Bananaphone

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Bananaphone

Studio album by Raffi

Released

1994

Recorded

March–June 1994

Genre

Children's music

Length

52:07

Label

Rounder Records

Professional reviews

All Music Guide link

Raffi chronology

Evergreen Everblue
(1990)

Bananaphone
(1994)

Raffi Radio
(1997)

Bananaphone is the name of a children's album released in 1994. The title track's lyrics describes the bananaphone, a portmanteau of the words banana and telephone. The song uses many puns ("It's a phone with appeal!") and nonce words like "bananular" and "interactive-odular" as Raffi extols the virtues of his unique telephone.

The song became an Internet meme when the flash animation "Banana Phone" was released on the website Newgrounds.com. Since then, many fan-made music videos for the song have been created. The sped-up version has also been used in a flash movie featuring the badgers from another Internet meme, Badger Badger Badger.

On September 4, 2007, "Bananaphone" received what is thought to be its first ever full play on a commercial radio station when John Warburton played it on his breakfast show on 96.2 The Revolution with the promise that it would cheer people up. A snippet of the song had previously been played on the show after being found by production assistant Jim Hall. Prior radio exposure of the song occurred in snippet form only and usually in a sped up version ala Alvin and the Chipmunks. This version became a staple in 2004 on The Opie & Anthony Show. The show still uses it today, though rarely. Another snippet of "Bananaphone" is occasionally used at the end of some segments of The Colbert Report.

The sped-up version has been played during Cincinnati Reds radio broadcasts, in the event that the play-by-play team needs to take calls from the audience to kill time during rain delays.