The Chipmunks with David Seville: "The Chipmunk Song"

December 15, 1958 (4 weeks)

I wasn't aware of it at the time but I was becoming a music fan by the time I was around four. I had already some idea of what I liked and didn't. My favourite song was Frank Mills' "Music Box Dancer" and I also really liked The Beatles' "Baby's in Black" and "Rock and Roll Music", Blondie's "The Tide Is High" and Billy Joel's "My Life". I knew next to nothing about any of these people though I had some idea of who the Fab Four were. On the other side, I didn't care for Kiss - they scared the crap out of me - and I wasn't convinced by the bulk of the children's music my parents and/or friends and family had given me and my sister.

There was really only one that we liked and it was an LP called Sesame Street Disco, which we played to death, typically while dancing around the family room in the basement, my sister's Lite-Brite — minus the translucent pegs — providing the appropriate discotheque atmosphere. The others, not so much. My dad liked the Pete Seeger children's album we had on cassette more than we did and it being played on car trips only succeeded in getting us to despise folk music. Sharon, Lois & Bram, Fred Penner, Raffi: they were all good fun when we went to see them in concert but their albums could never keep my attention past one or two songs.

But the album we had the least amount of use for was The Twelve Days of Christmas with The Chipmunks. We played it once in December of 1981 and never again but it always seemed to be around. I remember kind of liking the title track but it doesn't take Alvin, Simon and Theodore to get me to into the joyous nonsense of 'four colley birds' and all that malarky. "The Twelve Days of Christmas" is a funny song with or without those naughty rodents. (Though, strangely, its many parodies are all universally unfunny) What's odd about this seasonal release is that their signature hit which first brought The Chipmunks to attention isn't even on it. The song that commonly has "Christmas Don't Be Late" in parentheses. Whatsmore, it didn't matter in the least. Having "The Chipmunk Song" on it wouldn't have improved it any way. That said, it also wouldn't have made it any worse so there's that.

It isn't simply that the high-pitched Chipmunk vocals are annoying — though they certainly are — but that the song itself is dire. It being not quite the middle of September, I'm not especially keen to be listening to much in the way of Christmas music but I nevertheless put myself through two whole minutes of The Goo Goo Dolls and their 2002 cover renamed "Christmas Don't Be Late". John Rzenik isn't one of my favourite vocalists and he's particularly raspy here and there's nothing he nor his fellow Dolls can do with it. If anything, I find myself missing The Chipmunks since at least they managed to make it distinctive.

"The Chipmunk Song" was the last CHUM number one of 1958 as well as being the third and final novelty chart topper that year. While Seville's earlier "Witch Doctor" was a bit of a pleasant surprise (if it's possible for a song that is merely okay to qualify in that category) and "The Purple People Eater" was unbearably awful, this one falls right in between — with the score to prove it. Still really bad but I could manage to get through it two or three times without being overcome by the overwhelming urge to stab myself in the eye with a compass. What "Witch Doctor" has over it is, quite obviously, far less of a reliance on the helium-voice effects as well as a catchy tune that could hold up on its own well enough even without the accompanying gimmicks. There will be other novelty number ones going forward but they'll never command a year in quite the same way. Fine by me.

Score: 3