In the middle of Jared Hess’ new hit film “A Minecraft Movie,” Steve (Jack Black) is introducing his new human friends to the fantasy realm called the Overworld. Everything in the Overworld is cubic, constructed of right angles, and the land is replete with mystical artifacts. The world of “Minecraft” operates by its own rules of surreal sorcery. In the Overworld, for instance, one can place a live chicken underneath a lava flow, and then magically extract a perfectly prepared rotisserie chicken dinner. Steve is happy to exhibit this process in action, displaying a fast-food stand called Steve’s Lava Chicken. He even sings a 34-second commercial jingle for Steve’s Lava Chicken, and it sounds very much like Jack Black made it up on the spot; it could easily have come from the set of “Whose Line Is It Anyway?”
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The 34-second “Steve’s Lava Chicken” song can, of course, be streamed and downloaded on all your favorite music-access services, and many “Minecraft” fans have been listening to it a lot. Like, a lot a lot. As reported on by the AV Club, “Steve’s Lava Chicken” has just broken into the Billboard Hot 100, making its way to a modest #77. This means it currently holds the record as the shortest song ever to make the Hot 100. It’s also the second time Jack Black has made it onto the Hot 100 singing a short song from a movie based on a video game; his “Peaches” from “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” peaked at #56 back in April of 2023.
According to Billboard’s own website, “Steve’s Lava Chicken” beat Kid Cudi’s 2020 song “Beautiful Trip” as the shortest ever on the Hot 100. Cudi’s song run a whopping 37 seconds, and that wasn’t so much a song as a mini mood piece. It also peaked at #100, so “Lava Chicken” is ahead of it in multiple ways.
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Other fun length records from the Billboard Hot 100
The Billboard website also lists other notoriously short songs to have charted on the Hot 100 over the years. 2016’s “PPAP (Pen-Pineapple-Apple-Pen)” by Piko-Taro peaked at #77, and it only runs 44 seconds. The three songs listed above are the only charting hits under a minute. Going back a few years, “Little Boxes” by The Womenfolk (the one about little boxes made of ticky-tacky) charted at #83 back in 1964, and it runs one minute and two seconds. The shortest song to reach #1 on the chart was Maurice Williams And The Zodiacs’ 1960 single “Stay.” It’s practically an epic at 98 seconds. Some might recall that “Old Town Road” by Lil Nas X, feat. Billy Ray Cyrus, broke some records, but at 113 seconds, it was merely the shortest #1 hit since 1965 (beating Herman’s Hermits’ “I’m Henry VIII, I Am”). Here’s some knowledge that might come in handy on trivia night: The director of the “Old Town Road” video remade “House Party.”
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As for longer charting songs, André 3000 broke a record in 2023 for his instrumental “I Swear, I Really Wanted to Make a ‘Rap’ Album but This Is Literally the Way the Wind Blew Me This Time” which runs 12 minutes and 20 seconds. That song debuted at #90, officially making it the longest single to ever appear on the chart. It beat out Tool’s “Fear Inoculum,” a 10-minute and 21-second song from 2019. Those tracks join the prestigious company of Taylor Swift’s 2021 single “All Too Well (Taylor’s Version),” the longest song to ever reach #1 on the chart. It’s 10 minutes and 13 seconds.
As one can see, Billboard’s short songs are a blend of light pop and whimsical novelty tunes. The full lyrics of “Steve’s Lava Chicken” are like a heavy metal version of Shel Silverstein, reading:
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“La-la-la-lava, ch-ch-ch-chicken
Steve’s Lava Chicken, yeah, it’s tasty as hell.
Ooh, mamacita, now you’re ringin’ the bell.
Crispy and juicy, now you’re havin’ a snack.
Ooh, super spicy, it’s a lava attack!”
And that’s it. Pop music at its finest.
