My Sharona

"My Sharona"
Song

"My Sharona" is a 1979 song which was the debut single by and international hit for The Knack. Written by Doug Fieger and Berton Averre, it was produced by Mike Chapman and released June 18, 1979. The single went gold in eight weeks and, on August 25 it reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100. Constructed around a guitar riff, "My Sharona" remains a popular song, definitive of early 1980s rock music, and the genre of power pop. It is known for its slamming drums played by Bruce Gary, driving guitar work, and simple, infectious beat. The song has been subject to numerous cover versions, parodies and sampling. The song is also often confused on the Internet to be by pop bands The B-52's and The Kinks and punk band The Ramones.

Inspiration and legacy

"My Sharona"'s easily recognizable riff was written by the band's guitarist, Berton Averre, long before he ever joined The Knack. According to lead singer/guitarist Doug Fieger, he met a girl named Sharona (who was 17 at the time), and fell in love with her. Whenever he thought about her, he would think of Averre's riff. The two worked out the structure and melody from there. The girl who inspired the song is Sharona Alperin, now a real estate agent in Los Angeles, California. [1]

The song's bright, driving bassline, played mainly if G octaves, appears in the playlist of many aspiring bass players, often sited as a superb technical example if it's genre.

Dave Grohl of the Foo Fighters has stated on more than one occasion that "My Sharona" is his favorite song. His earlier band Nirvana even did a live cover of it. The original song gained some attention in 2005 when it appeared on the playlist of U.S. President George W. Bush's iPod.[2]

Quincy Jones wanted a "black version" of "My Sharona" for strength on his epic 1982 album Thriller.

New Wave band, Devo wrote their single, "Girl U Want", as their version of "My Sharona".

Parodies, samples and covers

With both the notoriety gained from being an international hit, and its distinctive rock guitar riff, "My Sharona" has been the subject of numerous parodies, tributes, and sampling, including:

Parodies

• Parodied by "Weird Al" Yankovic as "My Bologna", replacing the chorus with "Never gonna stop, eat it up, such a tasty snack, I always eat too much, and throw up, but I'll soon be back for my-my-my-yi-yi, woo! M-M-M-My Bologna!". It appeared on his self-titled debut album.
• Chicago radio personality Steve Dahl parodied the song as "Ayatollah" (following the Iranian Revolution of 1979), beginning with the lyrics "Oooh, ya' got a real nice beard, a real nice beard, you know it really caught on my Eye atollah. But you know your mind is weird your mind is weird, you really are a crazy kind of guy, atollah."
• The Mexican rock group Moderatto parodied this song as "Chaperona."
• Parodied by the Dead Kennedys with the song "Pull My Strings" with the words "My Sharona" replaced with "My Payola". Although originally intended as spoof when they were asked to appear at a music industry convention, it was released in 1987 on their rarities album Give Me Convenience or Give Me Death.
• Parodied by someone unknown over the Internet with the song "Nine Coronas" a song about drinking and the drunk perception of women..
• Parodied by Michael Youn, french radio personality as Conard in 2004
• Parodied on Canadian/Vancouver radio station CFMI in a version about British Columbia politician Moe Sihota.

Audio samples

• Run DMC used an audio sample from the song for their hit "It's Tricky".
• Japanese girl group Morning Musume used the same riff at the beginning of their song "Aisha Loan de" on their album 3rd -Love Paradise-.
• Electro-rock group Rogue Traders used the famous guitar riff from the song in their 2006 release Watching You.

