Trivia / Barenaked Ladies

• Approval of God:
  • Both Yoko Ono and Sean Lennon enjoyed "Be My Yoko Ono." Yoko even gave the band permission to use clips of her in their music video.
  • Brian Wilson loved their song named after him and, just to make things exceptionally meta, has covered it live a few times.
    • Which itself was flipped around when they started using Wilson's 5-part harmony a cappella arrangement for the first chorus in live performances, as can be heard on the Live In Michigan DVD.
• Black Sheep Hit: "One Week" sounds more like a pop song with rock influences than their usual brand of folk rock, as it was originally intended to showcase Ed's freestyle rapping skills. They've recently taken to performing a more stripped-down bluegrass version of the song, which sounds much more in-place with the rest of their catalogue.
• Chart Displacement: Americans might be surprised that their sole #1 in Canada wasn't "One Week", which did top the charts south of the border, but follow-up "It's All Been Done". And their only other Top 40 hit on the Billboard charts was "Pinch Me", instead of an earlier, better-known song such as "Alcohol" or "If I Had $1000000".
• Corpsing: Steven Page can be heard trying in vain not to lose it on both "The King of Bedside Manor" and their incredibly ridiculous cover of "Jingle Bells." You can practically see Page and Robertson smiling on the last verse of "If I Had $1000000" and trying to hold it in after Page ad-libbed the "not a real green dress" line.
• Creator Backlash:
  • Part of the reason Steven Page left the band in 2009 was because he was unhappy with the creative decisions they had been making since Everything To Everyone (keeping all songwriting in-band, allowing the other members to Step Up to the Microphone). His Role-Ending Misdemeanor (see below) was simply the final straw.
  • Page has also expressed frustration at fans clamoring for a proper reunion. While both sides appear to be at least on cordial terms with one another, he's said that reuniting to appease the fans is analogous to a divorced couple getting back together for the sake of their children (ie, there may be some short-term happiness, but it'd be unhealthy for everyone in the long run).
• Executive Meddling: The two new songs on Disc One: All Their Greatest Hits were susceptible to this: "It's Only Me (The Wizard of Magicland)" had its original title in parenthesis because the label didn't want to market a single with a Non-Appearing Title, and "Thanks That Was Fun" was originally called "One Weaker" before the label vetoed it.
• A Good Name for a Rock Band: The band's name was conceived at a Bob Dylan concert after Steven and Ed got bored and began making up stories about and names for the band on stage, with "Barenaked Ladies" being one of them.
• He Also Did: After Ed Robertson did a shout out to Red vs. Blue in his blog, he eventually had a role in that show, Captain Butch Flowers, and collaborated with Rooster Teeth some more (they did RvB intermissions for a Barenaked Ladies tour and directed the video for "Odds Are", while Robertson starred in Captain Dynamic and with the band wrote a song for Lazer Team).
• Official Fan-Submitted Content: One of their videos was clips of fans lip syncing to the song.
• One-Hit Wonder: In the United States, they're known almost exclusively for "One Week", though "Pinch Me" barely made the Top 20. In the 2000s they became known for the theme song from The Big Bang Theory.
• Rarely Performed Song: For a while they stopped playing "If I Had $1000000" in concert, because they got sick of fans throwing Kraft Dinner^note Kraft Macaroni & Cheese to Americans at them during the song. Now they play the song, but they place donation boxes for food shelters at their concerts and request that fans leave their Kraft Dinners there instead.
• The Pete Best: Andy Creeggan, who was uncomfortable with fame. Two videos, however, did show him after his departure. Pollywog In A Bog had a bespectacled fox playing a steel drum—Andy wore glasses and his brother Jim was also depicted as a fox. It's harder to glimpse him in the Clip Show video for Thanks That Was Fun, but he's there in a few shots.
  • When the band was inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame, he appeared onstage with them when they played "If I Had $1000000", the only time all six members performed live together.
• Promoted Fanboy:
  • As a young man in the 1980s, Steven Page was a devoted fan of Stephen "Tin Tin" Duffy, the original lead singer of Duran Duran before Simon Le Bon joined, and who at the time was the singer for the folk-rock band The Lilac Time. Page began corresponding with Duffy in 1987 through fan letters before Page formed the Barenaked Ladies, and eventually the two began writing songs together. The results of their collaboration include the BNL hits "Jane" and "Call and Answer". The two also recorded an album together in 2005 under the name The Vanity Project
  • Steven Page is also an avid fan of the Mountain Goats and has performed with them during the Ships and Dip cruise.
  • Similarly, Kevin Hearn is a fan of relatively unknown Dutch band Nits and has played with them at their 30-year celebration in 2004, also getting their drummer Rob Kloet to play on his solo efforts.
• Real Life Writes the Plot: There really is a net on a bridge near where Steven Page lives to stop jumpers from "raining down on the cars and trucks below", as mentioned in the song War on Drugs.
• Real Song Theme Tune: "It's All Been Done" was used as the theme song to the animated TV show Baby Blues. Part of the reason why the show was never reissued until 2020 was that the creators were unable to clear the rights to the song.
• Role-Ending Misdemeanor: Though he had been seriously considering leaving for some time, getting busted for possession of cocaine (right as the band were promoting a children's album, no less!) proved to be the last straw for both Steven Page and the rest of the band, leading to his departure in 2009. Since he left, Page has reunited on stage with the band only once, in 2018 when they were inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame.
• So My Kids Can Watch: Several examples, actually. In addition to Snacktime!!, there's "The Ballad of Gordon", an Anvilicious yet catchy PSA the band did against racial prejudice very early in their career. They've also contributed songs to other children's compilations.
• Throw It In!: Steve and Ed recorded different takes of "If I Had $1000000" every day while recording Gordon and used the best ad-libs for the final version.
• What Could Have Been: The verses for "One Week" were originally going to have more to do with the chorus, but Ed had trouble writing a rap with the intention of performing it, so he recorded himself freestyling for a few minutes and then wrote down the best parts.

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