Comedy-rock is an underrepresented genre on the UK singles chart, if indeed it is a genre at all. Most of the comic songs we’ve met so far have been thoroughly pop-leaning, and most of them have been thoroughly awful…

Pretty Fly (For a White Guy), by The Offspring (their 1^st and only #1)

1 week, from 24^th – 31^st January 1999

Luckily this next record rocks, and isn’t awful. ‘Pretty Fly (For a White Guy)’ would be a hard-rocking #1 in any era, but in the extreme pop landscape of the late nineties it really stands out. And if any sub-genre of rock lends itself towards comedy, it would be this sort of gonzo nu-punk. From the faux-German intro (borrowed from Def Leppard), past the uno dos tres…, to the Give it to me baby, Aww-aww-aww-aww… this song is packed with several extremely dumb but catchy hooks.

Admittedly I turned thirteen on this song’s final day at #1, so was the perfect age for something this loud and obnoxious. But I will argue that it has held up pretty well, and in fact its poseur-bashing message is perhaps even more relevant in the social media age. Okay, some of the references are dated (Ricki Lake, mistaking Vanilla Ice for Ice Cube) but He may not have a clue, And he may not have style, But everything he lacks well he makes up in denial… is a line for all seasons. Fake it ‘til you make it, baby…

Frontman Dexter Holland made it clear that the song wasn’t a comment on Black/hip-hop culture, but a satire on middle-class white kids trying to ape it. My favourite line is when the hero of the song is cruising in his Pinto, waving at homies as they pass… But if he looks twice they’re gonna kick his lily ass… To this day, though, I don’t get the reference to him wanting a ‘13’ tattoo but getting a ‘31’. I’d appreciate it if one of my more fly readers could enlighten this particular white guy…

The Offspring, from southern California, had been around since 1984 under the name Manic Subsidal. They were proper punks back in the day, which inevitably led to some older fans seeing the poppier sound (not to mention the chart success) of this track as a sell-out. They presumably had conniption fits when they heard the ‘Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da’ aping follow-up ‘Why Don’t You Get a Job?’, which made #2 a few months later.

This smash hit set the Offspring up for a good few years of belated chart success, with tunes like ‘The Kids Aren’t Alright’, ‘Original Prankster’, and ‘Hit That’ to name a few of my favourites. They probably never quite hit the commercial heights of other ‘90s pop-punk acts like Green Day or Blink-182, but they have something that neither of those bands managed: a number one single.