"Better Things" is a series of weekly posts, each about one song I really love, by an artist I haven't featured in the previous This Year or Portions For Foxes series. See the introduction for more.
OK, this is a joke song, more or less.
But it's a great joke, told absolutely deadpan, over a jarring, fuzzy musical track. And I feel like it's mostly forgotten now, though it seemed pretty big at the time.
For this week, I'm all-in for Detachable Penis by King Missile.
I woke up this morning with a bad hangover
And my penis was missing again
This happens all the time
It's detachable
It's sung from the POV of a hipster-ish guy in NYC, thirty-some years ago. (The song is from 1992.) What do you do when your detachable penis is missing? Well, you go out and look for it, of course.
It makes me feel like less of a man
And I really hate having to sit down
Every time I take a leak
It's a story song; we get the story. It's funny along the way, and the music has that bounce and zip to it that underscores how silly it all is.
Yes, the song is basically a novelty. Yes, it can wear out its welcome, I suppose. But I love the guitar riff it's built on, and singer John S. Hall has a great deadpan tone throughout. It's not one of the great moving songs of our time, but it's not trying to be: what it is is just fine.
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