Funny / Todd In The Shadows One Hit Wonderland 2021

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Specials

Tag Team - "Whoomp! (There It Is)" (1993)

• He brings up the barely one-month-old GEICO ad featuring them parodying their song almost immediately, and looks forward to having to hear it a few hundred more times.
• On the onomatopoeia of the title:
  Todd: I don't even know what sound it's supposed to be. The sound of someone flopping onto a beanbag chair, maybe.
  • And then finding the same sound in the song that kept it from the #1 spot: Whitney Houston's "I Will Always Love You" (where it signals its famous Truck Driver's Gear Change).
    Todd: [Sounding like he's suppressing a giggle] See? There it is.
• The failed follow-up, "U Go Girl", gets a thumb-up of approval from Todd for its positive message of celebrating all of the empowered Black women that Tag Team know... and then things suddenly take a turn.
  Todd: Just like "Whoomp! There It Is", it's a more positive, uplifting version of the Miami Bass sound. You can call it corny, but I think there's a place for that.
  DC: Nubian ham is what I want / Step to and lemme ride that coochie, koo / Fat rump, I pursue / Big breasteses? I love 'em too
  Todd: [troubled] ...Okay, I think we're starting to lose the thread a little in this third verse.
• Among the many cash-in variations of the song is "Bulls! There It Is", made to promote the then-enormous Chicago Bulls during the '95 championship. Todd speculates that it might've been the deciding factor in Jordan quitting basketball and joining the White Sox.
• When mentioning that Tag Team recorded a version for Addams Family Values, he points out that no rapper has ever done a song for that franchise and kept their career intact, citing MC Hammer (who made "Addams Groove" for The Addams Family) and very likely Migos (who made "My Family" for The Addams Family (2019)) as examples. He even lampshades that he went out of his way to mention the latter, since most people probably forgot that that song even existed.
  • In regards to the video for Addams Family Whoomp, Todd thanks "whatever weirdo had this on their computer and uploaded it to YouTube." Search for Addams Family Whoomp on YouTube and, sure enough, it's been on Todd's own page since 2014. In fact, it is the first video uploaded on Todd's channel.
• He plays the Mickey Unrapped version of the song, and imagines Max Goof being horribly embarrassed by his father's involvement.
  Max: This is pathetic.
  • As much as Todd says he liked the original as a kid, it's clear he's not enjoying any of the re-recordings, almost cringing out of his skin during Mickey's intro.
• Todd reveals the duo's absolute rock-bottom moment — they were the ones who rapped "Pig Power in the House" for the Gordy soundtrack.
  Todd: Mickey Mouse is at least a cultural icon. Gordy?

Mark Morrison - "Return of the Mack" (1996)

• The Running Gag surrounding British society's cluelessness over the American Hip-Hop and R&B scenes.
  • To illustrate what British hip-hop was like in the 90's, he pulls up a clip of two goofy white rappers who look and sound like Loadsamoney in "street" getup.
  • One live performance Todd shows sees the emcees joke that the song's about recovering a lost Mackintosh coat (a.k.a. a "Mac"). This pays off later when Todd discusses the song's Transatlantic appeal: it was so American of a track that The Guardian had to outright explain what "Mack" meant.
    Todd: It's not a goddamn raincoat, you limeys.
  • While discussing Morrison's later output, Todd finds a song of his called "Get Horny" that's Exactly What It Says on the Tin. It's so bombastically up-front and jarring compared to other big names in British soul (i.e. Simply Red) that Todd finds it absolutely hilarious.
    Todd: I imagine them all just dropping their teacups, the Queen fainting.
    Mark Morrison: ♫ I said youuuuuuuuu got me hooooooornyyyyyyy! ♫
    Todd: You can't not like this. Remember fun R&B? What happened to that?
• Todd notes that Morrison's artist biography describes him as "the most successful British R&B singer of the mid-90's", which he calls "a sentence with a hell of a lot of qualifiers".
  • Which becomes even funnier when Todd wonders if even that isn't true.
• Todd being surprised that "Return of the Mack" is actually a post break-up song and loving it because of that.
  Mark Morrison: ♫ Yes I cried, yes I cri-hi-hied... ♫
  Todd: Does this sound like a song about crying to you?
• Eventually Todd gets to Morrison's history of legal issues, the list of which gets so long and over the top (escalating from bar brawls to threatening a cop with a stun gun, which Todd notes "are super illegal in the UK") that it goes from concerning to downright hilarious. It caps off when Todd mentions how the final straw was Morrison ditching community service by paying someone else to impersonate him.
• While Morrison's numerous run-ins with the law were a big reason he never had a second hit on the left side of The Pond, Todd thinks it's because of an even worse decision he made: signing with Suge Knight, at a time when Death Row Records' entire income was dependent on "dead Tupac."

