Food Songs Are Funny

"Is it going to be about food?"

— Kurt Cobain, in response to "Weird Al" Yankovic asking to parody "Smells Like Teen Spirit"

For whatever reason, singing about food is funny.

It's not really clear why; it's just one of those things. Perhaps it's because eating is (almost) always an entirely pleasurable/joyous experience, but also mundane. Perhaps it's just because eating is such an everyday activity that making a song of it sounds ridiculous. Perhaps—again—it's just one of those things.

Subtrope of Ode to Food.

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Examples

• "Slurf Song" by Michael Hurley and The Holy Modal Rounders is about various kinds of food. It's also pretty hard not to laugh—or at least crack a smile—while listening to it.
  • NOTE: The second-to-last verse may or may not be safe for work, depending on where you work.
• Food is a major theme for "Weird Al" Yankovic: His first single was "My Bologna", a parody of "My Sharona". His Breakthrough Hit was "Eat It," a food-related parody of Michael Jackson's "Beat It" from Thriller. He's made no less than ten songs about food, and has a whole compilation album of them—and that album doesn't include "Girls Just Want to Have Lunch" (A deliberately terrible Self-Parody). When Weird Al asked Nirvana if he could parody "Smells Like Teen Spirit", they actually asked if the parody was going to be about food (they didn't mind that it was mocking the Mondegreen lyrics). In his later years, Al often lampshades, mocks, or subverts his tendency to make songs about food (most prominently "Foil", which starts out talking about food then takes a wild right turn into Conspiracy Kitchen Sink).
• "Food, Glorious Food" from Oliver!, the musical adaptation of Oliver Twist. A bunch of starving workhouse boys sing of having all the food they want. In this case, though, it's arguably serious, since the singers are starving and food is clearly something they greatly desire.
  • Taken even further in Ice Age 2, where it was sung in anticipation by hungry vultures.
• Fat Boys' "All You Can Eat".
  • The Fat Boys did at least two other ones (and probably more): "Burger Pattern" and "One Billion," both for Square One TV. In the first they get 15 burgers, a shake & fries; in the second they talk about ordering one billion cheeseburgers.
• "Carrot Juice Is Murder" by The Arrogant Worms. A parody folk song about the oppression of various veggies... "I've heard the screams of the vegetables..."
• "Toast" by Heywood Banks. The comedian's classic song skit. This live version with bonus verse.
  • Played with in his "Big Butter Jesus." A song about a giant real-life Jesus statue which Heywood explains looks like he's made of butter. Many butter puns ensue. "Oh, spread the word!"
    • Live version with an additional verse, after said statue was struck by lightning and destroyed.
• There is also another song called "Toast" by a band called Streetband. It's rather funny by itself, and downright hilarious if your a little kid, but what makes it is the fact the singer is a very young (no pun intended) Paul Young!
• "Fish Heads" by Barnes and Barnes. A strange, but somehow earwormy song about, well, fish heads.
• "Abbondanza" and "Sposalizio" from The Most Happy Fella.
• Anyone wanting a cake with an unsual taste? The villains from Asterix and Cleopatra are making a nice arsenic cake for the queen. Oh, and while you're at it, try also to listen to the song in the different languages. The same movie also has a song about healthier (by comparison) food, involving beer, boars and cheese.
• Just about anything sung by Redwallers.
• The Simpsons:
  Homer: "I like pizza,
  I like bagels,
  I like hot dogs with mustard and beer!
  I'll eat eggplant,
  I could even eat a baby deer"
• Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street: The two big comedy numbers are "The Worst Pies in London" and "A Little Priest".
• The old folk song/shanty "Cape Cod Girls," which makes fun of the Cape Cod diet of...well...cod.
• "Lunch Lady Land" by Adam Sandler, from his time on Saturday Night Live
  • "The Thanksgiving Song", also by Adam Sandler on SNL
    Turkey for me / Turkey for you / Let's eat the turkey / In my big brown shoe / Love to eat the turkey / At the table / I once saw a movie / With Betty Grable
• In E.R. Eddison's The Worm Ouroboros, General Corund sings the "Song of the Chine"^note A bilateral rib rack including the backbone which discourses about how pork is better than poultry.
• An awful lot of songs by Shonen Knife. ("Kappa No Ex" is about cucumber extract, of all things, and there's a song that goes "Banana chips for you, banana chips for me, banana chips in the afternoon, banana chips with tea...") They were once asked why they wrote so many songs about food and somebody in the band said that they liked writing about what made them happy, and food was what made them happy. OK, that works....
