When I was a kid, I had the album "Chipmunk Punk". This was a 1980 album of Alvin and the Chipmunks doing 9 songs that were not really in any way, punk, but were pretty cool and influential to me. This album actually introduced me to a lot of songs that I would later come to really love. At the time, I had never heard of "The Knack" and I don't think I had heard of most of the other songs on the album either. I just knew I liked the Chipmunks as we had a cool clear red album of theirs from 1969.

Recently I was thinking back on this and realized just what a weird album this was. The track listing was:

Side A

• "Let's Go" by The Cars
• "Good Girls Don't" by The Knack
• "How Do I Make You" by Linda Ronstadt
• "Refugee" by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
• "Frustrated" by The Knack

• "Call Me" by Blondie
• "You May Be Right" by Billy Joel
• "Crazy Little Thing Called Love" by Queen
• "My Sharona" by The Knack

Now the first thing I noticed is that one third of the songs are from The Knack. Now don't get me wrong, I love The Knack's debut album "Get The Knack" which spawned all three of these songs, but to have three of nine songs by The Knack, who I had never even heard of at that time, seems an odd choice. Were the producers friends with The Knack? Did they get a hellaciously good deal on song rights?

Secondly, though I remember very specific changes they made to the lyrics to make them more kid friendly, those three songs from The Knack are racy! They're all about trying to get laid. Sure they changed "Til she's sitting on your face" to "Til she's sitting in your place" but a few lyrical changes do not change the overall subject of the song.

I don't really remember realizing at the time what these songs were about, but again in hindsight, WHOA! How did this album get made?

"You thought you heard her saying 'Good Girls don't'...but she's been telling you 'Good girls don't but I do."

"Frustrated" is all about blue balls, basically. Some girl not putting out.

"My Sharona", all about lusting after this young teenage girl.

Again, I ask, HOW DID THIS ALBUM GET MADE AND RELEASED? All I know is I'm glad it did, because I played the hell out of it and was introduced to some awesome music. I own every one of those songs on CD by the original artists. Except for "How Do I Make You". I can't remember how that one goes but I remember I liked the Chipmunk's version of it. Somehow I listened to this album repeatedly without ever really realizing how inappropriate some of the songs probably were for a nine year old boy.