Beef up your 'mixtapes' with this growing collection of overlooked songs, old and new. One track, up to three times a week. Don’t forget to join in on the conversation, too. And you can always keep up via the Playlist Repair main and Playlist Repair ambient playlists on Spotify.
‘You better duck when I show up/The goo goo muck’
Great to see a kickass song from a stellar band poke its way through the froth of pop culture. But I’ve got a bone to pick with TikTokers out there who have abandoned The Cramps’ Goo Goo Muck – the soundtrack to the viral dance performed and choreographed by Jenna Ortega in a recent episode of the Netflix series Wednesday. In case you missed it, we’re talking about lead character Wednesday Addams (of Addams Family fame), and the series was dead smart in opting for a song by The Cramps – lords of the rock subgenre known as psychobilly. But as the dance blew up on TikTok, the song was often replaced by many mimicking the dance to a Lady Gaga tune. I give props to Lady Gaga for her flamboyance and verve, but her music is anything but weird. And the world needs more weird music, something that got harder to find when we started listening to singles instead of albums. Deeper cuts were often the most creative, stirring, and yes, weird. From Lena Lovich to Bjork, Primus to Radiohead, weird is wonderful. Even the Beatles embarked on their own Magical Mystery Tour – they’re part of a proud, nonconformist tradition that runs from goo goo g’joob to Goo Goo Muck and beyond.
Got a favourite weird song or two? Leave a comment with your picks and I’ll collect them for a supplementary playlist.
There's different kinds of weird. You can have weird instrumentation or like the Cramps be weird lyrically (or both). I think Devo and some of the Stranglers stuff would qualify as "weird".
THANKS! Totally forgot about the Cramps, have listened in a vampire's age!