Irony, by definition, is a state of affairs or an event that seems deliberately contrary to what was or might be expected, an outcome cruelly, humorously, or strangely at odds with assumptions or expectations. Although Alanis Morissette’s 1995 hit track “Ironic” has sparked debate and reflection as to the nature of irony itself, there certainly are situations in the song that fit the definition of irony listed—winning the lottery only to die the next day and flying on an airplane for the first time only to have the plane crash.

While these situations are certainly not typical, what happens when reality begins to mirror the song lyrics in startlingly literal ways?

Imagine a person claiming their lottery winnings only to tragically die the next day, or a young doctor committed to finding a cure for a rare cancer, only to succumb to the same cruel fate he hoped to save his patients from, or someone robbing a bank to escape their spouse, only to be sentenced to home confinement due to a twist in legal proceedings. Naturally, such stories would seem to be nothing more than pure fiction. However, the real-life accounts in this list showcase the unpredictable ways that irony manifests itself in everyday life with both humor and tragedy.

Here are ten ironic (and tragic) news stories that could easily belong in an Alanis Morissette song.

Related: Ten Oddball News Stories out of Canada

10 Man Dies One Day after Claiming $2 Million Powerball Winnings

At one point or another, many of us have thought about just how different our lives would be if we won the lottery and dreamed of what we’d do with our winnings—buy our dream car, pay off debt, travel the world, or help those near and dear to our hearts.

Seventy-two-year-old Mark Krogman of Clinton, Iowa, was no different. He planned to use his lottery winnings to pay off his house, possibly add onto it, help his family with needed finances, and just enjoy life. The difference, however, between Krogman and everyday dreamers was that Krogman actually won a lottery prize. Unfortunately, in a tragic and ironic turn of events, he would never get to do all he hoped for with his winnings.

Krogman purchased a lottery ticket for the Powerball drawing on November 25, 2023. Players in a $2 Powerball select five numbers between 1 and 69 and another number—called the Powerball—from a separate set of numbers between 1 and 26. For an extra $1, a Power Play option is available, which can multiply non-jackpot prizes by 2, 3, 4, 5, or even 10 times the amount.

The winning numbers for that night’s drawing were 27-33-63-66-68 and a Powerball of 9. Krogman’s ticket matched the first five numbers drawn but did not match the Powerball number. However, Krogman had chosen to add the Power Play option to his ticket purchase, multiplying at the Match 5 level, meaning he won $2 million! In fact, Krogman’s ticket was the only one in the country to win a $2 million prize in that night’s drawing.

While it was known that there was a Powerball winner, the ticket went unclaimed for months, that is, until Krogman finally made his way to the Lottery headquarters on April 17, 2024. Unfortunately, the shock and joy of realizing he’d won was short-lived, as Krogman died on April 18, 2024, just one day after claiming his winnings. Although Krogman’s cause of death was not disclosed, his obituary stated he passed away peacefully at the University of Iowa Hospital and Clinics.^[1]

9 Elderly Woman’s Life Claimed by Medical Device Meant to Save Her

A medical alert system can be either an in-home or wearable device—such as a necklace or bracelet with a help button—that allows a person to call for help should they fall, get confused or injured, or have a medical or healthcare emergency. Should such a situation arise, the person in need can simply press a help button rather than call 911, and from there, the monitoring center can assess the situation, alert loved ones, and dispatch emergency medical services to the home.

Eighty-six-year-old Roseann DiFrancesco of New Cumberland, Pennsylvania, had a medical alert necklace, but unfortunately, the device meant to save her life ultimately claimed it instead.

On February 15, 2016, a nurse came by to visit DiFrancesco but got no answer after knocking on the door. The nurse then entered the home but found DiFrancesco dead in her bathroom. The coroner later revealed that DiFrancesco was using her walker when she lost her balance and fell. Sadly, the lanyard of her medical alert necklace—which did not have a breakaway clasp—got caught on the handle of the walker, causing DiFrancesco’s upper torso to be suspended above floor level, strangling her to death.^[2]

8 Man Robs Bank to Avoid Wife but Is Sentenced to House Arrest

On September 2, 2016, 70-year-old Lawrence John Ripple walked into the Bank of Labor in Kansas City, Kansas, and handed a teller a note that read, “I have a gun, give me money.” However, unlike most bank robbers, Ripple’s goal was not money; rather, he was hoping to go to jail to avoid being at home with his wife. Therefore, after the teller handed Ripple $2,924 in cash, he simply sat down in the lobby of the bank and waited for the police to arrive.

It didn’t take long for the police to arrive, given that the bank was just a block from police headquarters. When confronted by authorities, Ripple returned the money and was arrested.

So, what exactly happened between Ripple and his wife that drove him to such extremes? Earlier in the day, an argument ensued between the couple when Ripple’s wife reminded him that the clothes dryer still needed to be fixed. Ripple later “wrote out his demand note in front of his wife and told her he’d rather be in jail than at home.” However, Ripple didn’t quite get the punishment he was hoping for.

While Ripple pleaded guilty to one count of bank robbery, he told the judge that a multiple bypass heart surgery in 2015 left him depressed and not feeling like himself. Ripple could have been sentenced to a maximum of 37 months in prison, but both the vice president of the bank and the teller supported the request for leniency, given the state of Ripple’s mental health.

On June 13, 2017, Ripple was sentenced to 50 hours of community service, ordered to pay $227.27 to the bank—the billable hours for bank employees sent home on the day of the robbery—and pay $100 to a crime victims fund. Ripple was also sentenced to six months of home confinement—leaving him no choice but to be at home with his wife—and three years of supervised probation.^[3]

7 Doctor Dies from Rare Cancer He Was Dedicated to Cure

Clear cell sarcoma, or CCS, is a type of cancer that grows just under the skin. Although CCS tumors most often occur in the arms, legs, feet, and hands, they can also grow throughout the torso (including the stomach and intestines) and have even been found in the genitals and head. This extremely rare cancer is named because the tumor cells look clear under a microscope. Unfortunately, this also makes the cancer hard to diagnose as the cells resemble malignant melanoma of the soft tissues.

However, Dr. Edward Showler believed that he could make a difference in the lives of his patients with sarcoma through pioneering treatments in the field of medicine. Tragically, in a twist of “cruel irony,” the talented young doctor lost his life to the same rare cancer he was dedicated to curing.

Sholwer’s older brother, Laurie, is an emergency doctor in Australia and was the one who inspired Showler to pursue the field of medicine. Showler studied medicine at St. John’s College Cambridge for six years and graduated in 2013. As a doctor, he went on to work for several hospitals- the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford, the Royal Berkshire Hospital in Redding, and University College Hospital in London. As a doctor working in the Sarcoma Unit at University College Hospital, Showler saw first-hand the effects of this fatal disease.

Therefore, in 2016, Showler began training to become a consultant hematologist at the Royal Free Hospital in Hampstead, but unfortunately, in September of that year, he was diagnosed with clear cell sarcoma. Knowing that there was no effective treatment for the disease, Showler chose to spend the next eight months making memories for those he was going to leave behind.

