They're Coming To Take Me Away, Ha-Haaa! - Napoleon XIV

Would you believe this was a Top 5 hit when it first came out?

Napoleon XIV is Jerry Samuels, a record producer and songwriter chiefly active throughout the 1960's. In 1966 Samuels was working as a recording engineer at Associated Recording Studios in New York. It was during this period, using both experimental techniques and technology, that he recorded They're Coming To Take Me Away, Ha-Haaa!

Amongst these new techniques was a machine called the Variable Frequency Oscillator (or VFO) which allowed Samuel to create the sped up Chipmunk-esque vocal pitch changes with out actually changing the tempo of the song.

The track also features what's one of the first uses of a drum loop. Apparently the unnamed percussionist couldn't hold a beat for much longer than seven seconds. To get around this, Samuels took those seven seconds, chopped them up, and looped it into the backing track appearing in the final song. On top of this he added hand claps (he'd initially tried to convince the musicians to take off their trousers and slap their thighs, but no dice) and the creeping VFO effected klaxons which signal the choruses.

Finally Samuels recorded lyrics he'd written over nine months (apparently he couldn't decide if the song was actually good or just a sick joke). The song might be about a man who's lost his wife, or about a man who's lost his dog, but it's definitely about a man who's lost his mind.

The song's structure is fairly simple, but through it's repetition allows the listener to descend into ever increasing anxiety. Novelty song though it is, it perfectly captures the feeling of unpleasant thought spirals that everyone is held victim to at one point or another; and the slow, steady overtake of unease that this results in. It's the scratched record ticking away at the back of you skull.

Not bad for a song built on Chipmunk voices and tambourines.