The intro to our next number one poses a pertinent question. Wha-wha-what’s going on…?
Axel F, by Crazy Frog (its 1st and only #1)
4 weeks, from 29th May – 26th June 2005
Well, quite. At least the answer comes promptly… This is the crazy frog!
Yes, the animated ‘frog’ (it looks nothing like a frog!) that started life as a seventeen-year-old boy impersonating a motorcycle engine, became a sound effect, then a ringtone, then a huge chart-topping artiste. Ding ding!
It’s hard to imagine now, in a world where everyone has their phone on silent, but ringtones were a huge deal back in the mid ‘00s. And for some reason they had to be as annoying as possible. And we paid good money for them. It really was bizarre. In the early days they were basic monotones (with which you really had to take a leap of faith that they sounded like the intended song), then polytones (with layered melodies), and then realtones. Crazy Frog, AKA The Annoying Thing (that’s not just my opinion – it’s what his creator called him), was born from this world. Ding ding!
He came with two controversies. One was that his company Jamster were saturating TV advertising breaks with his nonsense. In May 2005, apparently 87% of the British population saw a Crazy Frog advert an average of twenty-six times. The other was that he had a small but clearly visible penis and scrotum, which some claimed was inappropriate for children. Ding… dong!
Perhaps inevitably, and thoroughly unhampered by these controversies, the cash-in single came along. It had Crazy Frog bababaabababaaba-ing and ringdingding-ing to the classic ‘Beverley Hills Cop’ theme, originally by Harold Faltermeyer, which had been a #2 hit in 1985. Of all the songs he could have desecrated, this was probably a good choice. It somehow, almost, works… The Frog’s garbled engine noises manage to fit around a sped-up version of the iconic synth riff. Of course, it’s insanely annoying. That goes without saying. But it also, I will admit, kind of exists capably as a song. Ding ding!
My problem here is not with Crazy Frog, or with novelty singles in general. One thousand and twelve number ones in, we’ve seen our fair share of silly songs. And I think Crazy Frog deserves a place up with there with the legendarily crap chart-toppers, like ‘Shaddap You Face’, ‘Star Trekkin’’ and ‘Mr. Blobby’. Not only was it era defining, and successful (four weeks on top, third best-selling single of the year, number one in thirteen countries around the world), but it claimed a huge scalp in keeping an established, real band off top spot. Crazy Frog released in the same week as Coldplay’s ‘Speed of Sound’, and outsold it by four copies to one… Ding ding!
No, my problem is with the fact that this did not end at ‘Axel F’. All the most heinous of novelties – your Blobbys, your St. Winifred’s kiddies, your Teletubbies – had the good grace to remain largely one-hit wonders. Crazy Frog dragged this out for four more Top 20 hits, and three full-length albums! Who in the name of God was sitting through entire albums of this garbage?! Not until 2009 was the Frog retired by its creators. And then in 2020 he was resurrected. Yes, right at the height of Covid, someone thought ‘You know what the world needs now? The Crazy Frog’.
Ding ding!
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