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2022-11-20 19:00 EST

So despite being a big fan of Tally Hall for the past few years, I've not really delved (delven?) deep into their members' individual careers. So, last week I decided to listen to Joe Hawley's 2016 album Joe Hawley Joe Hawley all the way through for the first time. Overall, I thought it was good, although some points were higher and lower than others. But one of the songs that unexpectedly stuck with me was his song "Crazy F***".

Now, it's worth mentioning that "F***" in the title largely stands for "Food" as opposed to "Fuck" (although it is used as such once in the song). I think this is hilarious. I think it's worth noting that this is the only song in the whole album that is "censored", and the fact that the title leans into that is genius. It's also worth noting that the bleep sound over top every swear word is in tune with the 8-bit portions of the song. It brings to mind a quote about comedy music from Spike Jones Jr. that says "when you replace a C-sharp with a gunshot, it has to be a C-sharp gunshot or it sounds awful." The only other time I've seen this done with censor bleeps is in the Derevolutions' cover of "The Monster Mash", which makes me think we really missed out in doing this back when songs were censored using bleeps.

Regarding the content of the song, I feel like this song is in the long tradition of comedy songs that contain long lists of things set to song, often with intense speed. A first example I can think of is Tom Lehrer's "The Elements". Other examples are the bridge of "Weird Al" Yankovic's "Hardware Store" and Lemon Demon's "Toy Food", which is interestingly another list of food.

The last thing I wanted to mention is that I appreciate Hawley's sampling prowess, both in this song and in the album at-large. As someone who spent most of her teenage years listening to video game music, hearing Hawley rap over a theme from Punch-Out!! and "Green Greens" from Kirby's Dream Land was very fun. The thing that took me a second to realize though is how much the song owes to "Scarborough Fair" (as popularized by Simon & Garfunkel). Apparently the sample is directly from Bill & Ted's Excellent Video Game Adventure.

I like that in addition to musically referencing "Scarborough Fair", it lyrically references it too. The song starts with, "Are you going to eat that crazy food," whereas "Scarborough Fair" starts with, "Are you going to Scarborough fair". At the end of the introduction, the lyrics are, "this was once a true fantasy of mine" in place of the original "she once was a true love of mine". (and then of course, Hawley references the chorus of "Scarborough Fair" with "parsley, sage, rosemary, wait / almost seems like this should be illegal."

Anyway I very much enjoy this song, its comedy, and its energy, and I am glad to have found it.

Tags: Joe Hawley • music • Tally Hall