Robbie Fulks: Fountains of Wayne Hotline
[purchase]
Our transition song this week was released as a one-off single in 2005, making it a bit more recent than we usually go for. But it was supposedly recorded as a private joke a couple of years earlier and then shelved for a long while before fan pressure prompted its release, and the songcraft it parodies has certainly been around long enough to count.
Full disclosure: I love Fountains of Wayne, especially 2003 hit record Welcome Interstate Managers, which is the same disc which Fulks and his band were listening to during the time they recorded this song in their friend's garage. [Ed: read more about the backstory here.] But Robbie Fulks' total breakdown of their formulaic approach to music is funny as hell, and a worthy addition to a vast and far-too-often underrated catalog which includes both the serious electro-pop satire of 2001 fave Real Money and such faux-country singalong love song hilarity as The Scrapple Song.
I have to admit, I'm not sure if this song is as funny if you haven't had college level courses in music theory. But let's give it a try, shall we?
