Love My Lips is the fourth Silly Song with Larry and was featured in the VeggieTales episode, Dave and the Giant Pickle.
In "Love My Lips," Larry visits his psychiatrist (played by Archibald), worried about losing his lips. Because his focus on his lips is so absolute, he sees everything as a lip when given a Rorschach test. Larry and Archibald go deeply into Larry's childhood traumas involving his lips, culminating in the moment he had to attend lip rehab with a young boy called Oscar who had been stung by a bee directly on the lip. Because both of their lips were so big, they were unable to communicate until the fifth week. When Oscar did begin speaking, he only spoke Polish, but he did teach Larry the word for lip: usta! The fact that Larry has no discernible lips makes this song even funnier.
Lyrics
The Announcer: And now it's time for Silly Songs with Larry, the part of the show where Larry comes out and sings a silly song. One day while talking with Dr. Archibald, Larry confronts one of his deepest fears...
Larry: If my lips ever left my mouth,
Packed a bag and headed south,
That'd be too bad.
I'd be so sad.
Archibald: I see ... that'd be too bad.
You'd be so sad ...
Larry: ... That'd be too bad!
Archibald: Alrighty.
Larry: If my lips said, "¡Adios!
I don't like you; I think you're gross!"
That'd be too bad.
I might get mad.
Archibald: Hmm ... that'd be too bad.
You might get mad ...
Larry: ... That'd be too bad!
Archibald: Fascinating!
Larry: If my lips moved to Duluth,
Left a mess and took my tooth,
That'd be too bad.
I'd call my dad.
Archibald: Oh dear! That'd be too bad.
You'd call your dad ...
Larry: ... That'd be too bad!
Archibald: Hold it! Did you say your father? Fascinating...So what you're saying is, if your lips left you...
Larry: That'd be too bad.
I'd be so sad!
I might get mad.
I'd call my dad!
That be too bad.
Archibald: ...That'd be too bad?
Larry: ...That'd be too bad.
Archibald: Why?
Larry: 'Cuz I love my lips!
(scatting) Be-de-be-bap bop be-de-bap-boo ee-be-dap-bop boop-ba-da-ba-bow yaba-dab-bop ba-de-ba-da-boom bom be-da-ba-ba-buh-dow yaba-dab-dab bbbrbbrbrrbrbbrum ebahdebayabagabbear bealllabealblllebleeallelallell bum.
Archibald: Oh my...This is more serious than I thought. Larry, what do you see here?
Larry: Umm...That looks like a lip.
Archibald: What about this?
Larry: It's a lip!
Archibald: And this?
Larry: (To the tune of William Tell Overture) It's a lip; It's a lip; It's a lip, lip, lip!
It's a lip; It's a lip; It's a lip, lip, lip!
It's a lip; It's a lip; It's a lip, lip, lip!
Liiiiiiiiiiiips!
Lip, lip, lip!
Archibald: Larry ... Tell me about your childhood.
Larry: When I was just two years old.
I left my lips out in the cold
And they turned blue!
What could I do?
Archibald: Oh dear. They turned blue...
What could you do?...
Larry: Oh, they turned blue!
Archibald: I see.
Larry: On the day I got my tooth,
I had to kiss my great Aunt Ruth.
She had a beard;
And it felt weird!
Archibald: My, my! She had a beard;
And it felt weird?
Larry: She had a beard!
Archibald: Oh!
Larry: Ten days after I turned eight,
Got my lips stuck in a gate!
My friends all laughed...
...And I just stood there until the fire department came and broke the lock with a crow bar and I had to spend the next six weeks in lip rehab with this kid named Oscar who got stung by a bee right on the lip and we couldn't even talk to each other until the fifth week 'cuz both of our lips were so swollen and when he did start speaking he just spoke Polish and I only knew like three words in Polish except now I know four because Oscar taught me the word for lip. "Usta."
Archibald: Your friends all laughed..."usta"...how do you spell that?
Larry: I don't know.
Archibald: So what you're saying, is that when you were young...
Larry: They turned blue!
What could I do?
She had a beard
And it felt weird!
My friends all laughed ...
"Usta!"
Archibald: I'm confused.
Larry: I love my lips!
(scatting) Be-de-be-bap bop be-de-bap-boo ee-be-dap-bop boop-ba-da-ba-bow yaba-dab-bop ba-de-ba-da-boom bom be-da-ba-ba-buh-dow yaba-dab-dab
Archibald: Uh, Larry....Larry, wait, Larry....Larry, that's enough, thank you...Larry...Excuse me! Larry...Larry!
The Announcer: This has been Silly Songs with Larry. Tune in next time to hear Larry say...
Larry: Have I ever told you how I feel about my nose?
Archibald: Oh, look at the time!
(Larry continues scatting)
Production
Mike wrote “I Love My Lips” on jury duty. This was pre-laptop days, so he didn’t even have a laptop with me; he had a legal pad. It was right around the time he was about ready to get married and going through premarital counseling with his fiancée, now wife. They were going in, talking to the marriage therapist, so that whole scenario made its way into the song. Mike was thinking, What would it feel like for Larry to have abandonment issues about his lips leaving him?
The Silly Song was originally called, "I Love My Tongue," as it was going to be Larry sharing his love for yodeling. He later thought that the concept was too weird so he changed the tongue to lips and made Larry scat instead of yodeling. The yodeling concept was saved until the second sing-along video.
