Various theories are floated, and Barney naturally assumes it’s porn-related. In what’s easily the greatest How I Met Your Mother episode of them all, “Slap Bet,” the gang becomes fixated on figuring out why Cobie Smulders’ Robin refuses to go to any shopping malls. Image Credit: Cliff Lipson/© CBS/Everett Collection It’s not exactly Childish Gambino 1.0, but the longer version places the cynicism of these kinds of cynical cash-in songs into a ludicrous earworm context. But the brief joke quickly proved so popular that a longer version was written, with help on multiple levels from then- 30 Rock writer Donald Glover, who contributed a few lyrics and performed much of the bonus material, doing a Tracy Morgan impression. In its initial form, “Werewolf Bar Mitzvah” was just an eight-second cutaway gag in an episode of 30 Rock: Tracy shows off his gold record for a Halloween novelty song, and then we get a brief snippet of the music video, with writers Robert Carlock and Tami Sagher each contributing a line (and as usual with 30 Rock songs, Jeff Richmond composing the music). The lyrics are much slighter than anything Donald Fagen or Walter Becker wrote, but it’ll make you feel the titular wind all the same. In the Documentary Now! episode “Gentle and Soft: The Story of the Blue Jean Committee,” Chuck Klosterman points out the dichotomy at the heart of early yacht rockers the Blue Jean Committee (played by Fred Armisen and Bill Hader): They “wrote about living in California while residing in Chicago.” The title track of BJC’s most famous (and final) album sounds an awful lot like Steely Dan, another group whose core duo came from a colder climate yet managed to make quintessentially mellow music. Image Credit: Alex Buono/© IFC Films/Everett Collection ‘Catalina Breeze,’ The Blue Jean Committee.“We set out to make a song you want to do spin class to,” Versteeg told Elle. But while the ridiculous earworm might have started as a joke, it quickly took on a life of its own, inspiring countless TikToks, gay club ragers, and even an authorized video. That Alexis had a brief, “critically reviewed” reality show called A Little Bit Alexis was a detail show creator Dan Levy came up with when he was sketching out the character, according to an exhaustive oral history of the song in Elle, the fact that its title track made it into the show’s fifth season was pure chance. Modeled off Britney Spears’ “Work Bitch” and “a bunch of Paris Hilton stuff,” Alexis Rose’s “A Little Bit Alexis” was written by Annie Murphy (who plays the broke heiress on the Canadian hit Schitt’s Creek) along with her real-life musician husband, Menno Versteeg, and his old bandmate Nick Boyd. Too bad - it’s the closest the Bradys got to maybe not the Beatles but Joe Cocker. Alas, that version is only heard on the series the recorded rendition dispenses with that wacky hook altogether. Instead of kicking Peter out of the band, Greg, apparently on a creative roll, comes up with “Time to Change,” which uses Peter’s vocal hiccup as its hook (along with lyrics like “Every boy’s a man inside”). But they had their moments of goopy pop glory, like the fizzy “It’s a Sunshine Day” and “Time to Change.” In the episode “Dough-Re-Mi,” older brother Greg, channeling the eco and rock movements of the time, writes a save-the-planet anthem, “We Can Make the World a Whole Lot Brighter.” Just as the family band is about to cut it, though, middle brother Peter’s voice starts to crackle as adolescence kicks in. On record, the Brady Bunch made the Partridge Family sound like the Beatles. Image Credit: Gene Trindl/"TV Guide"/Everett Collection (Otherwise, “Daydream Believer” would have been very highly ranked.) We also had a long debate about what to do with the Monkees, before it was decided that at a certain point, they Pinocchio’ed their way into being a real band, and thus didn’t qualify. We set out the following eligibility rules: 1) Original songs only, with apologies to the Blues Brothers, the Commitments, and other great fictional cover artists 2) No biopics or other films where musicians essentially play themselves (e.g., Prince in Purple Rain or Eminem in 8 Mile) and 3) It has to be some kind of genuine fictional music act, rather than someone just performing an original song in the context of a movie, show, or stage musical. It’s a strange but often hugely appealing musical subgenre, and this is our attempt to figure out which are the true best songs of the fake best songs. Today’s launch of Daisy Jones & The Six, Amazon’s 10-episode adaptation of Taylor Jenkins Reid’s bestselling novel about the rise and fall of a fictional Seventies rock band has us wondering where The Six lands in the long and sometimes distinguished history of fake bands and singers in film and television.
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