“Covering the Hits” looks at covers of a randomly-selected #1 hit from the past sixty-odd years.

When I spun the hit randomizer, I pulled up a song I’d never heard of. So I Googled it. Google spat out these lyrics:
Girl, shake dat laffy taffy
That laffy taffy
Shake that laffy taffy
That laffy taffy
Girl, shake that laffy taffy
That laffy taffy
That laffy taffy (candy girl)
That laffy taffy
It didn’t get better from there.
“Laffy Taffy” was a number-one hit in 2005. Despite that being a time near the end of high school where I was listening to the radio, it entirely passed me by. Ditto the group D4L, an Atlanta-based rap collective that only released the one album before their MC Shawty Lo embarked on a solo career with some success.
To be honest, I’m surprised there aren’t more covers of this. The 2000s were a peak era for novelty rap covers in “white” genres like folk, twee-pop, etc. Think Dynamite Hack’s “Boyz-N-The-Hood,” The Gourds’ “Gin & Juice,” Karmin’s entire output, etc. This incredibly silly song would seem like a prime candidate for such a thing. I did a find a couple in that vein, but they’re just kids goofing around on YouTube. I’m surprised Guster or Ben Folds didn’t try it.
There’s some kids doing a hard-rock version too, which I could be into if the sound quality wasn’t so awful (that’s the problem with being a literal garage band)
The only cover that has any only traction at all is a YouTuber named Duke Dennis singing thirty seconds of it. Somehow this has half a million plays. Dude’s got charisma, but still.
After a lot of digging though, I finally found two I actually like.
The first is by a marching band at Grambling State University, an HBCU in Louisiana. The simple riffs makes for a great tuba-and-drums song, and it’s a hoot when they all stop playing and just begin shouting the nonsense lyrics. (Someone tell that announcer to shut up about the dumb game so we can hear them better!)
But the best of all is this Bandcamp upload from Jazzmyn Coker aka jazzoolazz. It’s acoustic guitar and piano, clearly done as a laugh but she and her friend harmonizing (unless that’s her multi-tracking a couple vocals) sell it. They give it a real melody too. Very fun and charming.