Sadly, at just 28 years old, Showler died on June 11, 2017. Showler’s family and friends later established the Edward Showler Foundation to make a difference for young people affected by sarcoma—CCS in particular—by increasing awareness, engaging with patients and families, and supporting research into the rare disease.^[4]

6 Former Crime-Fighter Finds Himself on the Wrong Side of the Law

In September 2011, John R. Morales was caught driving 50 mph (80 km/h) in a 35 mph (56 km/h) zone and was subsequently pulled over for speeding in Galveston, Texas. However, when the police officer—assisted by a drug-sniffing dog—searched Morales’s Infinity, they discovered diagrams of two indoor pot-growing operations sitting on the front seat and an abundance of marijuana seeds in the trunk.

This discovery led authorities to search Morales’s home, where they seized 1,000 marijuana plants and 9,000 rounds of ammunition for 27 weapons, which included a shotgun, pistols, rifles, and a military grenade launcher.

While Morales’s arrest may not seem to stand out given the abundance of crime-related news that can be found on television, the internet, and social media, what makes this news story ironic is the fact that Morales once played the role of a crime-fighting character named McGruff the Crime Dog—a cartoon bloodhound created in the 1980s for the National Crime Prevention Council. The cartoon figure was used by U.S. police to spread crime awareness and is perhaps best known for the tagline “Take a bite out of crime.”

Although 41-year-old Morales insisted that he was nonviolent and his attorney claimed he had only sold drugs to help sick relatives, on February 6, 2014, Morales was sentenced to 16 years in prison.^[5]

5 Reptile Show Focused on “Overcoming Fears” Ends in Death of Snake Expert

Fifty-three-year-old Dieter Zorn—a herpetologist and co-host of the Reptile Show—had worked with reptiles for 25 years. His goal in life was to help people conquer their fears about snakes and reptiles. In fact, Zorn’s Reptile Show invited audience members, both young and old, to handle a variety of creatures such as snakes, crocodiles, scorpions, and spiders to become more comfortable with them. Unfortunately, in an attempt to help others overcome their phobias, the German snake expert would ultimately die at the hands of the very creatures he urged others not to be afraid of.

Zorn and his colleague, Uschi Kallus, had been traveling to different villages across the region of southern France. However, as Zorn was performing his show in Faugeres on June 18, 2013, he was bitten several times by an Aspic viper—a highly venomous snake native to France, Switzerland, Italy, and Spain. Despite being bitten, Zorn got the snake back into a cage, preventing it from attacking members of the audience.

Emergency services arrived on the scene and administered a blood thinner, but unfortunately, they were unable to save Zorn. The viper bite caused Zorn to suffer an “extremely rare allergic reaction,” which ultimately led to a heart attack.^[6]

4 Suicide Prevention Advocate Tragically Takes His Own Life

Peter Wollheim of Boise, Idaho, was described as “a man of enormous heart who would have been there for anybody at any time if they were struggling.” Unfortunately, despite Wollheim dedicating years of his life to helping others in need, in the end, he was unable to conquer his own demons. He did what he’d passionately urged others not to do—take their own life.

Wollheim taught in the Department of Communication at Boise State University from 1989 to 2012, retiring from teaching to pursue a career as a mental health counselor. Wollheim went on to serve as the co-chairman of the Idaho Commission on Suicide Prevention, helped co-found the Idaho Suicide Prevention Action Network (SPAN)—a non-profit dedicated to suicide prevention and survivor support—managed a local suicide prevention hotline for 15 years, presented at national and international suicide conferences, and established the nation’s first certified crisis worker preparation program on the Boise State University campus.

However, in light of all the outreach work Wollheim did, his sister, Ruth Wachter-Carroll, stated that Wollheim had been depressed for years but never sought professional help. Additionally, Wollheim began having bad dreams about the Holocaust and its effects on his Jewish parents—Norbert and Frieda Wollheim—who had survived the Nazi death camps in Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen, leading him to believe there was no way out and do the unthinkable.

On July 21, 2015, 67-year-old Wollheim was found in his home by a friend, several days after his death, with a note that said “he was tired of having Holocaust dreams” and that “he was done with life.”^[7]

3 Heart Attack Comes “Out of Nowhere”

Born in Los Angeles, California, on October 26, 1927, Warne Marsh came from quite a talented family—his father, Oliver Marsh, was a cinematographer, his mother, Elizabeth, was a violinist, and his aunt, Mae Marsh, was an actress. With that in mind, it’s no wonder that Marsh would go on to find a love of music and performing.

Marsh played in a band called Teenagers, which performed on Hoagy Carmichael’s musical radio show in 1945 and then went on to serve in the U.S. Army in 1946.

Then, in 1948, Marsh became a student of Lennie Tristano, who was a blind American jazz pianist, a major figure of the “Cool School” jazz style, and an influential teacher of jazz improvisation. Tristano was the principal influence on Marsh’s art as a tenor saxophonist and jazz musician, and the two played together from 1949 to 1952.

Marsh went on to play with other students of Tristano, such as Lee Konitz and Ted Brown, in addition to leading his own small musical groups and teaching. However, Marsh gained even more exposure in the 1970s as a member of Supersax—a saxophone-centered ensemble (Link 40) that played orchestral arrangements of Charlie Parker solos. He later recorded albums such as Jazz of Two Cities, Quartet, and Warne Marsh under his own name.

Unfortunately, on the night of December 17, 1987, as 60-year-old Marsh was in the middle of playing the tune “Out of Nowhere” at Donte’s club in Los Angeles, he slipped off his stool and collapsed. Marsh was taken to St. Joseph Medical Center in Burbank and pronounced dead in the early hours of December 18, 1987, after suffering a heart attack.^[8]

2 Drunk Driver Had Warning Against Drunk Driving on Car

Around 4 a.m. on February 24, 2019, officers spotted a dark-colored sedan weaving across three lanes of traffic in Berkeley, California. The unnamed male driver was stopped by the California Highway Patrol and found to be well over the legal blood-alcohol limit of 0.08 percent.

While driving under the influence is certainly no laughing matter, what makes this news story ironic is that the car featured a sign sponsored by the National Highway Traffic Administration that read: “I should probably get a ride home” (with the word “probably” crossed out) and “Buzzed driving is drunk driving.”^[9]

1 Man Dies Trying to Set Record for “Buried Alive”

Twenty-four-year-old Janaka Basnayake’s mother, L.D. Leelawathi, stated that from the time her son was young, he enjoyed performing unusual acts. In fact, Leelawathi claimed that Basnayake had even been buried alive on two previous occasions—once for two and a half hours and once for six hours. Basnayake was, however, apparently unimpressed with his prior feats and decided on a third daredevil attempt to break a world record for spending the longest time being buried alive. Unfortunately, it would lead to his demise.

