On their second album Turtleneck & Chain (out today), comic act the Lonely Island — featuring Saturday Night Live‘s Andy Samberg, Akiva Schaffer, and Jorma Taccone — scored an impressive list of guests for 15-track set of hilarious tunes, which include Santigold, Beck, Nicki Minaj, Snoop Dogg — and even pop balladeer Michael Bolton. They’re perhaps the only guys who could get the reclusive Beck to utter a creepy-hilarious lyric like,”All you pretty girls, we know you want our bodies,” (as he does on “Attracted to Us”) or get Bolton to don drag and impersonate Erin Brockovich, like he did for the group’s awesome “Jack Sparrow” video.
But what about the great comic albums that came before them? SPIN caught up with Samberg and Schaffer and asked them to pick the five albums that impacted them the most.
For more on the Lonely Island, visit their official site.
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- Tenacious D, Tenacious D
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After trading VHS copies of their early HBO appearances from the late ’90s, Samberg recalls being totally psyched when their debut album finally came out in 2001. “‘Double Team’ is easily the quintessential track,” he says of the prog-funk sex fantasy, which finds frontman Jack Black rhyming “sex supreme” with “cream jeans.” “It was one of the first things I ever saw them do and I had to immediately memorize every word because it made me laugh so fucking hard.”
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- Spinal Tap, This Is Spinal Tap
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Schaffer, who calls the rock’n’roll parody one of the best comedy movies ever made, says Flight of the Conchords and Tenacious D would never have happened if it weren’t for David St. Hubbins, Nigel Tufnel, and Derek Smalls. “They paved the way for those type of guys, who love music so much that they can make parodies that are just a few steps off from the original version,” he says. Adds Samberg: “There seems to be this genuine interest in making the music not just funny, but listenable. I mean, ‘Big Bottom’ is so close to sounding like that Queen song ‘Fat Bottomed Girls.'”
For his 1984 album, the comedian offered up instantly classic parodies like “Eat It” and is perhaps the only guy to make a 15-part polka medley actually sound cool.”That was the album that introduced us to him existing,” says Schaffer. “It was so silly and fun — it had a big impact.” Samberg, meanwhile, adds that Yankovic is as sweet and gentle as he appears in his videos: “He’s so fresh — just incredibly nice and super funny and very gracious. Everything you’d expect.”
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- Adam Sandler, They’re All Gonna Laugh at You!
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“‘Fatty McGee was a big hit at summer camp when I was a kid — shit yeah!” says Samberg of the skit featured on the SNL vet’s 1993 album. “It’s the hardest I’ve ever laughed in my life.” Schaffer, meanwhile, prefers musical tracks like “Medium Pace,” Sandler’s hilarious, X-rated spoof of a cheesy power ballad. “He was great at mixing songs with skits — you got the whole package,” he says.
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- Steve Martin, A Wild and Crazy Guy
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Schaffer says Martin’s 1978 classic — which included the classic “King Tut” and won Grammy for best comedy album — was always around his household as a kid. “My parents would always play that,” says Schaffer. “It’s just one of those things where it was just so ingrained into my life.”