Rick Dees & His Cast of Idiots - "Disco Duck" (1976)

• The very fact that this episode was uploaded to Patreon on April Fool's Day is amusing in and of itself, and led a lot of people to believe it was a fake-out like Float On at first, before the YouTube upload the following day confirmed that it was in fact the actual subject of the video.
• A lot of jokes come from Rick Dees' day job as a morning DJ, which Todd considers the lowest form of humor... "said the YouTuber".
  • Todd compares a successful Top 40 radio host also being a one-hit wonder to finding out that Ryan Seacrest wrote "Mambo No. 5".
• When it's time to do the "Before the Hit" segment about a one-hit wonder's humble beginnings, it turns out Rick Dees had already had a "sizzle reel" made about himself (and narrated by Don LaFontaine, no less), so Todd just kicks back with a bag of popcorn and lets Rick do the work for him.
  Todd: Thanks Rick! I'll be nicer to you when I get to the review part.
  • Mere seconds later, the reel quotes Rick's old college roommate, former Scripps Networks CEO Ken Lowe, who recalls with affection that rooming with Dees "was like living with Robin Williams" because he was always doing wacky new bits and characters. Todd dryly comments, "that sounds absolutely exhausting".
  • The reel also claims that Rick Dees hosted the world's first Wet T-Shirt Contest, which Todd absolutely does not believe.
• The clip that Todd shows to start the "The Big Hit" segment is...really something.
  Paul McCartney: There's always one song you wish you could've written. In my case, that one song is "Disco Duck".
• Disco has gotten a fairer re-evaluation in recent years for all of its contributions to the black and gay community, so Todd expresses a little reticence about going all in on making fun of "Disco Duck", even if it's a chintzy novelty song that itself helped tarnish disco's reputation. Cue footage of Rick Dees doing a "yokel" voice too stereotypical for Hee Haw as part of his stage banter. Almost immediately, Todd concludes that there is NOTHING black or gay about Dees, and declares him fair game.
  "If he was doing a Daffy impression, maybe, but uh, no, that is no little black duck. That is lily-white Donald."
• Some songs don't make it onto One-Hit Wonderland because Todd can't find enough footage of the artists. "Disco Duck" doesn't have that problem, as Todd found a shockingly large amount of footage regarding Rick Dees, much of which is utterly ridiculous.
• While discussing how the duck voice used in the song and the duck puppet used in live performances of it sounds and looks like a lawyer-friendly version of Donald Duck, it turns out Disney didn't just release a hip-hop album in the 90s. They released a disco album in the 70s too, featuring "Macho Duck".
  Todd: How did the House of Mouse sound like they were the cheap knock-off compared to the morning DJ?!
• Todd compliments the other elements of the song for as long as he can — great chorus with a catchy hook, good sound — but ultimately can't ignore how it had no place as a #1 hit (especially since Rick is the worst part for him).
  [Trying not to laugh] "People in the 70's, what the hell was wrong with you?"
• On the inevitable second single, "Dis-Gorilla":
  Todd: ...Nope, nope, not gonna front. I love it when the follow-up is the exact same song as the original.
  • When the video starts up, with Greg Brady and the cast of What's Happening!! introducing Rick Dees on stage designed to look like a jungle, complete with women dressed up like jungle natives, it appears that Todd is horrified. And then Todd speaks:
    Todd: HOW IS THERE VIDEO OF THIS?!
  • After explaining that "Dis-Gorila" was probably a riff on/ripoff of King Kong (1976):
    Dees: The crowd went bananas / And begged for more
    Todd: ...This actually is making me appreciate the craft of "Disco Duck" a lot more. AND the craft of King Kong '76, for that matter. 'Twas DJs, killed the beast...
• Rick also wrote a Jaws parody set to the melody of the theme from Shaft.
  Todd: This is so stupid I'm actually enjoying it.
• Calling Rick's radio empire built off the success of "Disco Duck" as his "Disco Duck Dynasty".

