ABSTRACT
Much of this book has been about the intentional uses of humor, but not all humor is intended. Sometimes, audiences find funny things in a small part of a song or a whole song that was not meant to be humorous. In this chapter, we consider various kinds of unintentional humor in popular music. We asked our contributors to identify songs that they thought were unintentionally funny. As we considered the songs, we found that we could not escape reference to the three traditional theories of humor (Incongruity, Superiority, and Relief). As this project moved along, we discovered that the nominated songs shared some similar characteristics. We have thus organized the selected songs into five categories: Mad Libs, Celebrity Squares, Overwrought and Over-the-Top, Bad Taste, and Simply Ridiculous.