With the help of family and friends, Basnayake was buried underground around 9:30 a.m. on March 3, 2012, in a 10-foot (3-meter) trench sealed with wood and soil in the town of Kantale, which is approximately 137 miles (220 km) north of Sri Lanka’s capital, Colombo. At 4 p.m., six and a half hours after he was buried, Basnayake was pulled to the surface but found unconscious. He was taken to a hospital and pronounced dead on arrival, although no official cause of death was given.

Following the news of Basnayake’s death, the Guinness World Records issued a statement on March 5, 2012, which offered condolences to Basnayake’s family but also stated that “record attempts related to being buried alive are not authorized, monitored, or adjudicated by Guinness World Records.”^[10]

Have you ever sung a song, one you know very well, one pretty much everybody knows, and stopped to consider the lyrics. There are some very strange traditional songs out there – Ring-A-Ring-A-Roses with its supposed allusions to the plague or the last line in the first verse of the Dutch national anthem which makes every patriotic lowlander pledge allegiance to, um, the King of Spain… whilst singing as William of Orange. Wait, what?

Here we have a list of lyrics in popular songs, rather than traditional ones. From the intentionally offensive to the bizarrely philosophical, these songs show that popular music doesn’t need to be all about love, money and fast cars. Sometimes they can confuse the hell out of you.

10 Strange Collaborations In Music

10 ‘Plush’ by The Stone Temple Pilots

Ah, Grunge. Not exactly the most upbeat musical genre ever, but it does get the blood pumping. This song, however, with its slow-build-to-soaring lyrics and guitars that don’t sound like their being dragged through a sack of pennies like in other grunge tracks, sounds kind of upbeat… until you read the lyrics.

It seems to be about a guy who has kidnapped and murdered a little girl. Unfortunately for lovers of this smile-making bit of 90s nostalgia, that is indeed what the song is about. Or is it? Lead singer Scott Weiland told VH1: “A girl was kidnapped and then later found tragically murdered back in the early part of the Nineties. So it gave me fuel to write the words to this song. However, this song is not about that, really; it’s sort of a metaphor for a lost, obsessive relationship.”

So the lines ‘And I feel, and I feel/When the dogs begin to smell her/Will she smell alone’ is a metaphor? Whatever you say, Scott.^[1]

9 ‘Cola’ by Lana Del Rey

How offensive could a song about a fizzy brown beverage be? Turns out, pretty damned offensive. Based on a quote about American women by her Scottish boyfriend, the Californian songstress released this single from her 2012 album ‘Born to Die’. Her boyfriend had told her that he believed that American women “walk around as if your pussies tasted like Pepsi-Cola, as if you’d wrap yourself into an American flag to sleep”. Fair enough.

Another inspiration for the lyrics was, more worryingly perhaps, the now-infamous Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein. The lines “I got sweet taste for men who’re older/ It’s always been so it’s no surprise/ Harvey’s in the sky with diamonds/ And it’s making me crazy/ All he wants to do is party with his pretty baby” don’t quite sit right in the wake of Weinstein’s crimes coming to light. Lana Del Rey has since retired the song from public performances. Probably a wise move.^[2]

8 ‘He Liked to Feel It’ by The Crash Test Dummies

This alt-rock band from Winnipeg, Canada are used to recording some pretty weird songs. Their big hit released in 1993, ‘Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm’ (catchy title!), included lyrics about children with various physical deformities and ailments and one kid whose parents drag him along to a Pentecostal church. Pretty odd. But their 1996 single ‘He Liked To Feel It’ is even stranger because it is more vague.

The song tells the story of a kid who enjoys taking his teeth out. He first pulls out a tooth by tying some string around it and attaching it to a doorknob. The kid also likes to show his friend and tells them that he: ‘liked to feel it when it came out’. He then moves on to a more creative means of dental extraction by tying it to his dog and throwing a stick for the pooch to chase. But before he can enact this plan, his dad shows up with some pliers and angrily yanks his son’s tooth out himself. ‘That wasn’t how he liked to have his teeth pulled out/He wouldn’t tell us how it felt when it came out’. Compulsive, exhibitionist self-mutilation from a child, coupled with some parental abuse? The video is weird too. So is Brad Roberts’ deep baritone vocals in an indie folk/rock group. That was pop music in the 90s, kids.^[3]

7 ‘The Macarena’ by Los Del Rio

Every wedding staged between 1993 and around 2005 included a dance floor full of drunken guests, mainly over the age of 50, fumbling around in an attempt to recreate the famous dance in the music video for this Spanish novelty track. This tradition was probably more prevalent than cake and white dresses during this era. But what are the two old Spaniards singing about in the annoyingly catchy chorus? If you don’t speak Spanish, you probably don’t know. Brace yourselves:

‘Macarena has a boyfriend who’s called…
who’s called the last name Vitorino,
and while he was taking his oath as a conscript
she was giving it to two friends …Aaay!’

Soooooo… Macarena isn’t just the name of a dance, it’s the name of a girl whose boyfriend is off in the army. And she cheats on him with two of his pals.

Why?^[4]

6 ‘Angel of Death’ by Slayer

Yes, metal bands are no strangers to controversial, gory and explicit lyrics. It would be really rebellious if some Norwegian black metal band released a song about buttercups, but hey, conformists will conform! The weird thing about this song is, given the title and the era, you’d expect it to be about the devil, maybe even devil-worship, or the battle in Heaven.

No, it’s about the Holocaust.

Slayer guitarist Jeff Hanneman is a real history buff. His very particular (and as far as I can tell, sole) area of interest is Germany from the years 1938ish to 1945. So, Nazi stuff. He collects artefacts and antiques that can be described as a bit right-wing, and has penned a couple of songs inspired by leading Nazi figures – this particular thrash metal classic was about Josef Mengele, the evil doctor of Auschwitz. Jewish groups were outraged, the album, ‘Reign in Blood’, was dropped by DefJam before release and all because of a misunderstanding regarding the song’s intent. The suggestion was that Slayer were condoning and even supporting Nazi-style anti-Semitism:

‘feeding on the screams of the mutants he’s creating/pathetic harmless victims left to die/rancid Angel of Death flying free’.

Hm. Not exactly glowing praise of the Nazi. Slayer’s legend of an axe-man Kerry King commented: “Read the lyrics and tell me what’s offensive about it. Can you see it as a documentary, or do you think Slayer’s preaching fucking World War II?”^[5]

10 Surprising Musical Moments From Popular Shows

5 ‘Aserejé’ by Las Ketchup

Now we can get to the Satanism. Or, at least, supposed Satanism. Even without the touted suggestion of occult lyrics, this very Macarena-esque earworm’s lyrics are pretty out there anyway.

So it seems that a guy called Diego walks into a club and : “With the moon in his pupils/and his turquoise suit/it seems smuggled/And there, where not even a soul can be squeezed in/He gets in whatever it takes/possessed by the ragatanga rhythm”.

This player comes into a club, knows the DJ who then plays his request; a ‘Midnight Hymn’… Satan, is that you?

