Upsetting Day: Lou Monte's Italian Animal Songs

This holiday season, let's take some time to learn of the many fine Christmas traditions from other cultures. By that, I mean the culture of New Jersey. You might have heard the ridiculous Lou Monte Christmas song, "Dominick The Italian Christmas Donkey," but you probably don't know that Lou Monte created an entire genre of music themed around the idea of "what if X animal was Italian and also a real piece of shit."

Dominick has a job, and he does it well. He wears bells on his legs and helps Santa deliver presents because reindeer can't climb over the hills of Italy. Sure, reindeer can fly, and maybe Lou Monte didn't consider that when we wrote the song, which is weird, but other than that, you can't argue with a hard working donkey who shows up on time and does what he's supposed to do. This is unheard of in the many, many other Lou Monte songs.

There were rumors that Dominick The Donkey was financed by the mafia to promote Italian American pride, but if the mafia were involved it would be a better song, right? Lou Monte does commit a multitude of musical crimes in "Dominick The Italian Christmas Donkey," including rhyming Josephine and Brooklyn by pronouncing it Brook-a-lean. Other than that, it's just not that notable of a song, and it didn't even make it onto the billboard charts, unlike Lou Monte's collection of other Italian animal-based works.

You see, Lou Monte got a tiny taste of success and went mad with power. Two years after Dominick did just ok he put out the song "Pepino The Italian Mouse," and people went nuts for it. The song stayed on the Billboard charts for ten weeks, peaking at number five.

Unlike Dominick, Pepino fucking sucks. He's a drunk freeloading Italian asshole who terrorizes and cock blocks Lou Monte. Lou begins the song by laying out his qualms with Pepino.

♪ Pepino, oh, you little mouse, oh, won't you go away

Find yourself another house to run around and play

You scare my girl, you eat my cheese, you even drink my wine

I try so hard to catch you but you trick me all the time ♪

Pepino chimes in occasionally to say, “hell yeah, I did it, and I'd do it again, I'm terrible.” Then Lou sings a few verses in Italian that, according to Google translate, are more or less the same information he gave us in English about Pepino, the agent of chaos. I think Pepino became so popular because the mouse character talks in the Alvin And The Chipmunks voice, and people were crazy for the Chipmunk voice that year. It was two years after the debut of the wildly popular chipmunks album, but the Chipmunks had moved on to television by that point, and people were dying to fill that Chipmunk Christmas void. Lou Monte heard the cries of the masses for high pitched animal hijinks, and he replied so hard it made him famous, but at what cost?

Pepino did so well that he got a sequel, “Pepino’s friend Pasqual the Italian Pussy Cat.” Like Pepino, Pasqual is also lazy and useless. Lou Monte gets Pasqual in hopes of using him to remove Pepino but instead, Pepino befriends Pasqual and they band together to torture Lou Monte with various Italian stereotypes such as loudly playing the mandolin, stealing meatballs, and playing bocce ball. It’s like the three things Americans know about Italian culture all come from a series of novelty songs about an annoying mouse.

♪ I said Pasqual listen now, please help me catch that mouse!

My girlfriend's so afraid of him she won't come in the house!

But when I turn my back he steals the meatballs from the tray

And now that cat and mouse are playing bocce-ball all day! ♪

Pasqual's voice in this song is haunting. It's low pitched to offset Pepino's high voice, and I admit I was instantly afraid of this bocce ball-playing cat. This fear is confirmed to be founded in the final moments of the song when Pepino tells Lou he wants to take his picture, to which Lou replies, "go ahead shoot!" and Pasqual actually shoots him. Don't worry; Lou survives. I know because there's a third Italian asshole animal novelty song in the Pepino saga! Nothing can kill Lou Monte’s love of terrible Italian animals! It will live on long after his mortal body.

"Paulucci (The Italian Parrot)" wasn't popular enough to be made into a single, but he made it onto the cover of More Italian Fun With Lou And The Gang as a ghostly figure haunting Lou Monte. Paulucci is Lou's beloved Italian parrot whom Pepeino and Pasquale want to murder. The song begins with an all-female chorus saying, "Once upon a time, there was an Italian Parrot called Paulucci," as if setting us up for a fairytale but, it's just more of Pepino and Pasquale terrorizing Lou Monte after their failed apartment coup. Lyrics include:

♪ My poor parrot, I'm sorry that they're treating you so rough

Watch out for that Pepino and Pasquale

I would cry if I woke up and found you stuffed ♪

♪ When I came home from my job the other night

I got worried cause you were nowhere in sight

Lucky thing I opened up the oven door

They were ready to make parrot cacciatore ♪

Learn more Italian stuff, Lou Monte, I'm begging you! There has to be something other than Meatballs and Italian animals to sing about, right? How will he up the ante now? How many more Italian animals can this man fit in his apartment?

After Pasqual and Paulucci both failed to yield Pepino's success Lou Monte finally lost confidence in the Novelty Songs About Italian Animals market. For his next big hit, he wrote a song about Paul Revere…....s Italian horse who was a piece of shit.

The song begins with a man with a British-by-way-of-New-Jersey accent asking a question I'm sure many of us have pondered before. "Was Paul Revere Italian?"

To which Lou Responds, "No, but his horse was!" He then proceeds to foster that mafia-bought Italian American pride by singing about what a shitty horse it was.

♪ You have heard of Paul Revere of course!

