Cast your mind back to 15½ years ago, when the Internet was delighted by The Duck Song, a stupid adaptation of an
already-ancient joke, presented as a song for a child and accompanied by some MS Paint-grade animation. It was catchy, though, and before long everybody had it stuck in their heads.
Over the subsequent year it was followed by The Duck Song 2 and The Duck Song 3, each in a similar vein but with a different accompanying joke. There’s sort-of an ongoing narrative – a story
arc – than spans the three, as the foils of the first and second are introduced to one another in the third in a strange duck-related meet-cute.
And then there was nothing for… well, almost 14 years. The creators went on to do other things, and we all assumed that this series was completed (unlike for example the Wave Hello trilogy I mentioned the other day, which is clearly supposed to get one more part, and is overdue!). That’s fine, of
course. Things are allowed to finish, contrary to what many American TV execs seem to think.
Then last year, we got a seasonal treat in the form of The Christmas Duck Song. It felt like a non-canonical
spinoff, though, not a true “fourth Duck Song”. Like the Star Wars Holiday Special. Except good. It’s appearance wasn’t taken as heralding a return of duck songs.
But perhaps it should’ve, because earlier this year we got The Duck Song 4! Yet again, it retells a stupid joke – in
this case, an especially silly and immature one – but man, it feels like an old friend coming home. Welcome back, Duck Song.
I don’t think I’ve done justice to it, though. Perhaps the
Permit yourself to be entranced by the magnificence of the animation, the piquancy of the wordplay, the splendorous yet seductive simplicity of the G-C-D chord progression. Let the
duck, like Virgil in Dante’s “Divine Comedy,” be your guide — lean into the quotidian but sempiternal question of whether the man at the lemonade stand has any grapes. Consider the
irritation of the man at the stand and ask yourself if the wrath of Achilles is really that much more disastrous. Admire the cunning of the duck’s questioning — was Socrates so very
different?
Yeah, that’s about right.
