Driving home today I finally got sick of listening to sports-talk radio and flipped the dial until landing on my local classic rock station. I became slightly entranced by the bassline in Bad Company’s “Feel Like Making Love,” a part I’d never focused on before. I’ve gotten many laughs out of “Feel Like Making Love,” once performing it at the end of one of my band’s shows in a drunken duet with my band’s bassist at a frat party in the mid-’80s. Our singer moved behind the drums. Then a song I’ve always hated started up, Phil Collins’ “In the Air Tonight.” I decided to listen intently through the big drum fill, to see if there was anything I could ever like about that song. There was not.
To relieve the boredom of trying to listen intently to “In the Air Tonight,” my mind wandered to possibly the most unintentionally hilarious hook in rock, the part in Collins’ “Mama” when he does the rhythmic evil laugh. Does anyone not laugh in anticipation of that part of the song, even fans of Phil Collins?
Has anyone ever done an in-depth interview with Collins to ask him to describe the process behind writing that part of the song? In retrospect, does he find it unintentionally funny?
Another songs with an unintentionally funny hook is that Rush song where Geddy Lee follows up a gentle reggae section by screaming “Salesmen!” Or is it the singular, “Salesman!” Either way, it’s worth my time listening to that ridiculous song just so I can laugh at that part.
What song’s hook makes you giggle, probably unintentionally, as far as the songwriters are concerned?
