The song I wrote you is so schmaltzy, it'll make "Moon River" sound like a farting orangutan

Despite the somewhat spotty, hit-or-miss quality of the more recent seasons of The Simpsons, they really did include some good songs, many of which are showcased on the new soundtrack album Testify: A Whole Lot More Original Music from the Television Series. It includes Weird Al's guest appearance, "Everybody Hates Ned Flanders" with David Byrne, the B-52's parodying their own song in "Glove Slap," and Homer's "I Love To Walk." There are also a few amusing short numbers, like the false beginning of "What Do I Think Of The Pie?" and the Ribwich jingle (which I'd forgotten about until listening to the album). Unfortunately, there's also the jockey elf song from "Saddlesore Galactica," something of which I'd rather not be reminded. I can't wait until that episode comes out on DVD and the commentary track has the writers talking about how funny that scene is, while I think, "WTF?" Sure, I'd prefer it if they admitted it was a mistake, but they don't seem to do that very often. Anyway, getting back to the album, it has a few songs that were never actually used in the show. The most interesting is "Hullaba Lula," a "Zippedy Doo-Dah" parody sung by Sideshow Bob, and allegedly recorded for "Simpsons Tall Tales." I don't see any way it could have fit into any of the three existing segments of that episode, though, so I wonder if they had originally planned a totally different story involving Bob.

It's interesting to see how many of the song parodies use the original music and how many are sound-alikes (as the take-offs of Evita, My Fair Lady, and The Sound of Music all are). Or occasionally they're sound-nothing-alikes, as in the case of "They'll Never Stop The Simpsons." It's obviously a play on Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start The Fire," but the tune really isn't even remotely similar. On the commentary for "Wild Barts Can't Be Broken," one of the writers mentions how he prefers to use the original tune whenever possible, and that they did so for their version of "Kids" (originally from Bye Bye Birdie). I notice that this song isn't on the CD, though. Also conspicuously absent are the boy band songs from "New Kids on the Blecch." I wonder if there were licensing issues, or they just didn't think those songs were that good (and, if I remember correctly, they really weren't, but I wouldn't mind having them for the sake of completeness).