Music fans know the phenomenon well. An artist or band will build a devoted, if modest, fan base via excellent work. And then, with a single novelty song that’s not necessarily emblematic of the rest of their catalog, they’ll achieve fame. Such is the case of Loudon Wainwright III, a ridiculously talented singer/songwriter with wonderful songs and albums galore. His lone pop hit: “Dead Skunk”, a song that pretty much gives away the plot in the title. Its aroma wafted all the way to the Top 20 in 1972.
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Loving Loudon
Loudon Wainwright III didn’t come from the hardscrabble background common to many musical artists. He was the son of an acclaimed journalist with Life Magazine. His initial inclination was to launch an acting career, and he has indeed shown up sporadically in TV and films over the years.
But Wainwright ended up making his name with an acoustic guitar and his voice. He stood out among songwriters for his willingness to inject humor into his material. In addition, he’d gain renown for the honesty of his songs, in that he didn’t generally seek out artistic distance from his material. You could usually tell that Wainwright had lived through his songs because he didn’t try to hide it.
Wainwright’s first two albums gained him a reputation as a singer-songwriter with a unique perspective, delivering songs of eloquence and humor. He wasn’t exactly seeking out a hit single. But he sort of stumbled into one on a drive, an incident that provided the impetus for “Dead Skunk”.
Playing “Dead”
Wainwright admitted that he wasn’t the one who accidentally drove over a defenseless rodent that inspired “Dead Skunk”. He happened to be driving one day when he saw the skunk, already killed. It fired up his artistic juices for a comical, throwaway-type song.
To that end, he claimed he wrote “Dead Skunk” in less than 15 minutes. He included it on the LP Album III in 1972. The record company smelled (so to speak) a novelty hit. Lo and behold, they were right, as the song went to no. 16 on the US charts and did well in Australia and Canada as well.
While he hasn’t quite disowned “Dead Skunk”, Loudon Wainwright III has also made light of its popularity over the years, understanding what an outlier it was. He certainly didn’t seek out a sequel, going right back to his usual songwriting tendencies. As a result, it still stands as the lone hit single in a monumental career.
Behind the Lyrics of “Dead Skunk”
Wainwright spends the first verse detailing how we come to the sad state affairs of “Dead Skunk”.
“He shoulda looked left and he shoulda looked right,” he explains. “He didn’t see the station wagon car/The skunk got squashed and there you are.”
The second verse delivers some colorful depictions of the potent smell: “Take a whiff on me, that ain’t no rose / ’Cause you can feel it in your olfactory.”
In the final verse, he catalogs all the other animals who make the mistake of trying to outrun a moving car: cats, dogs, frogs, rabbits, and raccoons. It ends with a description right out of a horror movie: “The blood and the guts they’re gonna make you swoon.”
You can add Loudon Wainwright III to luminaries like Chuck Berry and Randy Newman, artists whose biggest hits were meant to be jokes. “Dead Skunk” is at least a pretty funny one, the fate of the foul-smelling little fellow notwithstanding.
Photo by David Redfern/Redferns/Getty Images
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