Meredith Brooks - "Bitch" (1997)

• The title card, consisting of Todd hastily (and poorly) attempting to censor the song name.
  • On Twitter, Todd noted the title would possibly not fall well with YouTube's tendency to be overtly sensitive, and the top comment on the video is even Linkara saying "All glory to the algorithm, may it forever favor you."
• Upon looking up the future oeuvre of co-writer Shelly Peiken, Todd learns that she wrote, of all things, "Rotten to the Core" from Descendants, resulting in an immediate double-take at how out of place it is.
  Todd: [audibly baffled] What, seriously? ...okay.
  • Furthermore, the song's producer Geza X has aided pop classics such as... "Holiday in Cambodia"!
• Todd communicates a big part of his problem with the song: that many of its platitudes about how being messy and imperfect is okay, are now commonly used by toxic people who don't seek to better themselves, just justify their behavior, and what's left over is the very uncontroversial take that women are secretly complicated and multifaceted. He then shows a Demotivational Poster of what's clearly a misattributed Marilyn Monroe quote, and his reaction to it is what sells it.
  Todd: [through gritted teeth, reading the misattributed quote] "If you can't handle me at my worst, you don't deserve me at my" — Marilyn-Monroe-never-said-that.
• Todd eventually reaches Brooks' Cover Version of "Lay Down (Candles in the Rain)" by 70's folk singer Melanie, and is immediately caught off-guard by the fact that it features Queen Latifah as a guest vocalist. His only response at first is a Flat "What", and he remains amusingly bewildered for the rest of the segment.
  Todd: I didn't even know Queen Latifah was still a rapper by then.
• Todd notes that afterwards, Brooks did something more baffling: She wrote a whole album for Jennifer Love Hewitt. Todd considers it a symbol of how far the Riot Grrrl movement had fallen.
  Todd: It started with Ani Difranco and Tori Amos, and it ended with the girl from I Know What You Did Last Summer trying to sing.
• Todd ends up running into a similar situation to his OHW of Rick Derringer's "Rock and Roll, Hoochie Koo" in which he discovers that the artist subject of the video nowadays holds some... rather controversial political views. The funny part comes when, whereas that revelation in the Rick Derringer video depressed Todd and he preferred to ignore it and appreciate the good in "Hoochie Koo"; here, where Todd made it clear that while he appreciates certain things about "Bitch" such as its staying power, he never was a fan of the song to begin with. Todd finds it an excuse to unload on it, culminating in calling it "a gift to wine moms everywhere." As he said in the "Did They Deserve Better?" section:
  Todd: I was thinking of being kinder to her but, uh, seeing where she is now— you know what? No. No.
• Early in the video Todd mentions the lyrics becoming a meme, so as a callback he sums up his thoughts in a spoken word parody of the chorus:
  It's relatable, it's universal
  It's real dumb, it's controversial
  It is perfect, it is lame
  It could not be sustained
• What Cover Version of the featured song does Todd decide to close the episode with? "Bloke" by stand-up comedian Chris Franklin.
  I'm a bloke I'm an Ocker
  And I really love your knockers
  I'm a laborer by day
  I piss up all me pay

The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus - "Face Down" (2006)

• Todd's utter bewilderment at discovering that the song was a No. 1 hit on the Christian Rock charts. He gets even more bewildered upon learning that yes, The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus are indeed a religious band, something he had never parsed about them before.
• The album version of the song includes some unexpected screaming during the bridge, but The Not-Remix sent to pop radio tones it down considerably:
  Todd: Take out the screamo, now you're mainstream-o.
• When Todd goes into the song's structure, he notes that an old staple of the show is back:
  Todd: Well, I'm not going to tell you these guys are groundbreakers; musically, this song isn't super original. In fact, the entire song is based around, you guessed it, the Pop Song Chords. Pop Song Chords: They're back! They never left! But also: They're back!
• Todd discloses that he had a story with the song: There's a part that he always heard as "Do you feel like holding on / When you push her around", and he didn't discover up until making the video that it actually says "Do you feel like a man / When you push her around". While he concedes that it makes more sense, he still wonder why the singer pronounced "a man" like "a ma-un".
  Todd: I guess he just wanted to ask this horrible wife-beater if he felt like a Mayan? I— uh...
  • It's worth noting that in addition to the usual comments on the video, a good chunk is wondering how on Earth Todd managed to mishear 'a man' for 'holding on'.
• Todd notes regarding the song's anti-domestic violence message that it focus is on the right places, saying that a lesser band would have it a romantic song, "like that stupid Shawn Mendes video." Cue Mendes's "Treat You Better."
  Mendes: ♫ I know I can treat you better / Than he can ♫
  Todd: "Oh, you need to get out of this abusive relationship because I'm in love with you." Not really the point right now, dude!
  Mendes: ♫ Better than he can! ♫
  Todd: Shut up.
• After noting that, out of the three singles from the band's debut album, the first two didn't have particularly heavy Christian themes or songwriting tropes, he stumbles upon the third one, "Your Guardian Angel", which does have them... and Todd hates it.
  Ronnie Winter: ♫ I'll be there for you through it all / Even if saving you sends me to Heaven! ♫
  Todd: Can't even bring themselves to say "going to Hell," they have to say they're being "sent to Heaven." Uuuugh...
• Todd notes that a couple of years later they would release a song called "You Better Pray". Todd is ready for it to be another overtly Christian song ("Here we go again with the preaching…"), before being surprised.
  Todd: Okay, so it's "You better pray... that we don't find you and kick your ass", is what they mean. Okay, see, my fear with Christian rock is that you'll get drawn in and you'll get tricked into hearing a sermon. I think it's kind of the reverse in this case! This is like they're trying to trick Christian kids into listening to normal music.
  [the music video shows a Hot Librarian doing a striptease in a library]
  Todd: See? What is this? If this is Christian music, give me that old-time religion...
• When Todd gets to the "Did They Deserve Better?" segment, he opens it with this:
  Todd: "Deserve better"... Well, morally, they're in good with Jesus, at the very least. But musically? Umm...

