There is something about commercial jingles, or theme songs for a children’s TV show, or a one-hit-wonder song, or anything that enters your brain in childhood… and it never leaves!! Even as an adult decades later you catch yourself humming it as you wash the dishes.
What are some obscure or funny old songs that get stuck in your head?
Right now I am mentally jamming to the kangaroo song from National Geographic’s Really Wild Animals series, with the talking Earth globe. Used to get these on VHS and now I guess it’s in my brain forever! Kangaroo song starts at 9:40
My mother taught my brother and I a song about a cannibal king. Though if you google it, it is not the song my mother taught us. I had to sing it out loud in order to type it.
Oh, the cannibal king
With the big nose ring
Made love to the hula hula
And every night by the pale moon light
Across the lake he came
He hugged and kissed
The pretty little miss
Under the bamboo tree
And every night by the pale moon light
It sounded like this to me
Arump, *kiss *kiss
Arump, *kiss *kiss
Arump, adie, adie, a
Arump *kiss *kiss
Arump *kiss *kiss
Arump, adie, adie, a
*faster
If you’ll be m-i-n-e mine
I’ll be t-h-i-n-e thine
I’ll l-o-v-e love you
All the t-i-m-e time
Just like an l-a-r-k lark
Out in the p-a-r-k park
I’ll k-i-s-s kiss you
In the d-a-r-k
You are the b-e-s-t best
Out of the r-e-s-t rest
And I’ll l-o-v-e love you
All the t-i-m-e time.
Not a jingle, but I do remember the telephone number for Saturday Swap Shop on BBC1, when I was a kid in the seventies. I never even rang the number, yet I know it was Oh one Eight double one eight oh five five
Oh man if I ever need my car windshields repaired in 2002 I can ♫CALL GIANT GLASS♪ How dare they put that song in my head and then go out of business!
Keiko’s song reminds me of that genre of music you sang on buses during field trips or in the back of cars with siblings specifically to annoy the adults, like 99 bottles of beer on the wall, and Henry the Eighth.
Like I said, my mother taught it to me as a little kid. I have since questioned her why she taught us a song about a cannibal making love when we were little. She just told me it was a fun song. She’d sing it with us.
I remember this from being a kid, it was a singing kangaroo and if you called that number you could choose 1 out of 3 doors for it to go through. 1 door had a price, the other two didn’t.
One I’ve absently had runnign through my head sometimes: Where in the world is Carmen Sandiego?.. she stole all the beans from Lima… she’ll take you on a slow boat to China, (Not all of it by far, possibly in the wrong order, but the parts I remember)
Was a sort of kid’s detective/geography show. Found a vid of the full song, though I think this recording is after I stopped watching. Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego (1991 FULL VERSION) - YouTube
And @RR8
Carmen Sandiego actually started out as a series of kids’ computer games. You had to track where she / her henchmen went through clues given by bystanders. They were designed to teach geography - and later history - but they were a lot of fun!
They’re still available free online if you look around. (I must dig out the links again! )
“Bag Man, Bag Man, everybody’s talking 'bout Bag Man” - a small local handbag and luggage store with a stupid name and a lame jingle that has not existed for about 20 years. But I can’t shake it.
"Dollar forty-nine day, Woodwards
“Dollar forty-nine day, Tuesday!”
Woodwards was a major department store in Western Canada for 101 years but closed in 1993. The jingle is famous for the whistling, which I recently heard borrowed for a completely different Canadian jingle:
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