and songs by the Chipmunks, “The Purple People Eater” was part of a craze in the 1950s for novelty rock songs. These were songs that used the sounds and tropes of rock and roll but were less ...

“The Purple People Eater,” about an unidentified flying object, sold 3 million copies in 1958 and reached No. 1 on Billboard’s Best Sellers In Stores chart. The song had people across the ...

Sputnik-era pop song that became his biggest hit. “The Purple People Eater,” with lyrics that included “It was a one-eyed, one-horned, flying purple people eater,” spent six weeks at No. 1 ...

Early rock hits such as Sheb Wooley's "The Purple People Eater" went the route of the novelty song, while classic-rock artists wrote about UFOs in a grander context (or even named themselves after ...

Next time you sing the song, you can decide if your purple ... It was a one-eyed, one-horned, flying purple people eater One-eyed, one-horned, flying purple people eater… All right.

The answer was "A purple people eater" and, even though the riddle was as unfunny then as it is now, Wooley wrote a song about it. His recording of "Purple People Eater" topped the US charts for ...