Lou Bega - "Mambo No. 5" (1999)

• Todd's usual introduction after playing the song on piano:
  Todd: I can't believe I haven't done this one yet. Today we are once again going to party like it's 1999, the last good year.
• Todd attempts to beatbox the song's opening synth riff, and ends up sounding more like a sneezing bull.
• While explaining Lou Bega's background, Todd reveals that despite what his name and the song might imply, he's not from Latin America, but that the guy's actually from Germany; born and raised in Munich from an Ugandan father and an Italian mother. As such, Todd gives quite the interesting juxtaposition:
  Todd: This is Lou Bega's traditional dance music. [cue goofy stock footage of Bavarians doing the Schuhplattler]
  • To dispel the assumption that Lou might at least have Cuban heritage, Todd further notes that his real name is David Lubega, and after falling in love with mambo on a trip to Florida, he just turned his Ugandan father's recognizably East African surname into an extremely Cuban-sounding stage name ("you could easily guess that it's short for 'Luis Vega-Rodríguez'"). Todd compares it to the kid who does a semester abroad and comes back with an accent.
• Before going over the song itself, Todd mentioned that he was sent a video called "Mambo Number HONK", which replaces every sound with a bicycle horn, resulting in a chaotic mess. The cover that Todd chose to play out the end? That song.
  Todd: I listen to this, and I can feel myself losing all contact with reality.
• Todd spends pretty much the entire review wearing and fiddling around with a Lou Bega-style trilby.
• While the song is an obvious choice for One Hit Wonderland, Todd eventually realises why he hadn't actually covered the song before; There's nothing that he can really discuss about the song because it's just "Mambo No. 5", what is there to say about it?
• Todd manages to work in a stellar Take That! when comparing Lou Bega to The Black Eyed Peas, stating that while they use plenty of the sounds and idioms associated with mambo and Hip-Hop respectively, their real genre is "annoying."
• Lou performed a version of this for Radio Disney Jams (among quite a few others, no less) listing classic Disney characters, when the song was originally about the (supposedly-real) flings he had in his life:
  Todd: Did Lou Bega have sex with Donald Duck? Is that the implication here?
  • Todd doesn't draw attention to it, but there's also a good amount of amusement in the fact that Lou audibly calls Minnie Mouse "Mindy." Later, when showing off a Kids' WB! promo Bega shot, the guy similarly calls Pokémon: The Series "pokey man." ^note in the latter "Pokemon" is used as a rather Painful Rhyme for "jam".
  • On a more darkly comedic note, there's the juxtaposition of Todd describing the song as an ode to Lou Bega's sexual escapades and footage from the same Kids' WB promo of Shareena Wickett— a middle schooler— fawning for the guy; Todd even liked a Twitter reply joking about it.
  • There's also a version performed by Bob the Builder. Todd's only reaction is stunned, thoughtful silence. Furthermore, as many in the comments noted, the Bob the Builder version of the song was the show's second No. 1 hit in the UK, meaning that actual children's show Bob The Builder has more No. 1 hits than actual musician Lou Bega.
• Todd describes "I Got a Girl" (a mambo-pop version of A Girl in Every Port, where Lou lists all the places that he's got girls) as him "expanding his persona into new creative directions".
  Todd: [Waggling his trilby] Lou Bega: he has sex with women!
• Lou audaciously describing "Tricky Tricky", a song about a beautiful gold-digger that he loves anyway, as his version of "No Scrubs". Aside from the fact that the two are nothing alike (Todd says it was, if anything, Bega's attempt at "Livin' La Vida Loca"), Todd accurately pegs the real Spear Counterpart of "Scrubs" as "No Pigeons" by Sporty Thievz, which had already come out the previous year.
• Todd brings up the lawsuit between Bega and the estate of Pérez Prado (the original songwriter of "Mambo No. 5"), since Bega claimed songwriting credit for his original lyrics...and then proceeds to bring up Bega's song "1+1=2", which turned up in the credits of Stuart Little.
  Todd: It is such a rip-off of "Mambo No. 5" that the Prado estate should have sued for this one too.
• On Bega calling himself the Mambo King:
  Todd: Like, no, you are not Tito Puente, bro. That'd be like Bruce Willis calling himself the King of Blues.
  • It should be noted that Todd doesn't use Bruce Willis as a random reference— the video playing over that sentence is of Bruce Willis singing "Under The Boardwalk" with The Temptations, which also manages to make this a bizarre callback to the Summer In Paradise Trainwreckord.
• While watching the Fleischer-inspired Animated Music Video for "Just a Gigolo":
  Todd: Lou Bega is going to be a DLC in Cuphead, by the way.

