Teenage Dirtbag

This is the one that makes people laugh, and there is a serious arrangement underneath the joke.

Teenage Dirtbag is an awkward pop punk song with a very direct chord sequence. Slowing it to a lounge tempo and reharmonising it does two things: it exposes a decent melody that the original delivers deadpan, and it creates a gap between how the music sounds and what the song is about, which is where the humour comes from. The music is behaving like a supper club and the lyric absolutely is not.

At an event it works as a moment of recognition during a set that is otherwise pleasant background. Someone at the third table works out what it is, tells the rest of the table, and the mood in that corner of the room shifts. Then it goes back to being dinner music.

The full band also plays it straight and much later in the evening, which is a completely different proposition.