3 Novelty Songs From the 1970s You Won’t Forget No Matter When You Hear Them

Despite what some dour or even gloomy artists might try to tell you, it’s okay to joke around sometimes in your work. It’s okay to have a sense of humor and not take things so seriously all the time. It’s okay to have fun!

Here below, we wanted to highlight three songwriters who understood that assignment. These are three tracks from back in the day that knew how to have a good time. Indeed, these are three novelty songs from the 1970s you won’t forget, regardless of when you hear them.

“Convoy” by C. W. McCall from ‘Black Bear Road’ (1975)

This novelty country song is both fun and rich with detail. The idea of the track is to tell the humorous story of a disparate group of truckers who come together to form a convoy with their mammoth vehicles. Fans have been falling in love with the tune ever since C.W. McCall released it on his 1975 LP, Black Bear Road. Indeed, just to give you a sense of how much people loved the song, it spawned a 1978 movie of the same name. Heck, even Homer Simpson is a fan!

“Disco Duck” by Rick Dees & His Cast Of Idiots from ‘The Original Disco Duck’ (1977)

You can’t talk 1970s music without talking about disco. And when you dive into the world of novelty songs from the era, you can’t forget to highlight the strange disco novelty song, “Disco Duck” by Rick Dees & His Cast Of Idiots. The 1977 offering from the group’s LP, The Original Disco Duck, is goofy beyond measure. But so was disco, in many ways. Looking back on the dance craze, it makes sense that a band would come up with a joke song about it. Not everything should be so intensely serious!

“Gimme Dat Ding” by The Pipkins from ‘Gimme Dat Ding’ (1970)

Just by reading the title of this track, you can tell it’s not exactly the most sincere of an offering. Back in the day, novelty songs not only joked around with their subject matter and their characters, but they also often played around with language, leaning into those words that were more sound effect than linguistic descriptor. And that’s just what happened in 1970 on the fun tune “Gimme Dat Ding” by The Pipkins.

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