The English are used to bad weather and eating tomatoes for breakfast. So it sort of makes sense that they’d like these goofy novelty songs.
Artist: The Outhere Brothers
Song: “Boom Boom Boom”
Story: American hip-hop group the Outhere Brothers have had a string of huge hits in England. And almost all of them have related, in some way or another, to butts and bathroom humor—often graphically. For example, their #1 hit “Boom Boom Boom” includes the lyric “put your booty on my face.” Other notable hits include “Gimme My Sh*t,” “Pass the Toilet Paper,” and “Pass the Toilet Paper ’98.”
Artist: Crazy Frog
Song: “Axel F”
Story: In 2005 the cell-phone ringtone producer Jamba! introduced its new advertising mascot, Crazy Frog—a grotesque, bug-eyed cartoon frog with a sinister smile. The character proved so popular that the company released a remix (attributed to Crazy Frog) of the 1984 Beverly Hills Cop theme song “Axel F.” The song was already a synthesizer-driven instrumental; Crazy Frog’s version sounded like a high-pitched cell-phone ringtone version of it. The song became a smash hit, going to #1 in the U.K. and throughout Europe. It also became one of the bestselling ringtones of all time in England.
Artist: Rage Against the Machine
Song: “Killing in the Name”
Story: In the U.K., watching to see which song will be #1 on Christmas is an annual pop-culture event. From 2005 to 2008, the Christmas #1 was the song performed by the winner of the British talent show The X Factor. Tired of the fact that the show had developed such a strong influence over the pop charts, two music fans named Jon and Tracy Morter began a campaign via Facebook in 2009 to steal that year’s Christmas #1 spot. They chose the most inappropriate tune for Christmas that they could think of: “Killing in the Name,” a profanity-laced diatribe against the American government by the leftist rock band Rage Against the Machine. Paul McCartney, Dave Grohl of Foo Fighters, and more than 750,000 Facebook users publicly endorsed the campaign. Christmas came…and Rage Against the Machine had the #1 song in England, bumping The X Factor winner Joe McElddery to #2.
Susie Rewer of the U.K. knitted a 5-foot-long scarf—while running in a marathon.
Artist: Chef
Song: “Chocolate Salty Balls (P.S. I Love You)”
Story: The TV cartoon comedy South Park is just as popular in the U.K. as it is in the U.S., and this song appeared in the 1998 episode “Chef Aid.” Chef (voiced by soul singer Isaac Hayes) bakes his homemade confections, “chocolate salty balls,” to sell at a fund-raiser. The whole song is a string of double entendres—Chef really is singing about baked goods when he croons “Say, everybody, have you seen my balls? They’re big and salty and brown.” On Christmas 1998, “Chocolate Salty Balls (P.S. I Love You)” hit #1 in the U.K.
Artist: The Cheeky Girls
Song: “The Cheeky Song (Touch My Bum)”
Story: Pop singers Gabriela and Monica Irimia, 20-year-old Romanian twins who’d been trained in opera and ballet, appeared on the British TV talent show Popstars: The Rivals in 2002. They didn’t win—the judges thought they were terrible singers, and one called their woeful attempt “cheeky.” But since the twins were attractive and at least memorable, offers for record deals began to pour in. Just a few weeks after their losing appearance on Popstars, “The Cheeky Girls” signed with Multiply Records and released “The Cheeky Song (Touch My Bum),” a thumping electronic/dance song with lyrics made up almost entirely of the repeated, tunelessly sung phrases “cheeky girls,” and “touch my bum.” “The Cheeky Song” peaked at #2 on the British pop chart.
If you die at work, there’s a 1% chance that the cause of death will be drowning.