August 3rd, 2007
9. Murs, "Silly Girl" (available on Murray's Revenge)
Like 50 Cent, West Coast underground favorite Murs thinks it's better to laugh at people rather than with them, though he leaves the actual chuckling to proxies. On "Silly Girl," Murs delivers a verbal smackdown to "silly little girls" who make him wait for sex and foolishly insist that he not fuck their friends. The sampled chorus chimes in with feathery laughter and a chiding "silly." For good measure, guest rapper Joe Scudda ends his verse with sneering laughter mocking a silly girl who bragged to her friends about Scudda's sexual prowess, only to have them try out his mad bedroom skills out for themselves.
10. Big Pun, "Laughing At You" (available on Yeeeah Baby)
In "Laughing At You," Big Punisher gets revenge on all the kids who made fun of him in school by taunting them with his current success. It's a corny vaudeville skit of a song in which the schoolyard laughers get laughed at and sidekick Tony Sunshine uses the hook to mock kids who told him he was ugly and made him "scared to crack a smile." If the song didn't sound and feel like such a bad joke, Pun's laughter would probably feel much more righteous and cathartic.
11. Paul Evans, "Happy-Go-Lucky Me" (available on Happy-Go-Lucky Me: The Paul Evans Songbook)
Lodged halfway between rock 'n' roll and pop novelty, Paul Evans' 1960 hit—most recently memorialized in John Waters' Pecker—is so gleeful that it takes a truly warped ear to appreciate it. Sure, it's a glaringly transparent ode to looking on the bright side, but it's rendered with an eerie desperation that makes it far more unsettling than uplifting. "I can laugh when things ain't funny / It may sound silly, but I don't care," Evans sings amid spasms of reverb-wracked, Joker-level cackling. Silly? Try insane.
12. The Beatles, "Within You Without You" (available on Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band)
George Harrison's songs often sound like calculated interruptions to the flow of The Beatles' albums. "Within You Without You" certainly does, coming between the whimsical "Being For The Benefit Of Mr. Kite" and "When I'm Sixty-Four" on Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. As Harrison's sitar-and-tabla sermon concludes, it gives way to a crowd gasping with laughter—possibly the mockery Harrison anticipated for trying to stick spiritual lessons into pop music, possibly a transition back to lightheartedness. Either way, it always threatens to snap listeners out of the mood Harrison worked to set.
13. Johnny Cash, "A Boy Named Sue" (available on The Essential Johnny Cash)
Johnny Cash's smirk is audible as he makes his way through Shel Silverstein's witty lyrics, but what makes the live version of "A Boy Named Sue" so indelible is the punctuating laughter of the prisoners at San Quentin. Cash feeds off of every appreciative whoop, chuckling through Sue's confrontation with his deadbeat father. At the song's conclusion, he adopts a faux-somber tone before chortling out, "And if I ever have a son, I think I'm gonna name him… Bill or George, any damn thing but Sue!"
14. Joni Mitchell, "Big Yellow Taxi" (available on Hits)
What could have easily been a ponderous, self-important lament, "Big Yellow Taxi" is one of Joni Mitchell's most accessible songs, buoyed by sunny guitar, "shoo-bop-bop" vocals, and a strange high-pitched giggle at the end. There's nothing natural or appropriate about it, but the laugh cements the irony of Mitchell's comparison between environmental disaster and her "old man" leaving in the middle of the night.
15. Eminem, "My Dad's Gone Crazy" (available on The Eminem Show)
Eminem is typically about as subtle as a two-by-four to the face, but the giggling vocals by his daughter Hailie Jade on "My Dad's Gone Crazy" add an extra-creepy counterpoint to the rapper's usual apoplectic bellow. While her dad rages, "More pain inside of my brain than in the eyes of a little girl inside of a plane aimed at the World Trade," Hailie merely snickers, "You're funny, Daddy," ratcheting up the already-weird track to full-tilt deranged.
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