HARKpodcast

Our annual 4/20 episode is back, and this year? Good songs only!!! You may be surprised to hear that we were still able to find two good weed-themed winter holiday songs, but indeed: "High on Hanukkah" by Micah E. Wood (featuring Ari Pluznik and Seth Kibel) is an enjoyable ode to holiday paranoia, and "Kushmas" by Smino is... well, surely it's about something, but that's sort of beside the point.

The ranking music in this episode i...

As per tradition (at least from days of yore when we did episodes weekly), we're using the week of Easter to add some more traditional Christmas music to our list. And it just so happens that both of this episode's songs are from the same album, 2012's Holidays Rule! Both songs were also composed by guys named Henry who were better known for other things, which I guess is also kind of a fun coincidence? Calexico's take on King Henr...

By request, we're tackling two holiday songs that expand the number of languages and dialects represented in our list. "Jingle Bells" as performed by Béla Fleck and the Flecktones featuring Alash marks the first appearance of Tuvan, and also, of Tuvan throat-singing! And, I don't know, maybe like the thirtieth post-modern banjo performance? And while we've had a good amount of French under our belts and in our ears already, "23 Déc...

It's Valentine's Day, one of the horniest holidays on the calendar, and we're celebrating with two songs from the 1950s that illustrate an uncomfortable truth: people have always been nasty little freaks about Christmas. In the case of "Santa Claus Got Stuck in My Chimney" by Ella Fitzgerald, it's entirely listener interpreation that takes this song from silly to risqué. In "Trim Your Tree" by Jimmy Butler, however -- maybe you wou...

Gosh, the Super Bowl seems to come earlier and earlier every year, doesn't it? Football music starts getting played the radio, kids start lining up at the mall to sit on Bill Belichick's lap. Hmm? What's that? Ok, I'm getting word that it's actually the opposite, that the super bowl comes later now. And the other things I said have never happened? Apparently? No child has ever desired to approach Bill Belichick? And "football music...

It's podcasts all the way down! By listener request, we're discussing "Don't Wait For Me Beneath the Mistletoe" by The Allusionettes. The band -- comprised of Jenny Owen Youngs, Martin Austwick, and podcast host Helen Zaltzman -- was formed for an episode of The Allusionist podcast about creating a 2020-appropriate holiday hit. We pair that with another Jenny Owen Youngs holiday tune, "Maybe Next Year", which definitely came out in...

To kick off our tenth year of HARK, we're writing the first page of what will surely be many chapters exploring the question of our time: why are there so many hip hop songs about the Grinch? "I Am The Grinch" by Tyler the Creator is a pleasant but not very illuminating entry in Grinch Rap subgenre, while "The Grinch" by Bad Lucc gives us a little more to speculate on, but is, you know, no "Landy in My Eggnog".

The ranking music fo...

It's finally here: our 2023 milestone episode! When looking for a candidate for all-time greatest Christmas songs, Jam attempted to laser-focus their pick to Ian's taste. When looking for the worst of the worst, the song Ian selected has more of scattershot strategy. 

The ranking music in this episode is "Christmas Unicorn" by Sufjan Stevens.

As mentioned in this episode, we were recently quoted in an article about Christmas music!...

The 2023 holiday season has arrived! We're celebrating with some brand new holiday songs. Since Hanukkah begins this week, we begin with the delightfuly catchy "Just A Little Hanukkah" by Oliver Richman featuring Jessica Toltzis and Nathan Brewer. Then we consider the new Christmas release by Wheatus (remember Wheatus?), titled "Christmas Dirtbag" (now you probably remember Wheatus).

The ranking music in this episode is "Hanukkah" ...

Season's Eatings! This very food-centric episode kicks off with a listener request. While he's perhaps best known to Christmas nerds for his work in White Christmas, we totally ignore that while discussing Danny Kaye's "Eat Eat Eat" and instead try to discern how light-hearted this holiday patter song actually is. We follow up this deceptively complex piece with a song so utterly devoid of deeper meaning that Carrie Underwood liter...

Jam's birthday is here again, and that means it's BIRTHDAY BOI'S CHOICE TIME!! And this year, they've chosen chaos. Covering two Weezer songs ("The Christmas Song" and "The Deep and Dreamless Sleep") might seem like a fairly conventional and orderly episode concept, but this thing got away from us pretty much as soon as it began. In the words of Nietzsche, "...when you gaze long into the [Weezer], the [Rivers Cuomo] gazes also into...

Halloween approaches, and as is tradition, we're covering two Christmas tunes with a Halloween-y kick! The first is "Hell of a Holiday" by the Pistol Annies, which offers a mish-mash of Halloween and (select) winter holiday flavors, as well as some intriguing questions about what spells their respective cleric domains would have. Then it's "Flappie", a dark Christmas tune beloved in the Netherlands, hauntingly performed in English ...

Here in the brief window between August Got Run Over By a Reindeer and Halloween, we're taking a minute to get to some listener requests! "Not Another Christmas Song" by Blink-182 is more or less what you'd expect, except maybe for the fact that it was released in 2019. In contrast, we weren't sure what to expect from "Thank God It's Not Christmas" by Sparks, but it still managed to surprise us.

The ranking music in this episode is...

World Animal Day approaches (probably), and we are celebrating (kind of) with two festive songs about animal companions! "Santa Claus Rides a Strawberry Roan" by Jim Lowe is unfortunately less about celebrating its titular animal companion and more about shit-talking reindeer. "Jingles the Christmas Cat" by Freddy Cole doesn't give us much more in terms of lore, but dang, does it go down smooth.

The ranking music in this episode is...

Since the High Holidays are just around the corner, we're listening to two songs celebrating their winter-time relative, Hanukkah! By request, we hear "The Night of the Dreidel" by Craig Carothers, a song with an epic-sounding title that tells a smaller, sweeter story about a drama-free holiday. But don't worry, "The Chanukah Song (We Are Lights)" performed by Jane Olivor has plenty of dramatic flair. Also: we got an email!

The ran...

It's been a long month, and we're closing it out by going back to the beginning. Randy Brooks's own version of "Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer" joins our list, as does his own parody of his own novelty hit, "Grandma Got Run Over by Corona". The bar is low and he's just gotta clear it to get us to the end of this freaking month!!

The ranking music in this, and all August Got Run Over By a Reindeer (AGROBAR) episodes, is "Everyth...

It's the second installment of our inexplicable self-inflected psychological experiment, August Got Run Over By a Reindeer! Our theme for these started out as "grandparents being run over by other, non-sleigh vehicles", but we discovered a variety of common threads. "Grandpa Got Runned Over By a John Deere" by Cledus T. Judd and "Grandpa Got Run Over By a Beer Truck" by Da Yoopers both turn the tables on grandpa, and also, they're ...