In an earlier post I talked about how Warren Zevon used simple words to move readers. Zevon also excelled in humor - he may have been the wittiest lyricist in all of rock. Let’s look at a few examples and see if we can learn anything that applies to business writing.

He’s the hairy handed gent who ran amok in Kent
Lately he’s been overheard in Mayfair
You better stay away from him
He’ll rip your lungs out, Jim
I’d like to meet his tailor.
(Werewolves of London, by LeRoy Marinell, Waddy Wachtel, and Warren Zevon)

Juxtaposition of incongruous elements — funny. That’s why a gecko selling supplementary insurance tickles our ribs. But the GEICO idea, while humorous, relies on an inherently silly element, a talking lizard. Zevon’s joke is even more skillful, in that neither werewolves nor tailors are inherently funny.

Image via Wikipedia

From a shotgun shack singing Pentecostal hymns
Through the wrought iron gates to the TV room
He had a little world, it was smaller than your hand
It’s a rockabilly ride from the glitter to the gloom

Left behind by the latest trends
Eating fried chicken with his regicidal friends
That’s how the story ends
With a porcelain monkey
(Porcelain Monkey, by Warren Zevon and Jorge Calderon)

__________

Daddy’s doing Sister Sally
Grandma’s dying of cancer now
The cattle all have brucellosis
We’ll get through somehow
(Play It All Night Long, by Warren Zevon)

Perfectly chosen, perfectly placed weird words — funny. In these two excerpts, I’d like to draw attention to how one single word turns ordinary into funny. In the first song, about Elvis Presley, “Eating fried chicken with his friends” would give us a taste of the situation, but “Eating fried chicken with his regicidal friends” says a mouthful. A less carefully chosen phrase, such as “homicidal friends” would have rendered the phrase merely disgusting. But “regicidal” add just enough quirky lightheartedness to make the concept palatable. Zevon used adjectives sparingly, but when he did, the adjective was, like the part in the werewolf’s hair, perfect.

David Letterman famously observed that Warren Zevon was the only songwriter in history to use the word “brucellosis” in a composition. I’m not going to argue. What’s really amusing here is this. You don’t even have to know what “brucellosis” means to know that if your cattle have it, you’ve got a very messed up situation on your hands.

The key to this technique is to use it sparingly. Packing light business copy with oddball words and phrases quickly passes from entertaining to annoying.

Questions
What kinds of advertising/taglines/business copy tickle your funny bone? Does humor help connect you to a company or product, or put you off?