Musical Montage: Tom Green “Lonely Swedish (The Bum Bum Song)”
Tom Green had his first major film role 25 years ago today when Road Trip debuted in theaters, but he had been blowing up before that on his TV show The Tom Green Show and had a hit song with “Lonely Swedish (The Bum Bum Song)”. Created for his Canadian TV series, Green released the song as a single when the show moved to MTV and encouraged fans to download the free .mp3 file from his website, burn it on CDs, and distribute it however they could. He also urged fans of his show to call Total Request Live and request the video be played. It got into frequent rotation and eventually hit the #1 video on August 27th, 1999, after which Green agreed to have it retired from airplay. Eminem later sampled the song for two tracks, “The Real Slim Shady” and “Without Me”. The music video was shot by Jeff Boggs in Seattle and features Green running around in various costumes, putting his “bum” on multiple objects and performing wacky stunts, like skitching on a car on a skateboard or wading into Lake Washington. You can check it out below.