The satanic imagery may be in there to highlight the sexy danger this Diego guy possesses, as opposed to being some nefarious call-out to devil-worshippers everywhere. Where the song does skirt closer to controversy is that Diego is referred to as a ‘Rastafarian Afro-Gypsy’, whatever that may be.^[6]

4 ‘Star Star’ by The Rolling Stones

Nothing is hidden or subliminal in this one, The Stones put it all out there with this song. When you hear the lyrics, you may wonder if there is a saltier person on earth than Mick Jagger. Maybe that’s why he is so wrinkly.

Despite the song seemingly being about a star-crazed groupie who went from guy to guy simply to bed famous people, legend has it that it’s actually about pop icon Carly Simon. Jagger had provided backing vocals to Carly Simon’s era-defining pop song ‘You’re So Vain’. Rumour has it that she and Jagger had hit it off in more than just a “You like playing Uno? Get out, I like playing Uno too!” kind of way. But it wasn’t meant to be for these rock icons, Simon instead deciding to marry soft-voiced folk singer James Taylor. Feeling a little put out by this (I mean, who turns down Mick Jagger?), the rubber-lipped singer penned a song so crude, so on-the-nose about Simon that it beggars belief. Questions remain – what trick did she do with fruit? And did she ever get to ‘meet’ John Wayne?

Despite the tasteless, mean lyrics, and despite not knowing who it’s truly about, (it’s obviously Carly Simon), it really is one hell of a jam.^[7]

3 ‘The Electrician’ by Scott Walker

Another act that includes a guy with a beautiful but unbelievably strange deep voice. The Walker Brothers, whether together or Scott Walker by himself, are no strangers to strangeness. I mean, they aren’t even brothers – ‘Walker’ is a stage surname for both Scott (Noel Scott Engel) and John Walker (John Joseph Maus… why change that?). After success in the 60s and early 70s, Scott decided to go solo. And very, very avante-garde.

This 1978 single from the Walker Brothers’ final album ‘Night Flights’ feels like a bad dream. And when you delve into The Electrician’s lyrics, you’ll know why. It’s about torture. And not any old torture, the song is from the perspective of a CIA agent/torturer in Latin America (or as some suggest, a torturer in Augustin Pinochet’s Chile). Let’s allow the lyrics speak for themselves:

‘He’s drilling through the Spiritus Sanctus tonight/Through the dark hip falls/Screaming, “Oh, you mambos/ Kill me and kill me and kill me”/If I jerk the handle/You’ll die in your dreams/If I jerk the handle, jerk the handle/ You’ll thrill me and thrill me and thrill me.’^[8]

2 ‘Australia’ by The Manic Street Preachers

When the ‘Manics’ played this song down under during the 2013 British and Irish Lions tour (A select squad of the best rugby union players from England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales that tour a southern hemisphere nation every 4 years), it couldn’t have been more fitting – it’s called ‘Australia’, they were in Australia, the crowd was mainly from Britain and Ireland, so really far from home, and the song is about Australia being really for away from Britain. Nice! Done and done.

But if you know the real inspiration for bassist Nicky Wire’s lyrics, it’s not exactly the advert for visiting Oz it seems to be. Wire envisioned the furthest place from the band’s native Wales he could imagine because he was really depressed and frustrated after fellow band member Richey Edwards went missing, rumoured to have taken his life by jumping off the Severn Bridge –

‘Praying for the wave to come now/It must be for the very last time/It’s twelve o’clock till midnight/There must be someone to blame/I want to fly and run till it hurts/Sleep for a while and speak no words/In Australia’.

Sad.^[9]

1 ‘Witchita Lineman’ by Glenn Campbell

Don’t you think that every great song includes a healthy dose of existentialism? Correct, nobody does. This classic does, though.

The song gives us two fragmented stories – an American telephone lineman dutifully working up and down the nation – so far so Americana. The second story shows his longing for his family, imagining that he can hear his wife in the hum of the lines he’s working on. Or it may be that he’s simply listening in on fragmented conversations random people are having through the phone lines. Some think it’s an anthem to the joys of hard work in quiet solitude, others hear the melancholia of a lone man in the wide open backcountry of the US, a speck in an ocean of grass and gas stations and ghost towns. Either way, this song, seemingly unfinished, leaves the listener enchanted but also thinking ‘wait…what’s going on here?’^[10]

10 Musicians Who Mastered Bizarre Instruments

The Billboard charts can be a funny thing, making certain musical acts appear bigger or smaller than they actually are. Some of the most notorious supposed “one-hit wonders” such as Vanilla Ice, MC Hammer, or Soulja Boy technically charted two top-10 hits. On the other hand, some of the most legendary musical acts of all time surprisingly had only just one U.S. top-10 hit throughout their entire career.

While the charts measure the weekly popularity of songs and albums, some aspects of music business success prove harder to quantify. An act can sell out arenas and stadiums, prove a lasting cultural influence, become a household name—but often, those accolades accrue over the long term, rather than manifesting in short-term sales and airplay figures.

Here are iconic bands and stars who, despite their enduring status, surprisingly only had one top-10 single hit on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.

Related: Top 10 Tragic One-Hit Wonders

10 Weird Al Yankovic

You used to know him from his oversized glasses and mustaches, then you knew him from his shoulder-length hair and Hawaiian shirts. The master spoofer has remained relevant and part of the cultural firmament for almost four decades through his continual parodies of popular songs. His most recent tour, titled the Strings Attached Tour, included a full symphony orchestra backing. Lin-Manuel Miranda, the writer and star of Broadway’s Hamilton, even called Weird Al his childhood hero.

Parodying the gangsta rap track “Ridin’ Dirty” by Chamillionaire featuring Krayzie Bone, Yankovic’s biggest song is 2006’s comparatively intellectual “White & Nerdy” at #9. While the original song referenced run-ins with the cops and fancy cars, Yankovic’s lyrics referenced MIT, Dungeons & Dragons, action figures, Stephen Hawking, the infinitely repeating mathematical concept of pi, Minesweeper, the computer coding language Pascal, vector calculus, the Star Trek language of Klingon, pocket protectors, the high school chess team, and the Renaissance Faire.

Mimicking Michael Jackson’s “Beat It” shot for shot, Yankovic’s next biggest hit was 1983’s early-MTV-era parody “Eat It,” reaching #12. His fellow gangsta rap parody “Amish Paradise,” spoofing “Gangsta’s Paradise” by Coolio featuring LV, peaked at #53.^[1]

9 Metallica

Despite their last six consecutive albums all topping the chart, most recently 2016’s Hardwired… to Self-Destruct, James Hetfield’s and Lars Ulrich’s pioneering heavy metal band was always a little too loud for singles chart success. While they can be trusted to sell out arenas on their world tours, their biggest song was 1996’s “Until It Sleeps,” which reached #10, in fact, preventing the listener from getting much sleep.

