Here’s a fun album from 1966 featuring songs sung about — and sometimes sung by — Superman and his DC Comics universe of characters. The original album features two songs each for Superman, gal pal Lois Lane, cub reporter Jimmy Olsen, extraterrestrial menace Mr. Mxyptlk, Superboy, and Superboy’s dog, Krypto. Here’s a few tracks to whet your appetite.
The first one is about “Superman,” so of course it has to talk about all the wonderful things he does in a wonderfully jazzy way.
Then there’s Lois Lane’s song “Busy Busy Busy,” where she sings about how she’s always hunting down the next big story. It sounds like a pretty good female-empowerment-type song until she says the biggest headline she’s after is becoming Superman’s wife!
Since they did a song for Lois, they had to do a song for Jimmy Olsen too. This one isn’t sung by Jimmy, but by Lucy Lane, who either had an unrequited crush on Jimmy or was his girlfriend. I don’t remember which.
I had to include both of Mr. Mxyptlk’s songs here just because they’re so goofy. The first one, sung by the fellow himself, declares “I Don’t Want to Go Back to the Fifth Dimension.” For some reason he sounds like an old country-and-western singer.
Mr. Mxyptlk, “I Don’t Want to Go Back to the Fifth Dimension”
The second one, “Mr. Mxyptlk,” has a group of singers singing about what a troublemaker he is. You’ll notice the singers don’t actually pronounce Mr. Mxyptlk’s name — they have him do it himself. I don’t know how they think the name’s supposed to be pronounced. I believe the comics’ version was “Mix-yez-pittle-ik,” and on TV’s Super Friends Superman pronounced it “Mix-el-plick,” but I don’t think anybody expected it to be said the way this guy says it.
The next song, “Kid Stuff,” talks about all the great things Superboy can do. This was of course before he went all crazy and started killing people like he did in the comics.
Finally, we couldn’t leave out Superboy’s dog, Krypto. In “A Dog’s Life” he laments that a supercanine’s life can be lonely. And I know I say this about any bass singer on a children’s record, but I’m pretty sure this is Thurl Ravenscroft, the voice of Tony the Tiger, vocalizing Krypto.
If you want to hear the rest of the fun songs on Children’s Treasury of Superman Musical Stories, you can get the album right here!
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