If you are looking for a good starter song for trying to indoctrinate your young children into the cult of “Weird Al” Yankovic (and come on, who isn’t trying to indoctrinate young children into the cult of “Weird Al” Yankovic), then you can’t do much better than his cover version of “George of the Jungle,” off of his 1985 album, “Dare to Be Stupid.” It’s silly, it’s short, it’s catchy, and it includes someone repeatedly slamming into a tree for comedic effect. In short, it is a children’s masterpiece.
I played this song in the car for my children the other day, and after only one hearing, my two-year-old son Edward was able to sing a bit of it and ask for it to be played repeatedly. This is, to my knowledge, the first time he has done that with a song not sung to him at bedtime. He does ask us to sing Mr. Moon to him a lot, but this is different. This is his first favorite pop culture song, and it only took one listen to drive that earworm all the way into his little brain!
Yesterday, as we were driving home, Edward said to me, “Dada, play song! Watch out! Treeeee!” Of course I knew exactly what he was talking about, so I put the song on, and when it was finished Edward said to me, “More George! More song! Watch out! Treeeeeee!” Well, we played that song probably four more times, and when we got home, everyone was very upset that we had to turn the car off and get out, meaning that we were no longer listening to this classic of modern music. Now, I like the song as much as anybody, but 5 or 6 times in a row definitely fills my George quota, if you know what I mean, so I was definitely the least sad.
Well, I got Edward out of his seat, and he decided to just keep singing the song, as best as he knew how. After hearing it so many times in a row, his singing of the song had improved to the point where he could now go “George! George! George! Jungah! Watch out! Treeeeeee! Kpchschwww!” He did this as I closed the car doors, and I told him to pay attention because we were in a parking lot, but he never listens to anything I say even on a good day, and now he had this song to distract him.
I swear I tried hard not to laugh, but as I turned around to make sure that Edward was following me up onto the sidewalk, I saw him (not paying attention to where he was going at all) walk forward and sing “George, George, George, Jungah! Watch out!” and right when he would have said the tree part, he walked his little head straight into the side mirror of the car. It was like he was in the cartoon, and he tried to warn himself, but he crashed anyway! He couldn’t have timed it more perfectly! Oh man, I wish I had been filming that.
So now he’s crying, and I’m cracking up, and I’m trying to hug him and comfort him, but all I can think of is “Edward, Edward, Edward of the jungle, watch out for that car! Watch out for that…Kpchschwww…caaaaaar!” so that is not helping anything. Luckily he has a very strong head and he didn’t really hit it very hard, I think he was mostly surprised, so I didn’t have to feel too too guilty about snickering at his misfortune. And maybe next time I will just play “Eat It.” It’s safer.