Fun Facts
Trivia
- This song is featured on the subsequent video releases:
- This Silly Song also appeared on the following Chuck E. Cheese's showtapes:
- Dance Party (April 1999 - July 1999)
- April 2004 (April 2004 - June 2004)
- April 2007 (April 2007 - June 2007)
- This song has appeared on the following albums and audio releases:
- When Archibald shows the Rorschach tests, a picture of a human can be seen. It has changed through the years:
- Sonny Bono was in the original version, but was later removed after his tragic death in 1998. However, this version was present on the original mass market release of "Dave and the Giant Pickle" (which happened six months after Bono's death).
- It was then changed to an edited picture with Robert Ellis' head pasted over Bono's. This was changed later to an actual caricature of Ellis drawn by Jody Nilsen when the legal department stated to redo the image so it can be original.[citation needed] The version with Ellis' head over Bono's lasted until June 2007 as it was the version used whenever it was included in a Chuck E. Cheese's showtape.
- Since 2002, the image is now a caricature of Mike Nawrocki drawn by Tom Owens due to Ellis later expressing discomfort with the caricature, and also because of Ellis leaving Big Idea on bad terms.
Bono, Bono/Ellis, Ellis, and Nawrocki as the faces in the ink blot test.
- Mike stated he originally wanted to be an image of Newt Gingrich, but changed it as Phil thought people in the Republican Party would think of it as an insult while people in the Democratic Party would think it was an endorsement.
- Stevenson did a cover of this song on VeggieRocks!
- The original version of the Silly Song (having Sonny Bono's photo) was featured on the classroom edition of Larry-Boy! and the Fib from Outer Space! and the premiere event disc of Minnesota Cuke and the Search for Samson's Hairbrush.
- The 2000 master of the Silly Song (with Robert Ellis’ photo) was featured on the original 2001 VHS/DVD releases of The Ultimate Silly Song Countdown and Heroes of the Bible!: “Lions, Shepherds and Queens (Oh My!)“.
- This Silly Song was featured in the Os Amigos Vegetais episode "Davi e o Gigante".
- In the Arabic dub of Dave and the Giant Pickle, The Hairbrush Song is featured instead of this Silly Song as a result of Are You My Neighbor? being banned in the Arab World.
- During Larry's fast recap of his time in the lip rehab, he states that Oscar taught him that the Polish word for lip was usta, however, the word for lip in Polish is actually "warga", while "usta" is the word for lips (plural) or mouth(s).
Remarks
- This is the first Silly Song in which the style of the original Silly Song title card looks different from the previous three. The looks of the music stand and the musical notes are different in style, hence the big musical note on the bottom left was also removed and replaced with two smaller notes. Larry's model also looks different in style in contrast to the one borrowed from the first Silly Song.
- The reason the style of the title card looked different from those of the previous three Silly Songs is evidently because the previous Silly Song title card was only created once for The Water Buffalo Song (which, at the time, was going to be the only Silly Song, as it would be replaced by other segments on the show unless otherwise) and the original project file was likely deleted. When reused in The Hairbrush Song, a towel was actually overlapping Larry on the picture instead of being wrapped around him, and in Dance of the Cucumber, a duplicate model of Larry was overlapping the original in an attempt to cover it with the Spanish garb and the sombrero (hence a goof showing that the sombrero is right in front of the music stand, not behind it). However, by the time this Silly Song was being made, they had to recreate the Silly Song title card template in case they managed to change Larry's pose, edit any of the musical notes in the picture, or replace the music stand with another object for any further Silly Songs.
- Both the bowler hat and lounge couch in the title card are extremely out of scale.
- The Veggie Gazette page on the old version of BigIdea.com erroneously stated that this Silly Song was made in 1995.
- It is possible that it, along with the episode it was made for, were both put into production that year, given by the number of months it took to produce the episode.
- In the 1998 VeggieTunes 2 album, the Narrator's voice was pitched higher during the end of the song.
- In Junior's Playtime Songs, the Announcer's lines are removed and the song fades out just before his closing line. The beginning of the song instead has Larry convincing Archibald to sing this song with him again, to which Archibald reluctantly agrees. Their dialogue here is as follows:
Archibald: Oh, not this one.
Larry: (gasps) Alright! Come on, Archie! Let's sing this one! It's one of my favorites!
Archibald: Uh, we already sang this once. I really don't want to go back there again.
Larry: It's a classic!
Archibald: Please, no.
Larry: And it's for the kids!
Archibald: Oh, alright.
Goofs
- In recent versions of the song, the picture brightness of the human caricature shot is mistakenly left unadjusted, making it look darker than the other scenes when the brightness levels in Dave and the Giant Pickle were adjusted for its 2004 remaster.
Inside References
- Two of the pictures on the wall are of the contract given to King Darius by the wise men in the episode "Where's God When I'm S-Scared?" and the towns Flibber-o-Loo and Jibber-De-Lot from "Are You My Neighbor?."
- The beginning and the end of the song involve a melody like that of the Water Buffalo Song.
Real-World References
- The tune where Larry says "It's a lip. It's a lip. It's a lip lip lip." is based on Rossini's William Tell Overture.
- One of the images in the Rorschach test is the number 6.023 x 10^23. This is known as "Avogadro's Number", a number used in Chemistry to set the value of a mole, which is a unit of measurement for particles too small to be counted individually (like atoms or electrons). It was developed by and named after scientist Amedeo Avogadro. The number is slightly off, however, as a closer estimate is actually 6.022 x 10^23. The full number, written out of scientific notation, is 602,214,150,000,000,000,000,000.
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