Will there ever be a place again for Novelty Singles? 

A year earlier, Westlife were Christmas No. 1, so not much less of a novelty act than Bob the Builder. As the noughties progressed, one could rely on The X Factor winner being a contender for that top spot. Acts like Leon Jackson or Matt Cardle would deliver a cover version of some random song and be on everyone’s lips for a week or two before vanishing off the face of the Earth. 

The X Factor raised another debate around the duty of care it faced around novelty acts. Many of the highest rated talent show videos on YouTube are of those really bad singers who are totally convinced of their own brilliance. Top-tier entertainment at the time, but now we can see how exploitative that process could be. 

Why did we all take the Christmas No. 1 so seriously when almost all the victors are kind of gimmicky? For five years, Ladbaby secured No. 1s with their tracks about how good sausage rolls are. We can offset the awfulness with the good cause it contributed to. 

There’s a lot of godawful music being released - and music is so subjective that your definition of godawful will be very different from mine - but the niche subgenre of novelty singles seems to have died out. Obviously, Gangnam Style, What Does The Fox Say and Dance Monkey each bred a distinctive miasma of cultural significance, but would Surfin’ Bird go TikTok viral in 2026? Or Fish Heads? Or Monster Mash? All undisputed classics, I’ll grant you. Just look at this year’s UK Eurovision entry, Eins, Zwei, Drei by Look Mum No Computer. Whereas other countries get away with producing similarly gimmicky trash for Eurovision, Britain’s sardonic sensibilities hardly match the bold brash requirements of a hit novelty single. 

Indie has more free reign to talk artfully about nonsense. The Flaming Lips made a hit song about spreading toast with vaseline. No novelty act would dare put something so silly down on paper.