Their next closest songs included 1991’s “Enter Sandman” at #16 and 1992’s “Nothing Else Matters” at #32. Often named one of the greatest heavy metal songs of all time, 1986’s “Master of Puppets” was only released as a promotional single for airplay and not a commercial single for purchase, making it ineligible to chart under rules in place at the time.

Still, the band earned their own standalone installment of the musical video game series Guitar Hero, one of only three groups afforded the honor—along with Aerosmith and Van Halen.^[2]

8 Johnny Cash

The Man in Black wrote simple songs, sung simply, connecting viscerally with audiences and turning him into a legend… but not necessarily on the singles charts. His biggest hit, 1969’s “A Boy Named Sue,” settled for the runner-up slot on the weekly Billboard chart behind “Honky Tonk Women” by the Rolling Stones.

Another Rolling Stone—not the band, but the magazine—ranked Cash’s “I Walk the Line” as the greatest country song of all time, calling it “the defining moment for country’s most iconic figure.” Yet it only peaked at #17. Other iconic hits included 1963’s “Ring of Fire” reaching the same position, while 1968’s “Folsom Prison Blues” stalled out at #32.^[3]

Cash’s song “I’ve Been Everywhere” detailed all the places he’d been on his life’s travels, but a trip to the top of the Billboard Hot 100 chart never appeared on the itinerary.

7 Grateful Dead

Fronted by Jerry Garcia, the perpetually touring band was primarily famous for their massive hours-long live shows and the cult following of “Deadheads” that resulted.

The band’s biggest hit was 1987’s “Touch of Grey” at #9, while their next closest was 1971’s “Truckin’” at #64. Their lead singer’s legacy lives on through the Ben & Jerry’s ice cream flavor Cherry Garcia, the company’s second-biggest seller of 2020, behind only Half Baked. Although based on their names, both flavors seem like ones Garcia would have enjoyed in life.

Another fun fact: the band also financially sponsored Lithuania’s 1992 Olympic basketball team since the team otherwise couldn’t afford to travel to the competition. The team wore tie-dyed uniforms in the band’s honor and ended up winning the bronze medal behind the slightly more famous U.S. Dream Team.^[4]

6 Oasis

Featuring Ringo Starr’s son Zak Starkey on drums, the band led by brothers Noel and Liam Gallagher notched eight chart-topping songs in their native United Kingdom. About 2.5 million people sought tickets for the band’s 1996 concerts at Knebworth House, more than four percent of the UK’s population at the time. But while they were undoubtedly big in the United Kingdom, they weren’t quite as huge on this side of the pond.

Their biggest U.S. hit, “Wonderwall,” peaked at #8 in 1996. Their next highest hit, “Don’t Look Back in Anger,” reached #55 that same year. Various singles which topped the British charts, including “Some Might Say,” “All Around the World,” “Go Let It Out,” and “Lyla,” failed to even crack the top 100 in the States.

Today, the Gallagher brothers aren’t even on speaking terms. In an interview with the magazine GQ, Noel said of Liam, “He’s the angriest man you’ll ever meet. He’s like a man with a fork in a world of soup.” ^[5]

5 Pink Floyd

Led by Roger Waters, the band was named for a portmanteau of blues acts Pink Anderson and Floyd Council. Between “The Dark Side of the Moon” and “The Wall,” the band claims not one but two of the 50 bestselling albums of all time. Only a few other acts can make the same claim, such as The Beatles and Whitney Houston.

Yet Pink Floyd’s album-oriented rock often proved unfriendly for radio station airplay, with radio’s focus on tight melodies versus the band’s long meandering instrumentals and solos. The group actually topped the chart with “Another Brick in the Wall (Part II)” in 1980. The next closest they came to replicating that success was 1973’s “Money” at #13.

Though their albums’ success arguably came at the expense of their singles chart success, they still ended up rolling in the “money” anyway. ^[6]

4 Garth Brooks

Country music would occasionally top the all-genre Hot 100 chart during the ‘50s, ‘60s, ‘70s, and ‘80s. But by the ‘90s, the parallel takeovers of rap, pop, and hip-hop essentially prevented country music from reaching its prior success on that metric. As a result, the single biggest country act since 1990 only earned one top-10 song. And here’s the craziest part: it wasn’t even with a country song.

While Garth Brooks was a force to be reckoned with on the albums chart, including spending a stunning 18 weeks at #1 with 1991’s album “Ropin’ the Wind,” his highest-charting song was 1999’s “Lost in You” at #5. The pop ballad, featuring little to no recognizably country elements, was technically credited to “Garth Brooks as Chris Gaines” during a brief and bizarre vanity project where Brooks pretended to be an alter ego, even though everybody knew it was him.

Brooks’s next biggest song was 2001’s “Wrapped Up in You” at #46. In January, he performed “Amazing Grace” at President Joe Biden’s inauguration despite being a Republican. “I might be the only Republican at this place,” he said about the inauguration, which also included performances by artists including John Legend, Jennifer Lopez, and Lady Gaga, “but it’s about reaching across and loving one another.” ^[7]

3 The Who

Almost every other Super Bowl halftime show act has earned multiple #1 hits, plus even more top-10 hits. Although The Who felt every bit as massive as some of those other headlining acts, perhaps even bigger in some cases, this was never quite reflected on the singles chart. Led by Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend and originally named The Detours, their success relied more on the album chart. The group pioneered the concept of the concept album with such storytelling releases as Tommy and Quadrophenia.

The group’s biggest song, “I Can See for Miles,” reached #9 in 1967. Their next closest hits included 1970’s “See Me, Feel Me” at #12, 1971’s “Won’t Get Fooled Again” at #15, and 1969’s “Pinball Wizard” at #19. Perhaps just as important for their modern cultural legacy, they were parodied on The Simpsons as a band called “The Whom.”

Still, the actual band’s lack of a chart-topping song disproves Abbott and Costello’s claim that “Who’s on first.” ^[8]

2 Led Zeppelin

Despite notching six chart-topping albums between 1969 and 1979, the band was never quite as commercially successful on the singles chart.

The band, which coined the catchphrase “get the led out,” was originally called the New Yardbirds. They changed their name after a conversation among the members about how the nascent group’s attempts at stardom might “go down like a lead balloon.” Led by Jimmy Page and Robert Plant, they changed “balloon” to “zeppelin” and altered the spelling of “lead” to “led” so people wouldn’t pronounce the word to rhyme with “need.”

Peaking at #4, their highest charting song was “Whole Lotta Love” in 1970. Their next closest song, “Black Dog,” reached #15 in 1972. Other iconic tracks like “Immigrant Song” peaked at #16, while “Stairway to Heaven” wasn’t released as a commercial single, rendering it unable to chart under rules in place at the time.^[9]

1 Nirvana

As the ambassadors of grunge, the Seattle trio of Kurt Cobain, Dave Grohl, and Kurt Novoselic redefined what rock music could sound like.

