10 Rock Songs That Were Written As A Joke

Rock and roll is not always about being doom and gloom all the time. Before you had protest songs and artists looking to change the world with their music, this was the kind of genre that you played during parties, with artists trying to have a good time whenever they stepped up to the mic. You can make it happen through excitement, but it doesn’t hurt to have some humor in the mix as well.

Before we start this list though, these are not meant to be your traditional comedy songs. Though people like Jack Black have made musical comedy their niche with Tenacious D, these are fairly serious bands that tried their hand at comedy and succeeded with flying colors. Though some of them may have been going for a more warped sense of humor than others, you can really tell the love that they have for their craft, even if it means serving something that’s played entirely for laughs.

When you really break it down though, having this kind of tongue in cheek side of your music is just another strength in a band’s arsenal. Anyone can get up there and make people laugh, but you’re on another level if you can have someone laughing one minute and crying the next.

In the world of Anthrax, metal and hip hop always went hand in hand. For as long as Scott Ian was listening to rock and roll, he had always been listening to the early days of bands like Run-DMC, having the same heaviness of hard rock with an emphasis on rhyming instead of riffing. The metal guys could hang too though, and their first attempt at rap metal made for one of the goofiest songs ever written by a thrash band.

Because if you listen to any sort of hip hop, Scott, Charlie, and Frankie are not the greatest MCs by any stretch of the imagination, almost sounding like a bunch of frat bros who happened to get on the mic for the evening and screaming non sequiturs at each other. Then again, part of the appeal is that the whole thing is meant to be self aware. These guys know that they are far from the greatest rappers in the world, and most of the verses revolve around how they can’t complete the rhyme correctly, aiming for just the right word and then dropping it at the last second.

The goof worked though, becoming one of the first gold records that the band ever had and going on to be the launchpad for them working with real rappers in the future, like when they teamed up with Public Enemy for a remake of the classic song Bring the Noise. This could have easily come off as just a mean spirited parody, but for all of the scariness that comes with metal, this was coming from a place of love for the guys in Anthrax.