• "Peaches" by The Presidents of the United States of America, which is a song about a man who wants to move to the country and eat large quantities of peaches. ("Millions of peaches, peaches for me.") Interestingly, in 1996 this song was nominated for a Grammy for Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals.
• In The Fifth Elephant, it's mentioned in connection with opera that Sam Vimes is moderately uncomfortable with any song more complex than "Where Has All The Custard Gone? (Jelly's Just Not the Same)".
• From 30 Rock, Jenna's "Muffin Top."
• The Aquabats! Super Show!:
  • "Aaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, burger rain, burger rain..."
  • "The Good Life" from "Laundry Day!" is mainly about eating donuts and pastries.
• From Private BEMANI Academy: "How to Cook Delicious Rice and the Effects of Eating Rice" (also known as simply "Okometal" or "Rice Metal"). A heavy metal song that instructs you on how to cook rice. No really, the first verse is actual rice cooking instructions, and the refrain is about how awesome and nutritious rice is.
• Depending on how you view it, "The Roast Beef of Old England" either averts this or plays it straight. Without question, the song's sentiment is deeply and honestly held, but its origins in the humorous and rather light Grub Street Opera make it rather clear that it's supposed to be taken lightly and you're supposed to laugh a little.
• Spam song from Monty Python?
• Various Sesame Street song parodies; which, being Sesame Street usually manage to be funny and educational, like "Healthy Food" to the tune of "Walk This Way" or "Cereal Girl" to "Material Girl". Or else they're just funny.
• "Motorway Food" and "Vodka and Toblerone" by Mitch Benn.
• "Aussie Bar-B-Q" and "Great Aussie Take-Away" by Eric Bogle.
• Animaniacs's "Be Careful What You Eat" which is about the ingredients in junk food.
• "Kraft Dinner" by Annihilator is Jeff Waters' tribute to the Canadian delicacy (which he had to live off of to pay for rent and rehearsal space). It's one of band's shorter songs, but features a wicked guitar solo and a high-pitched voice at the end saying "Kraft dinner is full of love and butter!" ^note For those outside of Canada; "Kraft Dinner" is Kraft Macaroni & Cheese.
• "Milk (Ode To Billy)" by Anthrax from the Attack Of The Killer B's compilation, and "Cupajoe" from Volume 8: The Threat is Real. Both are rapid-speed thrash tunes about really wanting the titular beverage, with the first in reference to Billy Milano of the Stormtroopers of Death, and the second being 46 seconds long.
• Sandra Boynton did "Faraway Cookies" (a goofy love song to the cookie jar) and "O Lonely Peas" (a kid talking to the peas he refuses to eat).
• A few of the music video segments on ChalkZone were themed around food- "Bushel Full O' Yum" (a Motown-esque number about jelly beans), "Chunky" (a hard rock song about eating, painting your room, and covering the moon with chunky peanut butter- it's every bit as ridiculous as it sounds), and "Piece O' Cake" (a jazzy song about well, cake)
• Captain Beefheart's "Kandy Korn" from Strictly Personal.
• The Beatles had a song called "Savoy Truffle", which was, among other things, George Harrison's humourous ode to Eric Clapton's chocolate addiction. The song can be found on The White Album.
• Frank Zappa:
  • "Mr. Green Genes" from Uncle Meat, where a long list of absurd things (greens, shoes, socks, trucks, truck drivers,...) that you can eat are described.
  • "The Dangerous Kitchen" from The Man from Utopia, about the dangers of disgusting, stale and/or rotting food in the kitchen, stuff you can cut your fingers on and all the things that you can step on and/or slip over.
  • "Call Any Vegetable"...or "Burnt Weeny Sandwich"...etc. Due to the intimidating breadth of Zappa's back catalogue, an exhaustive list could jeopardize the integrity of the TV Tropes server (or the reader's patience).
• The Slayer parody "Seasoning the Obese" by the Stormtroopers of Death, though its subject matter is a little different from the rest of the examples.
  DO YOU WANNA FRY!?
• Chris Yacich's "I Like Bananas (Because They Have No Bones)".
• The Mighty Lunch Hour program, playing at noon throughout The '80s on Boston classic-rock radio station WBCN, began each episode with a lunch-themed parody song.
• One Dragon Ball Z Character Song for Vegeta is entitled Vegeta-sama no O-ryouri Jigoku (Vegeta's Cooking Hell), in which he very enthusiastically (and sometimes violently) narrates the process of making okonomiyaki. At the end though, it turns out he forgot the mayonnaise.