Named after a brand of deodorant worn by lead singer Cobain’s girlfriend at the time, Nirvana’s breakthrough hit “Smells Like Teen Spirit” proved a cultural watershed. Everything about it stood in sharp contrast to the dominant sounds and looks of the era, from the nihilistic lyrics to the mumbled delivery to the band’s intentionally unkempt appearance in the music video. Rolling Stone named it one of the 10 greatest songs of all time and the only such song released outside the narrow 1958-71 window.

While the track reached #6 in 1992, the band’s next biggest hits, “Come as You Are” and “Lithium,” peaked at #32 and #64 that same year. Parent album “Nevermind,” with its iconic cover of a baby in a swimming pool chasing after a dollar bill, nonetheless became one of the biggest-selling and most heralded albums of all time. ^[10]

All these acts prove that slow and steady can win the race in the end. Will any more contemporary music acts win the contest for long-term cultural influence over their more immediately high-charting peers? Stay tuned for a few decades to find out.

Music has the ability to evoke all kinds of emotions in us, but all too few of them make us laugh. Fewer still have titles that induce a guffaw, chortle, or eye-roll. Here are 10 of them that might.

Related: 10 Celebrities And The (Mostly) Hilariously Bad Songs They Released

10 “You Can’t Have Your Kate and Edith Too,” The Statler Brothers (1967)

In October of 2020, Twitter lit up after people discovered they’d been misquoting a popular idiomatic proverb all their life. The popular English proverb is “you can’t have your cake and eat it too,” which means, according to the Cambridge Dictionary, “to have or do two good things at the same time that are impossible to have or do at the same time.” The shorter version would be “you can’t have it both ways.”

Some Twitter users claimed the proverb was really, “you can’t have your Kate and Edith too.” One user was incredulous: “So the saying is really you can’t have your Kate and Edith too? I know I ain’t the only one saying, ‘you can’t have your cake and eat it too.’” Another: “How am I just now learning this at 23?” Another: “It’s definitely the cake one. ‘Kate and Edith Too?’ It don’t make no sense.”

The source of the confusion is a 1967 song from the country and gospel group The Statler Brothers that cleverly made a pun of the proverb. The song is about two guys who go on a double date with Edith and Kate. The trouble started at the drive-in: “You were kissing on Kate/ She wouldn’t let you go/ I looked at Edith, started feeling bold/ I found your big hairy hand holding on/ to the hand I was trying to hold/ You can’t have your Kate and Edith too.”

The singer is sent for popcorn, and when he returns, he finds his date, Edith, in the back with Kate and the other guy. The song ends with “Years have passed since that first date/ I married Edith, you married Kate/ Now every night when I come home/ Your car’s in the driveway, Kate’s in the car/ And you and Edith are in the house alone/ You can’t have your Kate and Edith too.”^[1]

9 “It’s Hard to Be Religious When Certain People Are Never Incinerated by Bolts of Lightning,” Mayday Parade (2018)

A number of song titles the alternative rock band Mayday Parade has released could make this list, with their dark (sometimes very dark) humor and turns of phrase. Titles like “Happy Endings Are Stories That Haven’t Ended Yet,” “I’d Hate to Be You When People Find Out What This Song Is About,” “Champagne’s for Celebrating (I’ll Have a Martini),” “Call Me Hopeless, Not Romantic,” and—my personal favorite—”If You Can’t Live without Me, Why Aren’t You Dead Yet?” Some of their titles are so bleak, they drip with darkness: “The Torment of Existence Weighed against the Horror of Nonbeing.” One song title is both intriguing and humorous: “It’s Hard to Be Religious When Certain People Are Never Incinerated by Bolts of Lightning.”

Songwriter Derek Sanders admits this song was “a little more angry than anything we’ve done before. I wrote it shortly after the 2016 presidential election when Trump won. I was just kind of horrified something like that was even possible—not that it’s all directed towards him, necessarily, but that’s kind of the mindset I was in.” Sanders does not elaborate on who that anger was directed at, but the song is clearly a ballad of disillusionment and disappointment.

The title is a quote from the book Attack of the Deranged Mutant Killer Monster Snow Goons by Bill Waterson, cartoonist for Calvin and Hobbs. While you will search in vain to find the title among the song’s lyrics, the title leaves little doubt about what the song is about. But Sanders is quick to add, “it’s not all dark. There is, at least to me, a hopeful outlook towards the future and trying to appreciate what we do have. It’s not all angry.”^[2]

8 “(I’d a Wrote You a Letter But) I Couldn’t Spell !✱¢#!” Wayne Carson (1968)

Originally written and recorded by country singer Wayne Carson Thompson, better known as just Wayne Carson, “I Couldn’t Spell !✱¢#! [usually a raspberry sound]” was quickly snatched up and covered by the pop novelty band Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs. Sam’s band already had two Billboard Top 10 hits—”Woolly Bully” and “Li’l Red Riding Hood”—under its belt, as well as covers for classic songs like the Coaster’s 1958 hit “Yakety Yak.” Sam and the Pharaohs rewrote Carson’s work into a novelty pop song, the version that’s usually remembered today. But it was 1968, and irreverent novelty songs were giving way to Vietnam protest songs. “I Couldn’t Spell !!*@!” never reached Billboard’s Hot 100, peaking at #122. Sam’s band disbanded soon after.

Clearly, this is a break-up song, the singer angry because his/her love interest was unfaithful. The singer progresses from drawing a “mustache on your picture” to finding the “tree where we carved our names and chopped that jive thing down.” Unsatisfied, the singer then “burned the tie you gimme” and wrote the ex-lover’s name and, presumably, phone number on the walls of 34 phone booths (back when such things were abundant).^[3]

7 “You’re the Reason Our Kids Are Ugly,” Loretta Lynn and Conway Twitty (1978)

Between 1971 and 1988, Loretta Lynn and Conway Twitty collaborated on 11 studio albums and a dozen singles, becoming one of the most awarded duos in country music history. Even in concert, the pair had a chemistry that gave their love song duets a realism that fooled many fans into thinking they were romantically entangled. This was reinforced when many of their songs portrayed them as a couple. One such song is “You’re the Reason Our Kids Are Ugly,” where they bicker as a tired, life-torn couple with too many kids and too little money.

Conway would sing, “you’re the reason I changed to beer from soda pop,” and Loretta retorts, “An’ you’re the reason I never go to the beauty shop.” They both lament: “I guess that we won’t ever have, everything we need, ’cause when we get ahead, it’s got another mouth to feed.” The kids, Loretta sings, are “the reason my good looks and my figure’s gone.” Conway adds, “and that’s the reason I ain’t got no hair to comb.” They both sing: “An’ you’re the reason our kids are ugly, little darling/ …But I love you just the same.”^[4]

6 “Our Lawyer Made Us Change the Name of This Song So We Wouldn’t Get Sued,” Fall Out Boy (2005)

Many have mistakenly believed Fall Out Boy’s name derives from Vault Boy, the mascot for the multiplayer online role-playing game Fallout. But the band is actually named after a character from the animated series The Simpsons. Introduced in a 1990’s (7th season) episode “Bart the Genius,” Fall Out Boy is the sidekick to the 1920’s movie serial superhero Radioactive Man.