Cover versions or quotations

• One year after this song came out, The Chipmunks covered this song as the final track on their 1980 comeback album, Chipmunk Punk
• Performed in Cantonese as 愛到你發狂 by Hong Kong Cantopop group Krusty on their debut album, Hello Krusty
• Covered live by Nirvana
• Quoted during "Flower Punk" in the 1984 remix of Frank Zappa's We're Only In It For The Money, in which the drum and bass tracks from the original album were replaced with overdubs recorded 16 years after the original album was released. This version is notable, as the original track was recorded 11 years before "My Sharona" was released. Arthur Barrow, who performed the bass overdub, was a friend of Bruce Gary's, and had urged Frank to do a Sharona parody. Little did he know it would end up in "Flower Punk". The notion that Barrow was not aware that "Sharona" was written after "Flower Punk" was a mistake by Barry Miles in his Zappa book. "My Sharona" was also quoted several times in live versions of songs performed during Zappa's 1980 and 1984 tours. It can also be heard during various parts of Zappa's Broadway The Hard Way album, including the song "Rhymin' Man"
• Covered by mathcore group The Number Twelve Looks Like You on their 2005 album An Inch Of Gold For An Inch Of Time.
• Polysics, the electro-pop-punk group from Japan covered "My Sharona" on the album For Young Electric Pop and again on their compilation Polysics Or Die!!!!. They also performed it live on John Peel's Radio 1 show.
• Veruca Salt recorded a version which was released on their EP Victrola.
• Al Tam sang this song in Cantonese entitled "Love Until You Go Mad" (愛到你發狂).
• Destruction covered the song on their 1990 Cracked Brain album.
• Covered by The Hormonauts for their 2006 single My Sharona, and later for their full album Hormonized.
• Covered by David Hallyday on his Satellite album in 2004.
• Covered by Towa Tei featuring Tycoon Tosh & Buffalo Daughter on his album Flash in 2005.
• Covered by Los Prisioneros on the b-side album Los Prisioneros En Las Raras Tocatas Nuevas De La Rock & Pop
• Pink Cream 69 also covered "My Sharona" in their 2004 album Thunderdome.
• The main riff and melody of the song "This One" by Astralwerks artist Scanty Sandwich is My Sharona.
• Pearl Jam covered the song at their show in Verona, Italy, on Sept 16, 2006, changing the chorus to "My Verona". A recording is available from the Pearl Jam Official Bootlegs
• Eldritch, an Italian metal band, did a well-received cover of it.
• The Instrumental death metal band Sleep Terror uses the signature guitar riff humorously between 1:21 and 1:26 in the song Autoerotic Spy, off of their debut album Probing Tranquility.
• DJ Miko engineered a dance/techno cover in 1995. This version would later appear on the Konami Dance Maniax series of rhythm games in 2001.
• Nembrionic recorded a parody song titled "My Corona".
• KT Tunstall and Keren Ann performed a live cover of this song in November of 2007.

In movies, television, other media

• The theme music used on the NBA on CBS during the 1980's, sounds similar to instrumentals of My Sharona by The Knack.
• In issue #8 of the comic book Cable and Deadpool, Deadpool sings the lyrics aloud during an awkward silence while the X-Men participate in a telepathic conference he is unable to join.
• Stan Smith knocks into a radio that starts playing "My Sharona" in American Dad episode "Iced, Iced Babies".
• The Simpsons episode "Marge's Son Poisoning" had "My Sharona" sung by bullies Jimbo, Dolph and Kearney at the end credits. Homer also refers to the song as a "pop music footnote".
• The song is an important plot element in the Eerie, Indiana episode "No Brain, No Pain", when in an experiment the contents of a scientist's mind are dumped on to an 8-track tape of the song.
• In the TV Series Scrubs, Jordan Sullivan utters the line "Perry, I'm not actually the girl they're singing about in My Sharona. Her name's Sharona."
• In 2004, Michael Youn, from French TV M6, parodied it again to make the soundtrack of his movie Les 11 Commandements (The 11 Commandments). The title was "Comme des connards" (Like jerks).
• In an episode of Full House, Jesse and his band play "My Sharona" at his high school reunion.
• Lee Harding did a live cover version of "My Sharona" on the TV show Australian Idol.
• Parodied in a flash animation by ESPN's Bristol Bob and the Page 2 Crue as a tribute to Maria Sharapova on her eighteenth birthday. [3]
• One of Chris Berman's famous nicknames is for Tennessee Titans kicker Rob "My" Bironas. He even sang part of the song once during a highlight, replacing "Sharona" with "Bironas".
• Cheech Marin sang the song as "My Scrotum" in Cheech and Chong's Next Movie. Later in the same film, he sang it as "My Cheechona" while waiting for his girlfriend.
• Played during the gas station scene in the 1994 movie Reality Bites.
• Quentin Tarantino had originally intended "My Sharona" to be played during the Gimp torture sequence in the film Pulp Fiction - but the rights had already been licensed to another film, Reality Bites (1994).
• Played in the Saturday Night Live sketch Janet Reno's Dance Party.
• A cover of the song is featured as downloadable content for the music video game Rock Band.
• The song is featured in the infamous AMV Hell 0 accompanying clips from the H Anime The Story of Little Monica.
• Played at Northern Michigan University for ice hockey forward, Nick Sirota.

External links

• Sharona Alperin's Website