• Larry Groce's "Junk Food Junkie" talks about the secret obsession of a rather outspoken health food nut as if it were an addiction to drugs or alcohol.
  I'm afraid someday they'll find me
  Just stretched out on my bed
  With a handful of Pringles potato chips
  And a Ding Dong by my head
• Hep cat Slim Gaillard, with a background as a cook on continent-crossing ships, did a number of food-themed songs, including "Potato Chips", "Dunking Bagels", and, hard to tell though it is, "Yep-Roc-Heresay" (it helps if you understand Armenian).
• Brian Wilson's "Vege-Tables" is certainly the most light-hearted song in his Smile album.
• "Coffee Mug" by Descendents, a 34 second punk song about how much the singer Must Have Caffeine.
• "Noodles Can't Be Beat," a rap battle with the villain of Parappa The Rapper 2 where he espouses the perfection of noodles while Parappa tries to convince him the worth of other foods like sweets. It's given some foreshadowing because the first song of the game Toasty Buns involves the big bad's grandfather mentoring you how to make burgers.
• "Burgz" by Ken Ashcorp is centered around making as many puns and references to various fast food chains as possible, with the song (allegedly) being a metaphor for relationships, as Ken may or may not have stated.
• Captain Organic Vegetable Man by Moosebutter talks about about the virtues of healthy eating and proclaims No Animals Were Harmed in the making of this song! ^note  Neither were any vegetables.
• Comedy-metal band Psychostick's album "Sandwich" overuses this trope so much they included a spoken-word track called "Too Many Food" that does nothing but hang a lampshade on it.
  One Guy: Do you guys realize there's like a ton of songs about food on this new CD?
  Other Guy: Dude. What do you have against food?
  One Guy: Don't get me wrong man: If food was a band, I'd be at every show. But, uh, don't you think we should write at least one song that would, you know, like... sell?
  Other Guy: What if food was a band? [...] What would food play?
  Third Guy: I don't know. A sandwich?
  [The next track "This Is Not a Song, It's a Sandwich" is a song that insists it is a sandwich.]
• Trip-hop duo Cibo Matto toy with this trope in their 1996 album "Viva! La Woman". It's a food Concept Album: Every single song is about food and named for food (except "Theme", which is still about it). Indeed, some are funny: "Know Your Chicken" (a pet chicken gets cooked?), "Birthday Cake" (a hippie mother makes a cake for her son, to his dismay). Most are artsy or poignant. Some are even subversive, such as the creepy, sensual cover of "The Candy Man". Their thesis? Featuring food in a song, if it doesn't instantly make it funny, at least makes it super-evocative.
• Adventure Time had a short song about makin' bacon pancakes. It was so successful that someone expanded it into a complete song.
• "Goober Peas," a comic ditty about peanut consumption very popular with Confederate soldiers in the The American Civil War.
• A semi-regular part of the humor on Teen Titans Go! are songs about foods. One is literally just the word waffles repeated over and over to a funky beat.
• Sesame Street songs are intended to be funny as well as educational. As a result they've produced many funny songs about healthy eating, often by Cookie Monster.
• VeggieTales uses food, and similarly mundane topics like hairbrushes and cebus, for Silly Songs intermissions. For example, You Are My Cheeseburger (which was technically a "Love Song with Mister Lunt").
• "I Love Onions", a minor 1966 novelty hit by Susan Christie.
• NRBQ's "RC Cola and a Moon Pie", where the singer rejects a whole bunch of food in favor of his favorite combination of soda and snack pastry.
• "Siomai Rice" by $ucc, anyone?
  • In a similar vein, "Sinigang" by No$ia.
• "White Castle Blues" by The Smithereens: A tongue-in-cheek blues-rock song about a late night craving for White Castle hamburgers. The song was included as a CD bonus track to Especially For You, though it was an old song written by guitarist Jim Babjak and his friend Bob Banta when they were in high school, and was only recorded for a lark when the band had extra studio time on their hands. It eventually found its way onto the Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle soundtrack album (but not into the movie itself), and got Babjak and Banta into the official White Castle Hall of Fame.
• In a bit of a subversion, Talking Heads' More Songs About Buildings and Food doesn't actually have any songs about food. (Or buildings, for that matter, but that's besides the point here.)