The influential pop-punk band is another group that could have more than one title on this list, such as “Reinventing the Wheel to Run Myself Over,” “A Little Less Sixteen Candles, A Little More ‘Touch Me,’” and “This Ain’t a Scene, It’s an Arms Race.” Their lyrics are pretty spectacular as well, with one of their best delivered in their 2005 “Sugar, We’re Going Down”: “I’m just a notch on your bedpost, but you’re just a line in a song.”

Fall Out Boy’s 2005 “Our Lawyer Made Us Change the Name of This Song So We Wouldn’t Get Sued” may sound like a gimmick to catch people’s attention, but it is perfectly legitimate. One rumor had it that the title that could’ve sparked a lawsuit was “I Loved You So Much More Before You Were a MySpace Whore,” but that was a joke printed in Rolling Stone magazine. The real original title was “My Name Is David Ruffin, and These Are The Temptations.”

The Temptations had formed in 1960, but by Christmas 1963, they had seen only minor success. This frustrated member Elbridge “Al” Bryant, who bristled at the rigorous rehearsals and performances and, after two altercations with other Temptations, was fired. Ruffin had been following the band, aspiring to be a Temptation, and in January 1964, he got his wish. Soon Ruffin took lead vocals with hits such as “My Girl,” “Ain’t Too Proud to Beg,” and “I Wish It Would Rain,” and the group found themselves crooning on American Bandstand and The Ed Sullivan Show.

But the fame—and cocaine—went to Ruffin’s head, and he demanded the group’s name be changed to David Ruffin and the Temptations as had been done with Diana Ross and the Supremes. Outraged, the group fired him. Afterward, Ruffin had some minor success on his own and was even inducted in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with five other Temptations, but he collapsed in a crack house in 1991 and was summarily dumped in front of a hospital where he died a few hours later.

Writer Paul Wentz wrote his song as a warning about the pitfalls of fame. “[It] was kind of supposed to be our nod at a bio piece on the Temptations and David Ruffin and where the separation lies between superstar and a megalomaniac.” Fall Out Boy’s lawyers quite rightly determined that Ruffin’s estate would sue them.^[5]

5 “I’m Gonna Hire a Wino to Decorate Our Home,” David Frizzell (1982)

Country music has a long history of novelty songs with thigh-slapping titles. For instance, there’s Hank Thompson’s 1966 song “He’s Got a Way With Women (And He Just Got Away With Mine)” and Charley Walker’s 1967 un-politically correct song “I Wouldn’t Take Her to a Dog Fight (Even If I Thought That She Could Win). Or Deanna Carter’s “Did I Shave My Legs for This?” Or Charlotte “Charly” McClain’s” Lay Something on My Bed Besides a Blanket.” And my favorite, Johnny Cash’s “Flushed from the Bathroom of Your Heart.” But if “I’m Gonna Hire a Wino to Decorate Our Home” has you scratching your head, maybe some elaboration is needed.

Written by the legendary songwriter Dewayne Blackwell who wrote hits for Roy Orbison, the Everly Brothers, Bobby Vinton, and, notably, “Friends in Low Places” for Garth Brooks, Blackwell shopped his “I’m Gonna Hire…” demo around for a record deal. There were no takers until David Frizzell heard it. Frizzell had been living in the shadow of his older brother, country music star Lefty Frizzell. “I think anybody who’s a brother of a walking legend is liable to feel a little inferior,” David said in an interview. “Lefty had accomplished so many things by the time he was 21 years old and had just become a world power in country music. There’s no way not to feel some sort of pressure.”

David had had some success singing duets with his sister-in-law Shelly West, but both Frizzell and West decided to pursue solo careers. When David heard Blackwell’s demo, he and his agent called Blackwell to secure the rights to record it. It became David’s first and only solo number-one record.

The song is about a husband who’d spend his evenings and paycheck at the bar. One morning he returned home to find his wife had come up with a clever idea: she would turn their home into a bar so that he and his paycheck would stay home. “We’ll take out the dining room table, and put a bar along that wall/ And a neon sign, to point the way to our bathroom down the hall.” She added: “We’ll rip out all the carpet, and put sawdust on the floor/ Serve hard-boiled eggs and pretzels, so I won’t have to cook no more.” And if that wasn’t good enough, she sweetened the deal: “You’ll get friendly service, and for added atmosphere/I’ll slip on something sexy, and I’ll cut it down to here/ Then you can slap my bottom, every time you tell a joke/ Just as long as you keep tipping, well, I’ll laugh until your broke… And when you run out of money, you’ll have me to thank/ You can sleep it off next morning, when I’m putting it in the bank.”^[6]

4 “The Weather is Here, Wish You Were Beautiful,” Jimmy Buffett (1981)

Jimmy Buffett has made a career of witticisms, the kind that end up on wall posters. Some of his gems are in his lyrics: “Laugh till You Cry, Cry Till You Smile” (Boomerang Love, 1989), “Wrinkles Only Go Where the Smiles Have Been” (Barefoot Children in the Rain, 1995), and “Is it Ignorance or Apathy?… I Don’t Know, and I Don’t Care” (I Don’t Know and I Don’t Care, 1999).

Some of them are in his song titles: “Happily Ever After (Now and Then),” “What If the Hokey-Pokey Is All It Really Is About?” “A Lot to Drink About,” and “If the Phone Doesn’t Ring, It’s Me.” He even imparts his wisdom in his books. “Searching is half the fun: life is much more manageable when thought of as a scavenger hunt as opposed to a surprise party,” he wrote in his autobiography A Pirate Looks at Fifty. In his novel, A Salty Piece of Land, he writes: “Grief is like the wake behind a boat. It starts out as a huge wave that follows close behind you…And after a long time, the waters of your life get calm again, and that is when the memories of those who have left begin to shine as bright and as enduring as the stars above.”

As a play on the old postcard line, “the weather is beautiful, wish you were here,” Buffett titled his song about being in the right place with the wrong person—“The Weather is Here, Wish You Were Beautiful.” The song is about a man living the hectic lifestyle of the big city who wants to vacation somewhere tropical. But his girlfriend is too busy to go with him. So he goes alone, has a meaningless fling, but falls in love with his vacation spot. So he quits his New York job and moves there. The final line is probably a personal philosophy of Buffett: “And if it doesn’t work out, there’ll never be any doubt/ That the pleasure was worth all the pain.”

As for the title, there was nothing particularly romantic about its origin. “Graffiti in the bathrooms of good bars has always been a great source of material,” he said. “I think this one came from Captain Tony’s or the Napoleon House in New Orleans.”^[7]

3 “Thanks for the Killer Game of Crisco Twister,” Minus the Bear (2002)

Crisco Twister has been a party game for decades, and it’s where the participants grease the Twister mat (and sometimes themselves) with Crisco or butter to make the game more challenging. There’s even a YouTube video of members of the band Nirvana and Smashing Pumpkins at a Boston bar called Bill’s Bar playing a half-hearted game of Crisco Twister on September 23, 1991. Die-hard Nirvana fans might recognize that date as the day before the release of Nirvana’s earth-shaking album Nevermind. Smashing Pumpkins also had just released their debut album Gish a few months before. It’s interesting to watch Kurt Cobain quietly planting hands and feet on the greasy colored circles the night before his world changed.

