Animal Instincts

REWIND: Every Friday, we hit rewind to visit one of our older playlists. The following is one of our favorites from the Loudcrowd vaults.

It must be hard being an animal around humans all the time, even one of those domesticated types that gets all kinds of treats, sustenance and warmth from us (mostly) un-hairy apes. People are constantly projecting ideas of what’s going on inside the animal mind. That has to get old fast; don’t you think? No wonder the monkeys fling their poop at the people.

Speaking of poop, humans do get all kinds of simple amusements from the animal kingdom — from the stupid pet tricks your older brother laughed at  a dozen years ago to our most exalted form of modern poetry, the LOLcat. And of course there’s the downright slanderous Fuck You Penguin website that you used to like until your Dad discovered it last week and began forwarding you links. What would people do here on this Internet except watch videos of the dog who skateboards or that squirrel who skis? That’s pretty much half of what anyone does in any office anywhere.

Where does music figure into all of this? Quite highly, it turns out. Since long before written history, people have sung songs about birds and dogs and donkeys and also animals we’ve never seen because we helped to make them extinct. Many of those super olden times songs are lost to time, of course — but that’s OK, they probably suck. If you’ve never heard “Can Your Monkey Do The Dog?” or “I’ll Put A Tiger In Your Tank” or “Animal Farm,” be sure to click on those links because they’ll take you to amazing places.

Animals have no shame when it comes to having sex. Most of them seem ready to just throw down anywhere, at anytime. So naturally, many animal themed songs are about this very thing, the having of sex. This is true of many of the songs on our “Animal Instinct” playlist, which features both songs that are animal themed and songs by bands named after animals — we don’t discriminate (except against songs that suck). Enjoy!

—DJ Yeti