Every Thanksgiving Day celebration needs at least one funny track on the playlist to get your family and friends into the festive spirit.
Our playlist collects some of the best funny Thanksgiving songs the Internet has to offer, from tracks about your dream dinner menu to songs crafted from a turkey’s perspective.
Funny Thanksgiving Songs
1. Adam Sandler – The Thanksgiving Song
Appearing on his debut comedy album, They’re All Gonna Laugh At You, Adam Sandler’s live performance of The Thanksgiving Song is rooted in an abstract sense of comedy, ingeniously interwoven with a myriad of 90s pop culture references.
This track’s hilarity doesn’t necessarily emanate from the festivity of its lyrics as much as the absurdity within them, Sandler tying a thanksgiving reference into every nonsensical two-line rhyme;
“Turkey for me, turkey for you, let’s eat the turkey in my big brown shoe, love to eat the turkey at the table, I once saw a movie with Betty Grable.”
2. Matthew West – Gobble Gobble
Matthew West’s Thanksgiving track, Gobble Gobble, is a comical attempt to give the November holiday the Christmas-style anthem it deserves.
Mixing a plethora of genres such as country, rap and indie pop within his soundscape, West’s all-American track interweaves catchy, nonsense lyrics with comically realistic illustrations of Thanksgiving celebrations;
“Gobble gobble one, gobble gobble two, gobble gobble me, gobble gobble you … I stick a straw in the gravy boat, I’mma eat a dozen dinner rolls, stretchy pants on that’s how I roll.”
3. Bear Valley Church – The Turkey Song
Bear Valley Church’s 2018 release, The Turkey Song, is a festive parody of Maroon 5’s 2014 hit Sugar, replacing its lyrics with details of the dream Thanksgiving menu, fantasised about in the days and weeks preceding the holiday;
“I’m excited for Thanksgiving Day, ‘cause I get to eat turkey all day, and I’ll finish with cookies and cake, some chocolate, grandma’s making her famous stuffing, and we’re gonna make broccoli and cheese, maybe even some warm apple bake.”
This hunger-inducing track is a must for any Thanksgiving playlist, guaranteed to welcome the family with the homely and celebratory energy inherent to the day.
4. This Turkey Will Survice
This old-school Thanksgiving meme track transfers Gloria Gaynor’s 1978 anthem, I Will Survive, to the perspective of a turkey realising her fate as the holiday season approaches.
This track is intrinsically hilarious, from the vocalist’s reimagination of Gaynor’s original style, to its lyrical story of being rescued from the frying pan as a scared, unhatched egg, raised into adulthood by a farmer before being threatened again with death;
“Go on, now go, walk out the door, just turn around now, ain’t chopping my head to the floor, weren’t you the one who prized this dark meat on my thighs, did you think I’d gobble, did you think I’d lay down and die?”
5. Bucky Habanero – Cold Turkey
Bucky Habanero’s bluesy acoustic release, Cold Turkey, contrasts the lavish idea of a Thanksgiving dinner with the concept of ‘too much of a good thing.’
Fashioning his track around the masses of food bought, stored and cooked in preparation for the day, Cold Turkey emerges as a symbol for decaying enthusiasm and monotony;
“So thankful for the food we’re about to eat but we wouldn’t be so thankful if we’d known that for the next four weeks we’d be eating cold turkey, cold turkey for breakfast lunch and dinner each day.”
Alongside making an appetising list of non-festive foods he’s craving after endless turkey dinners, Habanero’s final laugh is found in his wordplay for abandoning an unhealthy habit; “Even the dog won’t eat it no more, I’d be glad to quit this cold turkey, I could do it, cold turkey.”
6. Heywood Banks – I Am A Turkey Bird
Heywood Banks’ holiday track, I Am A Turkey Bird, is set against an outlandish country-rock soundscape, its banjo composition and narrator’s wildly Southern accent conjuring a true, free-spirited farmyard atmosphere.
Embellished with lyrical absurdity and turkey gobbling sounds, I Am A Turkey Bird captures the innocence of a turkey unaware of his impending demise, assuming he has been invited to a Thanksgiving party as a guest of honour, rather than as the literal centrepiece;
“Had a little dream of all the good china, you know I like cranberries, lighting up candles, pass me the rutabaga, any corn left? Getting kinda sleepy here, ate too much, boy I’m stuffed.”
7. The Holderness Family – Missing Thanksgiving
The Holderness Family’s 2020 Thanksgiving release, Missing Thanksgiving, puts a light-hearted twist on the cruel theme of pandemic-incited separation over the holiday season.
This parody of Aerosmith’s rock anthem, I Don’t Want To Miss A Thing is crafted as a letter from a family to their grandmother, its lyrics woven with bounties of germ-based paranoia motivating the narrator to celebrate without her, compelled by the burdening fear of killing her;
“You make amazing ham bone soup, but you are in the high risk group, yeah I miss you Grammy, but we’re missing Thanksgiving, it is an impossible task, ‘cause you can’t eat while wearing a mask.”
8. Tale Of The Turkey
Tale Of The Turkey is a comedically melancholic Thanksgiving song detailing the final thoughts of a turkey after being shot by his farmer for food.
Anchored in a sombre, funereal ambience, this slow and bluesy country piece is topped by trailing vocals which appear initially as a joke, before amplifying its morbid atmosphere exponentially;
“I think I’m gonna see the big turkey in the sky, and they’re gonna pluck the hell outta me, then they’re gonna shove me in the oven, oh I forgot, they’re gonna stuff me… And they have the nerve to say grace over my dead body.”
9. Crank Hardley Jr. – Thanksgiving Dinner With You
Undoubtedly the most absurdly hilarious track featuring on our list, Crank Hardley Jr.’s smoky R&B parody, Thanksgiving Dinner With You, is an innuendo-clad track anchored in risque allusions between meat and stuffing.
Styling his spoken word verses with an endearing Barry White flair whilst mimicking female singing in the chorus, it soon becomes shocking how obscure this 11 year old YouTube masterpiece truly is;
“I like eating the turkey, but what I really like is the stuffing, yeah, oh yeah, some folks call it dressing, but I call it stuffing, and later on we might do us some undressing … Take a little bit of my special meat baby, pass it around, I know you like the meat hot girl, I sure hope you like dark meat.”