Can you imagine if Guns n’ Roses never released “Sweet Child o’ Mine” or Blondie didn’t put “Heart of Glass” on the radio? Well, that could have happened, because they started out as jokes.
Here are 5 very popular songs that you hear on 98.9 WMMO that started off as jokes, but they turned into huge hits for these artists:
“Sweet Child O’ Mine” by Guns N’ Roses - Slash originally referred the beginning as a “stupid little riff.” Duff even said, “We thought, what is this song? It’s gonna be nothing.”
Heart of Glass" from Blondie - When they came up with this song, it wasn’t cool to play disco, but they wanted to be uncool and stand out. Guitarist Chris Stein said, “We only did it as a novelty to put more diversity into the album.”
“You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet” by Bachman Turner-Overdrive was meant to be a joke for their manager Gary that had just quit. According to Talk Bass, Gary had a speech impediment and they sang the song as a joke for their friend Gary and it turned out to be a huge hit for them and they never corrected the stuttering through the lyrics.
Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” was written in an attempt to be a huge pop song for the band. Kurt had hooked up with a drummer from another band and that morning, she sprayed “Kurt smells like teen spirit” on his mirror. Kurt thought it was a cool punk, rebellious type song title, so he wrote a song around it. It wasn’t until later on he found out it was the name of her body spray/deodorant and she sprayed that saying on his mirror, basically saying you smell like me now.
(You Gotta) “Fight for your Right” (To Party) by The Beastie Boys was meant to poke fun at bands like Motley Crue and Twisted Sister with their rock anthems. Jokes on them, it turned out to be one of their biggest songs ever.
Here are more songs that started out as jokes that you can check out from Mental Floss and Talk Bass.