But nobody seems to know a thing about his horse

His name was Ba-Cha-Ca-Loop and he came from Italy

He was nuts about Italian wine what a crazy horse was he! ♪

♪ Hey get up Ba-Cha-Ca-Loop and Paul Revere

Get up ah Ba-Cha-Ca-Loop the British are here

Put down that jug of cherry wine and please get out of bed

I just looked out the window and all the coats I see are red ♪

♪ Ba-Cha-Ca-Loop and Paul began to ride

They came upon a tavern and the horse he ran inside

Paul ran in to get him and he found him there in bed

Eatin' a Pepperoni with an ice pack on his head ♪

It's the first song that includes some real songwriting growth from Lou Monte. There are no meatballs! The Italian horse eats pepperoni instead! What a revelation. There's also a specificity to the horse drinking cherry wine that feels important. We have no idea what kind of wine Pepino drank. Lou is building out these characters now. They're not just general Italian stereotypes anymore. They're specific Italian stereotypes.

I also feel like a character that wants to lay in bed and eat pepperoni instead of work is his most relatable protagonist to date, albeit somewhat of an anti-hero. Overall, "Paul Revere's Horse (Ba-cha-ca-loop)" is his second strongest work after "Dominick The Christmas Donkey." And with it, Lou Monte decided he could finally move on to a new, more creatively rewarding idea: silly songs about Italian animals fucking up.

Lou Monte's The Mixed-Up Bull From Palermo and other Italian Fun Songs continues an ongoing theme of Lou Monte begging an animal to do something and the animal simply refusing. Pepino won't leave his house. Pasqual is asked to murder Pepino but turns on Lou instead. Paul Revere's Horse just wants to get drunk instead of work. The Mixed Up Bull from Palermo wants to kiss Lou instead of bullfighting with him. Finally, an animal wants to be nice to this man, and he rejects it! What are you trying to get out of these Italian fun animal relationships, Lou?

♪ Oh you mixed up bull from Palermo

Come on and fight with me the brave torero

Stop drinking wine and dancing the bolero

With that pizza on your head for a sombrero ♪

Wait, did that fucking bull have a pizza for a hat? At this point, it's really starting to feel like Lou Monte thinks being Italian is a disability. I think he was writing propaganda to support calling in "Italian" to work. "Sorry, my uncle Pauly brought over a magnifico wheel of Parmigiano. I'm too Italian to do anything else today! Aaaaay, oh and'a now my hat is a pizza! When it'a rains, it'a pours, aaay."

It's now four years after the success of Pepino, and Lou Monte is haunted. Haunted by Italian fun that should have been. He was certain that Pepino's friend Pasqual should have been a hit! So certain that he decided to remake the entire song changing nothing but Pepino and the murder and the end, which I have to agree is probably why the song didn't make it big. He called the "new" Italian "fun" cat "Cheech the Cat" and released it alongside "Makin' Whoopee (Italian Style)." Because nothing gets Italians hornier than drunk animals wearing pizza and being best friends.

♪ Everyday I tell that cat to catch that crazy mouse

But all day he combs his hair and struts around the house

He says that he’s afraid of him but he just puts me on

I know that he won’t catch him cause that mouse is his paisan (friend) ♪

Instead of the attempted murder, the song has a sweet ending where the cat and mouse pretend to run away together, and the narrator decides that he actually misses them both. Despite the cutesy ending and the Lou Monte winning formula of "annoying Italian animal hates Lou Monte, again," this single didn't do numbers, and it crushed him. He almost gave up, but then in 1977 he took one last shot at an animal song with something called "Crabs Walk Sideways." I know what you're thinking, "um, is the crab Italian? Because if not, I'm not interested."

Unfortunately I could not find a copy of "Crabs Walk Sideways" before my deadline for this article. And let me tell you, I begged for a four month extension so that I could be shipped a scratched record from a shifty eBay store, but my bosses are real hardasses as you well know. “Bugg, you better get us two thousand words on drunk Italian animals by Wednesday or you’ll be kissing the curb hello!” they screamed. Luckily, my newfound expertise in Lou Monte lyrics combined with my frankly transcendent Photoshop skills could create this, a perfect approximation of what "Crabs Walk Sideways" was probably like:

(In the Alvin And The Chipmunks voice) Hi it's me, a terrible Italian crab. I would pinch you, but I'm'a too drunk!

♪ This crab is supposed to be my accountant but he does a terrible job

Its pincers are full of pizzas what a useless thingamabob

All-day he drinks wine and breaks pencil with his claws

I don't think he really knows any accounting laws ♪

♪ What a mean mean crab

He gave me a little jab

And demanded that I pay him in pepperoni

I said you can't do math at all you little phoney ♪

♪ Giuseppe the Italian crab accountant what do you have to say

So many legs for holding wine glasses all the day

I cry and yell Guiseppe what you going to do for me

But Giuseppe has already skittered back to Italy ♪

♪ What a mean mean crab

He gave me a little jab

And demanded that I pay him in pepperoni

I said you can't do math at all you little phoney ♪

You know, something like that. I think, in a way, Lou Monte was one of the first social media influencers. You've probably run across those creators on TikTok, or YouTube who had an unexplainably viral hit, and now they're trapped doing nothing but rating cats in scarves forever? Lou Monte wanted that life for himself. He begged for it! He looked into the eyes of the public and said, "Please let me be the novelty songs about shitty Italian animals guy," and the world said no. But he didn't listen. He didn't'a listen.

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You can follow Liddy on twitter @youknowlydia for a list of Italian animals she personally dislikes (mostly toucans).

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You can follow Liddy on twitter @youknowlydia for a list of Italian animals she personally dislikes (mostly toucans).

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