If you’re a human being and you’ve been to any kind of party, dance or wedding, chances are you’re more than familiar with “Mony Mony.” The classic track was a hit not once, but twice…and the second time it topped the charts, “Mony Mony” spawned a raunchy call-and-response trend that was so popular, it ended up getting banned.
Originally released as a single in 1968 on the Tommy James & the Shondells album of the same name, “Mony Mony” was a huge success in the U.S., where it peaked at #3 on the Billboard Hot 100, and an even bigger triumph in the U.K., where it went all the way to #1.
Not too bad for a song that was initially “pasted together,” as James explained in a 2009 interview with Songfacts.
“Originally, we did the track without a song,” James said. “The idea was to create a party rock record, and in 1968 that was pretty much a throwback to the early ’60s. Nobody was making party rock records really in 1968. There were a few, Archie Bell and the Drells kind of did something with ‘Tighten Up’ and stuff like that, but nobody was doing those big-drum-California-sun-what-I-sing-money-type songs. So we went in the studio, and we pasted this thing together out of drums here, and a guitar riff here. It was called sound surgery, and we finally put it together in probably a month.”
“We had most of the words to the song, but we still had no title,” he continued. “And it’s just driving us nuts, because we’re looking for like a ‘Sloopy’ or some crazy name — it had to be a two-syllable girl’s name that was memorable and silly and kind of stupid sounding. So, we knew what kind of a word we had, it’s just that everything we came up with sounded so bad. So, Ritchie Cordell, my songwriting partner and I, are up in my apartment up at 888 Eighth Avenue in New York. And finally we get disgusted, we throw our guitars down, we go out on the terrace, we light up a cigarette, and we look up into the sky. And the first thing our eyes fall on is the Mutual of New York Insurance Company. M-O-N-Y. True story. With a dollar sign in the middle of the O, and it gave you the time and the temperature.”
“I had looked at this thing for years, and it was sitting there looking me right in the face,” James added. “We saw this at the same time, and we both just started laughing. We said, ‘That’s perfect! What could be more perfect than that?’ Mony, M-O-N-Y, Mutual of New York. We must have laughed for about ten minutes, and we finally go in — and that became the title of the song.”
Nearly 20 years later, Billy Idol brought “Mony Mony” back to the top of the charts with his live cover, which became his first and only #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1987.
Of course, the song quickly became a go-to for DJs looking to get the party started. Somewhere along the way, fans developed a call-and-response chant that was (and still is) frequently shouted, with great enthusiasm, during breaks in the song: “Hey, say what, get laid, get f—d!”
Unfortunately for school administrators across the country, the chant became a particularly beloved tradition at high school dances, leading to bans at many schools, according to Ultimate Classic Rock.
In 1989, the Chicago Tribune interviewed Griff Powell, superintendent of Grayslake Community High School, where students protested against “Mony Mony” being banned at the prom.
”Look, I remember when protests were against the war in Vietnam, and for civil rights,” Powell said. “And I’ve been watching the situation in China, and what those students in Beijing were standing up for. Somehow, I just can`t get my heart into being upset about whether ‘Mony Mony’ should be allowed at the prom.”
High school bans didn’t stop Idol from incorporating the chant into an updated version of the song, released in 2018.
Related: 1974 No. 1 One-Hit Wonder Became a Timeless Party Anthem