Novelty Songs

As much as we love exercising our tear ducts with a tender power ballad or two, some days just call for a smile-enticing mix of novelty songs — and we've got a jolly bunch of them right here, including the lounge-Oasis of "Wonderwall" à la The Mike Flowers Pops, the Franken-fooling of Bobby 'Boris' Pickett's "Monster Mash", and the endearing eccentricities of They Might Be Giants — "Istanbul (Not Constantinople)".

Our Next Steps are spiked with more merry melodies than a Looney Tunes marathon.

Master of melodic parody, "Weird Al" Yankovic, gets our novelty train moving again with his food-centric version of a Michael Jackson classic, "Eat It", while Allan Sherman spoofs the summer camp experience with "Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah". We've also included a slew of songs that go easy on the punch lines but still manage to amuse, including the peculiar pitch-shifting and surreal madness of "Fish Heads" by Barnes & Barnes.

How are your sides feeling? They'll be splitting in a second — thanks to Deep Cuts.

Succumb to our final playlist of lightly sweetened novelties, including Right Said Fred's pop-cloud of narcissistic candy-floss, "I'm Too Sexy", the instantly gratifying "Yummy, Yummy, Yummy" by the Ohio Express, and the 1910 Fruitgum Company's relentlessly jaunty "Simon Says". Toto Coelo put a spin on the usual bubblegum fare, with the table-turning declaration, "I Eat Cannibals", while Sheb Wooley warns us of the "one-eyed, one-horned flying purple people eater".

Many novelties, like the ones that come wrapped in a paper crown in Christmas crackers, have a lifespan shorter than the average gnat — the fun wears off quickly — but these novelty tunes are real keepers, guaranteed to tickle funny bones time and time again. There's plenty to choose from, as we've piled up an assortment of catchy side-splitters (South Park's "Chocolate Salty Balls", Monty Python's "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life"), perky kid classics (Aqua's "Barbie Girl", Crazy Frog's "Axel F"), and ever-golden oldies ("The Streak" by Ray Stevens, "I'm the Urban Spaceman" by the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band).