How Did These Strange Songs Hit No. 1?

When Melanie’s “Brand New Key” debuted in 1971, some people were confused. What did the singer, who died on Tuesday at 76, mean when she sang about having a brand-new pair of roller skates and someone else having a brand-new key?

Melanie told interviewers that she wrote the song in 15 minutes, after ending a 27-day fast, and that it was intended to be cute. The folk singer said that it did not have a deeper meaning, though many thought its playful lyrics about biking and roller skating were really about sex (“Don’t go too fast but I go pretty far”). It sounded strange, like a song out of time — Melanie said she intended it to hearken to the 1930s — sung with what could now be called a warbling “indie girl voice.” And it somehow hit No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100.

The song has lingered in pop culture, from a lip sync battle between Jimmy Fallon and Melissa McCarthy to a post-apocalyptic DJ playing it endlessly on “Kids in the Hall.”

“Brand New Key” wasn’t the first No. 1 song to perplex listeners, and it wouldn’t be the last.

Here are some of the strangest, and well, actually, let’s be honest, fun songs to top the U.S. Billboard chart over the years:

“Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini” by Bryan Hyland

A girl afraid and nervous to leave a locker room and be seen in a brand-new tiny bikini is the subject of this song that debuted in 1960 and was in the top spot for one week. The song might not have aged well, but it was resurrected in a Yoplait Light commercial in 2005 about a woman who, after eating the yogurt for months, was finally able to wear her own yellow polka dot bikini.