• An NSFW example from Ninja Sex Party: "The Ultimate Sandwich" involves Danny singing about a massive ("Five feet high and three feet wide") sandwich full of incredibly random ingredients. The twist, however, is that Danny has little interest in actually eating the sandwich...
  Now just add panther, bear meat and duck
  And you've got a sandwich that I'd like to fuck!
  (spoken) I mean, eat... What?
• Hobo Johnson and the Lovemakers frequently reference food in their songs, which adds humor and comic relief to what might otherwise be somewhat sad songs.
• Trout Fishing in America has "Pico de Gallo", an ode to the Mexican condiment of the same name ("Don't get it in your eye-o / Unless you wanna cry-o / So come on, don't be shy-o / It's pico de gallo!")
• Harry Champion's "A Little Bit of Cucumber".
  I like pickled onion,
  I like piccalilli
  Pickled cabbage is all right
  With a bit of cold meat on a Sunday night
  I can grow termartoeses, but what I do prefer
  Is a little bit of cu-cum-cu-cum-cu-cum
  Little bit of cu-cum-ber.
• Israeli rap artist Yehoshua Sofer (AKA Nigel Addmore) published what is commonly recognized as the first Israeli hip-hop song, "Hummus Makes you Stupid", which is a humorous ode to all manners of Eastern Jewish foods.
• Melanie Safka has an early rocker called "Animal Crackers", cheerful self-mockery over her own struggle with her weight vs the foods she loves. The last verse has a Shout-Out to "Alice's Restaurant".
  Did you ever eat at Alice's Restaurant?
  I eat at Alice's Restaurant year after year.
  She makes an animal cracker pizza,
  And she gives animal crackers out free with the beer!
• Parodist Cledus T. Judd offers up "Bake Me a Country Ham", a parody of Tracy Lawrence's "Paint Me a Birmingham".
• Even Neil Diamond got into the act with "Chunky Granola", although this may actually be about something else.
  If you sang it at school, they're liable to send you home
  Never knowin' — what you're showin'
  Think you're growin' your own — tea^note Tea was slang for pot back in the '40s until the late '60s. Of course, with medicinal cannabis finally legal today, there really are cannabis teas.
  • "Porcupine Pie" is definitely about food, however.
• Lad Baby's four parody songs about sausage rolls: "We Built This City on Sausage Rolls", "I Love Sausage Rolls", "Don't Stop Me Eatin'", and "Sausage Rolls for Everyone". All of which became Christmas number ones in the UK (the fourth, "Sausage Rolls for Everyone", actually beat out the very song it was parodying—"Merry Christmas" by Ed Sheeran and Elton John—although it helped that Sheeran and John were also featured on LadBaby's version).
• The Songs of Paddington has an entire number about marmalade, with the singer really hamming it up toward the end.
• "Lima Beans" from The Wacky Musical Adventures of Ronald McDonald: Intergalactical Magical Radio consists of Grimace singing about times where he had dreams about vegetables.
• While Commander Cody is almost entirely remembered for his version of "Hot Rod Lincoln", he also got some fame from a silly yet memorable music video in 1980 for his song "Two Triple Cheese (Side Order of Fries)".
• “Taste the Biscuit”, from Chickens in the Shadows. At times it plays with being some kind of raunchy Double Entendre, but then it doubles down on just being about food, with hilarious results.
• The Marathons' "Peanut Butter".
  Well, I went to a dinner and what did they eat
  (Peanut, peanut butter)
  Ah-well, I took a big bite and it stuck to my teeth
  (Peanut, peanut butter)
  Now everybody look like they got the mumps
  (Peanut, peanut butter)
  Just-a eatin' peanut butter in-a great big hunks
  (Peanut, peanut butter)
• Eminem, as someone known for writing funny songs, has done this on occasion. He used to keep his mind occupied at his minimum wage line cook job by freestyling with the food ingredients, and maintained an affection for rhyming food items as a warmup exercise.
  • The first verse of "Music Box" is a Slasher Movie villain listing the food items that his victim smells like. There's some Reality Subtext to this, as Eminem was recovering from disordered eating at the time, as well as relearning how to rap due to recovering from drug addiction.
  • Eminem often uses stereotypical 'white trash' food items in his lyrics as punchlines, usually food bank staples like Hamburger Helper and Kraft Mac & Cheese, or low rent restaurant food like McDonald's or Red Lobster.
• "After School Navigators" from Love Live! is a heavy metal song about Nico, Rin, and Hanayo being unable to decide what to eat after school. Its extreme Lyrical Dissonance of it being a metal song with Seinfeldian Conversation lyrics makes it one of µ's funniest songs.
• "T-Bone", by Neil Young and Crazy Horse, is a nine plus minute jam song about having mashed potatoes, but not having T-Bone.