Holmes, Todd decides to provide a Waxing Lyrical of his most famous solo hit ("Escape (The Piña Colada Song)") as "if you like peñis-- coladas, that is..." Heck the fact that Todd likely chose to cover this song right after making a Trainwreckords video on Funstyle just to repeat the "peñis colada" line from "U Hate It" is weirdly amusing to think about.
• Todd's downright horrified reaction once the realization of what "Timothy" is really about dawns on him is equal parts disturbing and hilarious, immediately setting the tone for the rest of the video.
  Song: Hungry as hell, no food to eat / And Joe said that he would sell his soul / For just a piece of meat
  Todd: (Beat) ...before I say anything, why don't we see where this is going.
  Song: Timothy, Timothy / Joe was looking at you / Timothy, Timothy / God what did we do?
  Todd: (Beat; horrified) ...No.
• The cartoon illustrations of the song's events, including the narrator rounding on Timothy with a bib on. A bib that says "BIB" on it.
  • This also ties into the title card for the video, as it shows Todd in the cave, effectively taking Timothy's place as he is being besieged by two stick figures.
• Todd's reaction when the song flat out say that Timothy was eaten by Joe and the narrator:
  Todd: (genuinely horrified) They ate him...They ate Timothy... This was a Top 40 hit!
• Once Todd gets into how the suits at Scepter Records tried to claim that Timothy was a mule, not a person, he immediately starts picking it apart, which starts off serious but gets funnier and funnier to watch the harder he doubles-down on it, further revealing just how shitty of an excuse it is, punctuated by the stock footage of a mule dragging a handler around in the dirt.
• When it comes time to talk about the failed follow-up, Todd makes it clear how pointless doing that is here:
  Todd: WHO CARES?! I mean, we started with cannibalism, we're not gonna top that! It's all downhill from here.
• Todd notes that he couldn't find any footage from the time of the band performing the song, probably because "When your one hit is about devouring the title character, yeah, you're not getting invited on Carson". That said, he did find footage of them playing The Failed Followup, "Give Up Your Guns", because it was a top 10 hit in the Netherlands.
  • Two members of The Buoys later formed a late 70's AOR band called Dakota, and Todd did find footage of them performing "Timothy" at their final concert... So we're treated to the fairly bizarre sight of a live audience happily clapping and dancing along to a cheery-sounding song about cannibalism:
    Todd: They're playing the cannibal song! WOOOOOO!!!
• The many cannibalism jokes, including the last line:
  Todd: It's hilarious that a bunch of no-names pranked a creepypasta onto the Hot 100, and really that's all you need from it. Nothing about the song could be as good as just the fact of that; it's great to know about, and curse other people with knowing about, and now you have it too in your cultural lexicon. Why don't you chew on that one and see how it tastes?
  • At one point, Todd refers to Timothy as "tasteless", but then stops to clarify that he means the song is tasteless, and that Timothy himself probably tasted delicious.

The Waitresses - "I Know What Boys Like" (1980)

• Todd's utter bafflement on how to review a band that somehow has two one-hits - this song, and their Christmas Song "Christmas Wrapping," which has become Vindicated by History as a seminal Christmas classic.
  Todd: Or as bandleader Chris Butler put it, they were a one hit wonder with two half hits!
• Todd usually has a title card for "The big hit," but since this episode has a unique situation, he has a segment on "Christmas Wrapping" ahead of the main hit, with the title card reading "The... the hit? Kind of? I don't know."
• "Christmas Wrapping" was originally recorded for a Christmas compilation released by ZE Records, a label known for Post-Punk and experimental rock, causing Todd to wonder what a Christmas song by the band Suicide would sound like. It totally sounds like he's joking. He then plays it.
• There's a point in "I Know What Boys Like" where Patty Donahue stops the teasing, turns the lyrics around and says she's willing... and Todd's face when he perks up at this news is just great.
  Patty: ...sucker. *Laughs*
  Todd: ...well, that's just mean!
• Some comments noted a bit of Gallows Humor in the part where Todd describes that Patty Donahue died of lung cancer in 1996... just as a slowed-down shot of Patty having a puff of her cigarette is shown.
• The final line of the video, when summing up if they deserved better (answer: a qualified yes):
  Todd: They know what Todd likes.