How a Universally Gross Experience Turned Into a 1972 One-Hit Wonder That “Paid a Lot of Child Support”

We often associate creative inspiration with positive qualities in life, like love and beauty and freedom. But sometimes, inspiration can pop up in gross, mundane, and universal experiences: encountering a dead skunk on the road, whether by sight, smell, or a nose-scrunching combination of both.

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For Loudon Wainwright III, this common—but still foul—experience brought him his only hit on the Billboard Hot 100, gifting him the title of “one-hit wonder” (and, according to the songwriter, plenty of child support money).

How Loudon Wainwright III Turned Roadkill Into a Rogue Hit

Loudon Wainwright III’s 1972 novelty song “Dead Skunk” wastes no time with extensive metaphors. “Take a whiff on me, that ain’t no rose / Roll up yer window and hold your nose / You don’t have to look, and you don’t have to see / ‘cause you can feel it in your olfactory / You got your dead skunk in the middle of the road, dead skunk in the middle of the road, dead skunk in the middle of the road, and it’s stinkin’ to high heaven.”

Most of us can imagine that musky aroma wafting through the car window just by reading the lyrics. And according to Wainwright in a 2017 interview on NPR’s Fresh Air, it didn’t take him long to translate his experience into song. After running over a skunk that a different passerby had already hit earlier, the songwriter said, “I went home and wrote that song in about 15 minutes. But I kind of sensed that it might catch on, and it did when I started to perform it. And it was exciting. What a thrill to hear yourself. Hear your song on the radio. On the AM radio. What they used to call AM radio.”

“That was fun,” he continued. “And certainly there was money—money that, as a result, I’ve said it’s paid for a lot of child support.” 

Why the Songwriter Eventually Turned His Nose Up at the Song

At this point, we would like to offer a humble disclaimer that while Loudon Wainwright III is undoubtedly revered in folk music circles, “Dead Skunk” was his only single to break into the Top 20 on the Billboard Hot 100. Thus, we’re including him as a “one-hit wonder” artist, by definition. And based on the singer-songwriter’s experience after “Dead Skunk” got popular, it seems fair to say that he had to undergo the one-hit wonder treatment. That is, never being able to escape the musical legacy of his singular hit.

“The problem was,” Wainwright told NPR’s Terry Gross, “I became the skunk guy. You’re expected—what’s the next funny animal song, you know? About the aardvark or whatever. That got ot be a drag. I played it for a while, and then I just got sick of it. I put out a record after that that didn’t have a novelty song on it or a funny animal song on it in any way. But it had some great songs. But the people at the radio just didn’t want to know. I was the skunk guy, and they wanted something along those lines.”

And indeed, that stinks just like a “dead skunk in the middle of the road.” Still, the child support money must have covered up the worst of the smell.

Photo by Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images