Monkey Business in Rock Music

This chapter examines the unique influence of monkey references in songs and their impact on the composition and energy of rock music. It highlights the vibrant vocal styles of early rock artists, focusing on how the Beatles' formative years shaped their energetic performances and expressive power.

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Episode notes

In this episode, Phil and JF are joined by Meredith Michael—musicologist, podcaster, and Weird Studies production assistant—for a conversation about animal songs. The phrase is intentionally slippery. Are we talking about songs about animals, or songs by animals? Both, as it turns out. Beginning with three very different human compositions—The Beatles’ “Everybody’s Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey,” Hovhaness’s And God Created the Great Whales, and Björk’s “Human Behavior”—the hosts discuss the roles animals play in human music, mythology, and mind. Along the way, they touch on Pink Floyd, the Beatles' trip to India, heroin addiction, the indeterminacy of singing and screaming, the messiness of inter-species communication, the discovery of whale song, the problem of (not) projecting humanness onto animals, the Book of Genesis, and the porous boundary between the human and non-human worlds. All that (and more) for two of the songs! Phil’s pick will be explored in a forthcoming episode.

Meredith Michael is a PhD candidate in Musicology at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music. She is working on a dissertation about musical mythologies of outer space in the twentieth century. In her spare time she loves making art of all kinds, going for long walks, making friends with cats, and watching cartoons. Meredith hosts the Cosmophonia podcast with Gabriel Lubell.

References

Victor Shklovsky, “Art as Technique”

Pink Floyd, Animals

Neko Case, "People Got a Lotta Nerve"

The Beatles, "Everybody’s Got Something to Hide Except for Me and my Monkey"

Gavin Steingo, Interspecies Communication: Sound and Music beyond Humanity

Little Richard, "Long Tall Sally"

Alan Hovhaness, And God Created Great Whales

Roger Payne, Songs of the Humpback Whale

Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus

Olivier Messiaen, Quartet for the End of Time

Weird Studies, Episode 181 on “The X Files”