Inventory: 6 essential Packers novelty songs
Decider apologizes in advance for getting these songs back in your head
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Like oil and water, drinking and driving, and senior frat boys and freshmen girls, sports and music should never be allowed to mix. Back in the mid '90s, when the Green Bay Packers were the NFL’s best team, a small group of Wisconsin-based songwriters, musicians, and DJs forgot this little truism and committed some of music’s greatest all-time sins to tape in the name of proclaiming the Packers’ greatness. With the team currently mired in a disappointing season, Decider looks back on the most memorable songs in the Packers discography.
The Lumberjack Band, “Go! You Packers! Go!”
Sample lyric: “Go, you Packers, go and get 'em / Go, you fighting fools upset 'em / Smash their line with all your might / A touchdown, Packers, fight, fight, fight, fight!”
Why it’s essential: Penned by Milwaukee jingle writer Eric Karll and first performed during a Packers game by the Lumberjack Band in 1931, “Go! You Packers! Go!” is the oldest NFL fight song and a major influence on the golden age of Packers novelty numbers 65 years later. Much like the no-nonsense team it represents, “Go! You Packers! Go!” eschews fey lyrical subtleties in favor of a more visceral approach. Obviously this directness helped the song stand the test of time, and set the template for every subsequent Packers song (and possibly Andrew W.K.’s career).
The Wizenhiemers, “Go You Packers Go!”
Sample lyric: “Title Town USA / This year they’re gonna go all the way / Some say that it’s too cold / If it’s too cold you’re too old.”
Why it’s essential: Madison band The Wizenhiemers removed an exclamation point and replaced it with a heaping slab of cock rock for its version of “Go You Packers Go!” Actually, all The Wizenhiemers took from Karll was the symmetrical song title—otherwise this attitude-heavy rocker (which includes not one but two “ass” bombs) is about as naughty as Packers songs got during the ’96 Super Bowl run, positioning The Wizenhiemers as The Stones or Guns N’ Roses of the Packers novelty song genre.
Eddy J. Lemberger, “I Love My Green Bay Packers”
Sample lyric: “Tell that Rush Limbaugh, tell Hilary and Bill / I love my Green Bay Packers / Tell Willard Scott, tell Oprah and Phil, (and Regis, too), I love my Green Packers”
Why it’s essential: Most people just talk about loving the Packers but Milwaukee’s Eddy J. Lemberger—self-described “motivational entertainer” and “musical keynote presenter”—actually captures the sound of Packers fandom with his gently rollicking polka “I Love My Green Bay Packers.” Maybe that’s why it’s one of the few Packers songs available on iTunes, where you can find the original version and a “new lyrics” version that paradoxically swaps in even more dated references to Cher, Sharon Stone, and “that Geraldo.”
Christmas Carols For Green Bay Fans, “Rest Ye Merry Football Men”
Sample lyric: “Vince Lombardi was a coach who really liked to win/If his players did not give their best on the field it was a sin / On the field his teams played on the honor rolls / When they took the trophy in the first two Super Bowls/When they won the first two Super Bowls”
Why it’s essential: For the most mentally unstable Packers fans, the team really is a religion, so taking the Christ out of Christmas and replacing him with Vince Lombardi must have seemed perfectly reasonable. “Rest Ye Merry Football Men,” a highlight of the Christmas Carols For Green Bay Fans choral album (also available on iTunes), might be mistaken for “Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen” by those not paying attention to the Lombardi-worshipping lyrics, which are so reverent they probably made the King Of Kings jealous.
Dan Weber and Jane Matenaer, “Packarena”
Sample lyric: “We are Cheeseheads cheering at the Lambeau / This is the year we make it to the big show / Favre has his big touchdowns/And we will do the Lambeau Leap in Title Town”
What it’s essential: Is there a better time capsule for the last half of the ’90s than a novelty song that combines “The Macarena” with references to Mike Holmgren-era players like Robert Brooks and Reggie White? “Packerena” was put together by the wacky morning crew over at Milwaukee radio station WMYX, and was unleashed on Wisconsin’s airwaves like an all-consuming virus during the Packers’ first Super Bowl run. (And the insanity continues. Go to "the official website of the Packarena" for a 2008 remix recorded for the NFL Championship Game earlier this year.) So, how do you do the Packarena? Like the Macarena, only with a slightly more embarrassed facial expression.
The Green Bay Backers, “What A Wonderful World”
Sample lyric: “I see skies of blue / And sacks by White / We win by day, and we win by night / And I think to myself, what a wonderful world”
Why it’s essential: Proving once again there is no song so sacred that it can’t be turned into a Packers novelty song, The Green Bay Backers take the standard most famously performed by Louis Armstrong in 1967 and turn it into an exceedingly screechy ode to the joys of Packer fandom. While Armstrong’s version could be seen as ironic in light of the period of war and racial strife it came out of, The Green Bay Backers blow the irony away as the singer gradually loses his sanity after seeing “fields of green and red noses, too.” If Travis Bickle’s psychotic impulses had moved him to write songs about professional football teams rather than rescue Jodie Foster, the result might have sounded like this.
