This is a question that has been burning in my mind for quite some time, but a song that I've recently stumbled across kind of solidified my curiosity on the subject.
Whenever I hear older songs (typically early radio era songs from the US), I have a hard time understanding how they fit into the broader social context and psychology of the time. The example that I'll use is "Barney Google", but I think that this question applies to any other song that is kind of comparably "empty" of content: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ThYl5fT-JIQ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1923_in_music
I'm not sure if there are modern parallels to this or not, as I'm not well versed (no pun intended) in current trends in music. My question is "how did people feel about music like this?". I kind of assume that the reason behind its creation has to do with the general forces of capitalism -- in this example, Barney Google was a super popular comic strip character, so there would be name recognition that could potentially drive sales.
How is it that songs like would resonate with the public so strongly? Are there records of people saying things like "X song makes me feel youthful/lively/etc."? I have a hard time imagining a song about Charlie Brown reaching wide recognition these days, although things like YouTube, etc., would certainly allow music to get around through other channels. A song like Barney Google seems to be ridiculously saccharine and empty by modern standards, making it difficult to wrap my head around how people might have enjoyed it when it was fresh in public consciousness.
I am not sure I understand the question entirely, but perhaps you're just not getting a joke that was funny circa 1940. The category of the music was, in the Tin Pan Alley days, called "novelties". Some of them- like Barney Google- didn't age well. On the other hand, some of the Spike Jones ones are still pretty good. It's maybe a vanished category- Weird Al Yankovich writes funny stuff, but they're parodies. One survival from novelties, though, is the hook: the writers knew that a good novelty had to have a hook, a memorable phrase or musical motif, and that seems to have been siezed onto by country music writers and never dropped..."She's Looking Better Every Beer", etc.