Introduction - Phineas and Ferb Song Ranking
NOTE: I published this like an hour before the announcement that the Phineas and Ferb had been renewed for 40 episodes. This has no effect on the ranking but it's pretty crazy anyway.
The Beatles were active for about seven years, and in that brief span, they wrote nearly 200 songs, many of which qualify as masterpieces, and very few of which, no more than 15, in my opinion, are unpleasant to listen to. For the sake of simplicity, let’s say that 15 out of 200 Beatles songs are roughly equivalent to or inferior to silence. This would mean that The Beatles had a hit rate of 93 percent. An exceptional score. This would also mean that they wrote 185 songs which qualify as anything ranging from “fine, I guess” to “world-changing.”
The Collection of Songwriters which Worked on Phineas and Ferb (CSWPF) were active for about seven years, (save a resurfacing in 2020,) and in that brief span, they wrote, according to my somewhat arbitrary criteria, 300 songs. Many of them qualify as masterpieces, but some, by my judgment, 70 of them, are roughly equivalent to or inferior to silence. This is a hit rate of 77 percent, far lower than that of The Beatles. Thus far, the data would imply that CSWPF is not as good at writing songs as The Beatles.
But let us not forget this important detail: the respective raw amounts. As aforementioned, The Beatles, by my personal judgment, wrote 185 songs that are better than nothing. CSWPF wrote 230. Hit rates be darned, sum totals are sum totals. If the Beatles had stuck together a little longer and padded their stats, would they have surpassed this marker of 230? Probably. But they didn’t. Does this mean that CSWPF is better than The Beatles? Who’s to say?
The Beatles, at least in the later portion of their existence, had a luxury that CSWPF did not have: the freedom to be patient. They spent ten months working on Sgt. Pepper, an album which contained thirteen songs, and proceeded to define an era of popular music. CSWPF never had the luxury of spending ten months fine-tuning thirteen songs. What they had were deadlines. A constant rush order. What they had was one new episode to produce, on average, every eleven days throughout season two, not to mention the Disney Channel Original Movie they were working on in the meantime, which, might I add, is the greatest piece of Phineas and Ferb media that there has ever been. What they had to do was write and record a song right now, constantly, for several years.
With such a massive output, one could reasonably expect the creation of a significant amount of bops and bangers, even by accident. What one would be foolish to expect is an extensive collection of spectacular songs, and that more than three quarters of them all would be certifiably good. Yet those are among the accomplishments of the CSWPF. When regarded as a whole, this is exceptional.
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A Couple Things Before We Start:
I’m not gonna Schaffrillas this. There are no parodies like “Rusted” and “Couldn't Kick My Way Right Into Her Heart” on this list. There is of course no “Eggs and Bacon” on this list. There’s no “Do the Moan.” There is unfortunately no “Free” and no “Fossils.” There is no “Brick.” Even Zach Timson’s request to include “I Want Nothing” has been denied. None of that dinky stuff.
After much internal hemming and hawing, I’ve decided to exclude “And the Animals Go” from the list. There is no sole reason for this, but there are several small ones which compound. Although it is longer than something like “Free,” its minimal instrumentation and altogether loose nature provide the sense of having been put together in the same way. This explanation doesn’t satisfy me completely, but the fact of the matter is that when I tried putting it on the list, it felt like an outlier.
Only songs that were originally written for the show will appear on the list. That means that there are no Christmas covers like “Run Run Rudolph” or “The Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire),” and there aren’t even any Christmas covers with original lyrics, like “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” and “Good King Wenceslas.” “Chop Away at My Heart” has also been omitted, since that song was originally written for Milo Murphy’s Law.
I fear that there is a high chance that I forgot to include songs that I should have included. For example, I had already begun to write my reviews for the first group of songs when I realized that “Feelin' Super,” “Doof's Evil Hideout Vacation Swap,” “Dance Baby,” “Let's All Dance Until We're Sick,” “Yippi-Ki-Yi-Yay,” “My Red Rubber Boots,” and “Questing Song” had all somehow evaded the list entirely. I had to stick them each in (somewhere) and adjust the numbers accordingly. Luckily, these final additions boosted my list to the extremely satisfying amount of 300 songs precisely. If I forgot a song, don’t tell me. I want to live in ignorance. Let us begin!
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