Ranking the Kids Shows: The Wiggles

The Wiggles are fucking awesome, and if you don't like them you are wrong.

What separates the Wiggles from shit kid shows like Barney is that the music rocks. I mean, these are really good tunes.  "Fruit Salad."  "Wags the Dog."  "Big Red Car." "Hot Potato."  Infectious melodies, hooks, they are written by an actual songwriter. Yeah, the words are dopey, but it's a fucking kids show, what do you expect? When you take sex and drugs out of the equation, there isn't a fucklot to write about.  But I stand by the music.  The crescendo in "Fruit Salad," for instance, is fucking brilliant, so too the bridge in "Hot Potato."  I don't know what the hell they are chipmunk singing in the background, but try listening to that shit a couple times and tell me it isn't stuck in your head.

The Wiggles are from Australia, which as we all know is a land populated by criminals.   (Inconceivable!  Sorry.)  Some things are lost in translation.  Apparently they mash a lot of bananas there.  I've never heard of, nor seen anyone, "mashing bananas," but when the Wiggles are singing it, I'm buying it.

Now not all Wiggles are created equal.  In fact, besides the Yellow Wiggle, the other three are pretty much worthless.  The Yellow Wiggle is Greg Page, and he is clearly the talent.  He is the frontman, sings all the songs, and I'm betting he wrote them all too.  As a lead singer and songwriter myself, I am naturally inclined to assign such importance.  Still it'd be tough to watch the Wiggles and figure out what the fuck the others do.  OK, the Red Wiggle, Murray, plays guitar.  So if he's Andrew Ridgley, what do you make of the Blue and Purple Wiggle, Anthony and Jeff?  I guess they'd be the background dancer in Frankie Goes to Hollywood but without the real sweet 'stache.

Each Wiggle has like a superpower.  Sort of.  Or you can call it a skill.  But I like superpower.  Yellow Greg is the talent, voice, and songwriter, Red Murray plays guitar.  Blue and Purple?  Um. Anthony eats a lot, and Jeff sleeps well.  Which makes these the lamest superpowers since Aquaman and that Wonder Twin who could only mutate into a water-based object, like a bucket of water.

So as you can tell the Wiggles are one injury to Greg from being finished.

Which is what happened.

A few years ago, Yellow Wiggle Greg Page contracted some weird disease that inhibits blood flow.  So he had to leave the band.  His replacement Yellow, Sam, is pretty much a talentless douche.  The Wiggles have basically become Genesis after Phil Collins left the band (yeah, that actually tried to carry on with a new singer.) You can You Tube "New Yellow Wiggle" and compare the two, and you see just how fucking awesome Greg was.  I watched "Big Red Car" and Sam's rendition lacked the emotional depth of Greg's version.  Sam is bland and boring.  Yeah, it's still a big red car, but I don't want to drive in it now.

In the end, like so many bands that linger too long (Bad Company still tours without Paul Rodgers or Mick Ralphs), the Wiggles are shells of their former greatness.

Still, if you can catch a rerun, it beats fuckall out of Calliou.

I give the Wiggles 8 out of 10 stars

*Greg Page recently received medical clearance to begin playing and touring again.  Though not, sadly, with the Wiggles.