“Golden Boy” may be a loathed request for John Darnielle, but it’s still great for what it is (and that’s all it is).

Track: “Golden Boy”
Album: Ghana (1999)

I randomized the list of songs to pick an order, but if I hadn’t done that I would have done “Golden Boy” absolutely last. It’s a really difficult song to talk about because there’s probably no good way to do it. If you want to find a bad way, you should read this brutally awkward interview MTV did with John Darnielle. The interviewer is clearly a big Goats fan, but he starts the interview by talking about “Golden Boy” and forces John Darnielle to say “I just find nothing amusing about “Golden Boy” yelling. It’s boring and awful. I might play it more if people wouldn’t routinely wreck the concert moment by yelling it. I just don’t want to feed the troll.”

“Golden Boy” originally comes from a compilation album called Object Lessons: Songs About Products that is literally what it sounds like. “Golden Boy” is about Golden Boy brand peanuts, a seemingly defunct brand of peanuts you used to be able to get in Asian grocery stores in California. It’s essentially a joke in that the message is that you must live a good life and go to the part of the afterlife where Golden Boy peanuts are available. In the context of a series of songs about products, it functions as the most extreme form of advertising possible: the endorsement of heaven.

“Golden Boy” is genuinely funny and it’s funny without being silly. That’s difficult to do, but there are very few songs like it in the catalog. Right there on Ghana with it there are a few others, “The Anglo-Saxons” and “Anti Music Song” especially, but you have to take them for what they are. Don’t yell for the funny songs at a show. Not even the best of them, about “those magnificent peanuts from Singapore.”