EVERY GENRE PROJECT - September 5 - Break-In

Genre of the Day - Break-In 

Album of the Day - Self-Curated Anthology 

Today, I sauntered into my newly-added introductory songwriting class with zealous enthusiasm. The beginning of semesters never gives me the warm and fuzzy feeling enjoyed by many students; I always feel looming anxiety about credits, whether my class schedule seems fulfilling, and trying to digest months-ahead requirements all at once. In anticipation for this course, though, I felt excited to swoon over thought-provoking lyricism and try my hand at producing my own. I found that at the door my instructor near-immediately chastised me for switching in late and interrogated me about my instrumental abilities. I respect having high standards and weeding out those who might half-ass your course—even if that course is explicitly introductory—but did feel a bit crestfallen that the experience was a far cry from the supportive and generous space I’d heard about in other sections of this same class (this professor’s was the only one that worked with my schedule). That’s a long lead-up to say that this week’s activity was to observe the students who’d been here last week performing a short section of a song more than fifty years old in front of the class. One particularly passionate peer performed a deep pull novelty song titled “I’m My Own Grandpa,” which stood in stark contrast to the popular standards selected by most students. It reminded me of the underrated intersection of comedy and music. 

Popular music tends to balance the melancholy with the laughable with stray humorous lyrics (see: Sabrina Carpenter’s recent “Juno”), but songs fully dedicated to the art of comedy are more scarce. The genre of break-in found radio DJs exploiting soundbites and snippets to break levity and laughter to political dramas and strange fads. Though they probably had no idea, their sound-collaging approach using reel-to-reel recorders was decades ahead of its time in foreshadowing the tactics of sampling and mashups and helps validate sampling’s oft-criticized place in music creation. 

Break-in records less than 100 releases on RYM, so even despite its pioneering plunderphonic (using multiple recordings to produce something totally new) approach that even mirrors sonic creation in the social media age, it wasn’t quite a widespread phenomenon. Break-in flew in on the wings of a UFO with the tune “The Flying Saucer” by songwriter Bill Buchanan and Dickie Goodman, a producer who would carry the art across decades. 

“The Flying Saucer” re-pitched Orson Welles’ infamous War of the Worlds alien-invasion radio show, but with music as narration; brief snippets from seventeen 1956 hits break into the recording as wild responses to the narrative’s disc jockeys, awestruck by aliens. The onslaught of lawsuits sampling entails is no new phenomenon, as lawyers dogpiled the duo after the song became an unlikely hit. Luckily, they beat the plagiarism allegations with the legal loophole of parody and created the landscape for further break-in records, which continued to appear at a steady pace over the next two decades. 

I initially couldn’t locate a full album of break-in songs, so I compiled a few key records for your listening and laughing pleasure.

1. The Flying Saucer by Buchanan and Goodman (1956)

2. Political Circus by Jack O’Ryan and Al Tercek (1956)

3. The Space Man by Alan Freed, Steve Allen, Al Jazzbo Collins (1956)

4. Dear Elvis by Audrey (1956)

5. The Interview (Summit Chanted Meeting) by "Jack" Haney & "Nikiter" Armstrong (1963) 

6. On Campus by Dickie Goodman (1969)

7. Waterbladder by Jive M. Fluffer (1973)

“The Space Man” is one of the most curious cuts here as a clear bite of the much more successful “The Flying Saucer,” though the latter’s alien imitations via masking effects feel much more artfully executed—we still conceptualize aliens speaking that way. Is imitation the sincerest form of flattery, and is criticizing anyone for imitating a song that’s composed mostly of other songs valid? These questions remain in today’s sampling context, representing break-in’s wider reflection of how much possibility and controversy the tools of modern music creation holds as producers overlap disparate musical modes through these sonic tapestries. “Dear Elvis” is a fascinating artifact of fandom and mass-media assisted celebrity crushes at a time when that phenomenon was new. Surprisingly, the song does not sample the idol in question—that restraint only supports the weight of the crush by suggesting that the narrator traced the lyrics of every single song circulating on her radio to her feelings for her one true love. Later break-in records take more political turns—“The Interview” features a JFK imitation so robotically dead-on you’d venture to think some time-traveling AI vocal replication is going on here as the song musically unpacks the Cuban Missile Crisis with whimsy and irreverence, and “On Campus” lampoons the chaos of late ‘60s student protests, making the imaginary city council declare “Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In” for greater shock value. Though these songs are incredible, immediate time capsules, they feel remarkably reflective of TikTok. The app’s sound collages and mashups distill popular songs, quotes from media, and silly moments from across the spectrum of public life in inventive, strange, and clashing ways not too far from break-in—really, the only difference is improved technology. Standing on a decades-long history, today’s online brainrot is a bit easier to appreciate.