Evan and Jaron - "Crazy for This Girl" (2000)

• After introducing the term "minivan rock" to describe this kind of "polished, guitar-driven pop" popular around the turn of the millennium with both kids and their moms, Todd introduces the track justly:
  Todd: So buckle up… because we're in a minivan, and it's important to be safe.
• Todd clowning on the unlikely man that discovered Evan & Jaron, as he imagines him discovering them:
  Todd: Our story begins with Jimmy Buffett [Beat] Yeah, Jimmy Buffett. One day in the mid-nineties, Jimmy Buffett is wandering around in his socks and flip flops and probably golf visor on his head, already drunk at 11:30 in the morning and is looking for a place to get a margarita and a cheeseburger or something, he staggers into a random venue and he sees two guys performing there and he's like, "Whoa, this guys are great, we should sign them!" and then he falls off his bar stool and vomits on the floor... I made some of it up. It actually happened at Buffett's club that he owns, not some random place, but uh... yeah, otherwise I'm pretty sure that's how that went down.
• Contrasting the song with other "minivan rock" hits where male vocalists sing about women, Todd finds the lyrics lacking in significant details about the actual subject of the song- he cites the lines "She rolls the window down /And she talks over the sound" as the only concrete things we learn about her:
  Todd: "Absolutely (Story Of A Girl)" is not a masterpiece of lyrical detail, but I at least understood the type of girl they were describing. I know nothing about "Crazy for this Girl" Girl. We don't even know if she's, like, funny or pretty - all we know is she can project over the sound of an open car window. Who couldn't fall in love?
• Describing their follow-up single, "From My Head to My Heart" justly:
  Todd: To my eternal frustration, things that sound like Fountains of Wayne do not tend to become hits.
• Talking about how another one of their failed follow-ups, "The Distance," sounded like a Christian song, which was unsurprising since Evan and Jaron were quite religious... except they were Orthodox Jewish.
  • This then leads to him talking about how they didn't perform on the Sabbath, where he of course pulls out the fitting Big Lebowski clip.
    Walter Sobchak: Shomer fucking Shabbos!
• When he gets to that "Christian song," "Pray for You," it turns out to be a bit of a Bait-and-Switch:
  Jaron: I pray your brakes go out runnin' down a hill / I pray a flower pot falls from a window sill / And knocks you in the head like I'd like to.
• Jaron is now the general manager of Postmodern Jukebox, which Todd describes justly (possibly while damning by faint praise):
  Todd: [It] dares to ask, "What if Richard Cheese, but you can actually listen to it more than once?"
• Earlier in the episode, Todd showed a picture of Evan alongside another man whose face was obscured, with Todd saying that it would be important later. When talking about Evan's later career, Todd reveals that Evan became a celebrity manager, and that he managed to sign at least one big name… Kevin Spacey, the man whose face was shown obscured before, and who Evan signed up just in time to face Spacey's sexual harrassment allegations. The increasing "What the fuck?!" tone in Todd's voice as he explains this is what sells it.
• During his final verdict (musically "meh,", but Jaron at least seems nice enough and has nothing to hold against him, and Evan really only has his taste in friends to hold against him), he refers back to Jaron's song, saying "I guess I'll pray for them?"

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