The members of Minus the Bear were just starting their musical careers when fellow Washingtonian Kurt Cobain committed suicide in their native city of Seattle. Whether the title “Thanks for the Killer Game of Crisco Twister” has anything to do with the famous Nirvana vs. Smashing Pumpkins bout is unknown. What is known is that it’s a perfect description not just of the song but Minus the Bear’s debut album, Highly Refined Pirates, on which the song appears. One reviewer said the songs on the album “revolve around drinking, partying and general kicking back. While these topics resemble what you might hear on country radio, [singer Jake] Snider delivers his lines as a relatable authority on the subject, i.e., you’ll appreciate his lyrics if you’re involved with what he’s singing about.” In short, the songs are the party soundtrack for parties.

Tracks like “Wanna Throw Up? Get Me Naked” and “Absinthe Party at the Fly Honey Warehouse” telegraph the upbeat party nature of the album. Two of the 14 tracks are one-minute instrumentals with titles nothing more than quotes from the 1997 movie Starship Troopers. The “Thanks for the Killer…” song opens with, “And then we all bought yachts/ And raced up to the islands/ Moored them at the docks/ Leading up to our cabins/ We raced up just to slow down/ And we drank some, man we always do/ Sunglasses to the water/ Our girls are lookin’ so good.”

If you’ve ever wondered how bands chose a name, Minus the Bear’s story is enlightening. “A friend of the band had gone on a date,” Jake Snider explained, “and one of us asked him afterwards how the date went. Our friend said, ‘You know that TV show from the ’70s [called] B.J. and The Bear? It was like that…minus the bear.’”^[8]

2 “Get Off the Table, Mabel (The Two Dollars Is for fhe Beer),” Bull Moose Jackson and the Flashcats (1984)

No one seems to know where this joke originated, but the earliest recorded instance of it used in a song appears to be December 1949, when a studio band named Pearl Boys released “Get Off the Table Mabel,” written by pianist and singer Larry Vincent. His “Get Off the Table Mabel” was about Johnny, whose wife Mabel was a dancer at a burlesque show, who garnered money from her husband by dancing on the kitchen table. “The twists and turns that you invent will help us pay the rent,” the husband sings. “Go out and get it Mabel, I’m down to my last cent.” His final plea: “Get off the table Mabel, shake your whatsits anywhere but here. Get off the table Mabel, my two bucks are for beer.”

At the same time, an off-shoot of Rhythm and Blues—called “Dirty Blues”—was gaining popularity in nightclubs all over America. Dealing with subjects usually too obscene to record, some brave souls did put their songs on vinyl and still survive today. Perhaps the earliest example is Gertrude “Ma” Rainey’s bawdy “Shave ‘Em Dry“—slang for sex without foreplay—released by Paramount Records in 1924. In 1943, bandleader Lucky Millinder hired a 24-year-old saxophonist named Benjamin Jackson that he thought was built like a bull moose. The moniker stuck.

Bull Moose Jackson went on to release solo projects such as “I Love You, I Do”—considered the first R&B single to sell a million copies—and the dirty blues hit “I Want a Bowlegged Woman.” In 1952, Bull Moose released “Big Ten-Inch Record,” a reference to 10-inch vinyl records prevalent at the time, where he’d sing about his woman who loved his “big ten-inch…record.” If that sounds familiar, Aerosmith covered it for their Toys in the Attic album.

In 1984, Moose and his songs had a minor revival when a Pittsburgh band known as the Flashcats recorded “Get Off the Table, Mabel (The Two Dollars Is for the Beer)” with the 65-year-old Moose. This version is substantially different than Larry Vincent’s version, singing about a “diner on the edge of town” where Mabel is a waitress. Bull Moose sings that Mabel has experience as a stripper and has to be reminded she can’t dance at the diner. “Get off the Table, Mabel, the two dollars is for the beer/ The service is good, I would if I could, but you can’t do that around here,” Bull Moose croons.^[9]

1 “2021: A Personal Space Odyssey,” Pet Symmetry (2021)

When Evan Weiss, Erik Czaja, and Marcus Nuccio formed the band Pet Symmetry in 2012, they were already firmly established in the resurgence of the Emo movement. Nuccio and Czaja were members of the Chicago-based Dowsing, and Weiss had played in various emo and underground punk rock bands and his solo project Into it. Over it. for more than a decade. From the start, Pet Symmetry established their trademark of serious introspective couched in clever word-play and sung in light, playful choruses.

Their name is a pun on Stephen King’s 1983 book Pet Sematary, and their song titles are heavy on eye-rollers. Titles like “Cereal Killer,” “Window Pain,” “Ends With Benefits” (a pun on the phrase “friends with benefits”), “Boldly Going Nowhere” (a pun on the Star Trek phrase “boldly go where…”), and “Simply Irresponsible” (a pun on Robert Palmer’s 1988 hit “Simply Irresistible”).

In their debut EP released in 2013, they demonstrated another of their trademarks: lengthy song titles. The title of the two-track EP was Two Songs About Cars, Two Songs with Long Titles. Just as promised, the two songs were “Please Don’t Tell My Father That I Used His 1996 Honda Accord to Destroy the Town of Willow Grove, Pennsylvania in 2002” (happily, Willow Grove was not destroyed in 2002 or any other year) and “A Detailed and Poetic Physical Threat to the Person Who Intentionally Vandalized My 1994 Dodge Intrepid behind Kate’s Apartment.”

The latter song starts by describing his Dodge Intrepid: “A silver surface worn into rust/ From nights in a neighborhood I started to trust.” The Intrepid is vandalized, the perpetrator leaving a note: “To you, it’s just Scotch Tape and a heightened sense of cowardly pride/ A U-lock, some entitlement to keep by your side.” The singer then melodically and sweetly sings: “Have you ever felt your perfect teeth make a connection with Chicago concrete?”

Fast-forward eight years to 2021, and the band turns from personal, introspective songs to more extrospective interpretations of the chaotic previous year in their third LP, Future Suits. There’s “Bootlicker” on law enforcement, “Simply Irresponsible” on political gridlock, and “Pet Synergy” on economic irresponsibility.

The COVID pandemic is there too, in the song “2021: A Personal Space Odyssey.” The song posits that the world is falling apart as we—like Nero—fiddle while Rome burns. “The Earth wants what it wants, and it’ll take what it gets,” Pet Symmetry sings, and adds ominously: “once the wheels leave the ground, we all own the ride.” Meanwhile, we “sit on the sidelines and place your bets” “while we wait in pajamas for further news.”^[10]