Production
At the time of the recording, Adam Sandler was in the middle of his five-season career at Saturday Night Live and much of this album was made with the help of his friends from the show. Besides Sandler, the album features fellow SNL performers Rob Schneider, David Spade, Chris Farley, and Tim Meadows, as well as SNL writers Conan O'Brien, Robert Smigel, and career writing partner Tim Herlihy. The album was also produced by G. E. Smith, SNL's musical director at the time. Several friends of Sandler's also perform and co-write on the album, some of whom would go on to become recurring players in Sandler's films, most notably Allen Covert.
In addition to several non-musical skits, the album includes five songs, two of which were performed live (and previously were performed on SNL: "The Thanksgiving Song" and "Lunchlady Land") at The Strand in Redondo Beach, California on July 25, 1993, [1] while "Food Innuendo Guy" is an uptempo George Thorogood meets Aerosmith-influenced blues rocker, "At a Medium Pace" is a sexually explicit love song, and "My Little Chicken" is a jazzy humorous number in which Sandler sings about his love for chickens.
Adam Richard Sandler is an American actor and comedian. Primarily a comedic leading actor in films, his accolades include nominations for three Grammy Awards, five Primetime Emmy Awards, a Golden Globe Award, and a Screen Actors Guild Award. In 2023, Sandler was awarded the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor.
Christopher Crosby Farley was an American comedian and actor. He was known for his loud, energetic comedic style, and was a member of Chicago's Second City Theatre and later a cast member of the NBC sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live for five seasons from 1990 to 1995. He went on to pursue a film career, appearing in films such as Airheads, Tommy Boy, Black Sheep, Beverly Hills Ninja, and Almost Heroes.
Robert Michael Schneider is an American actor, comedian and anti-vaccine activist. After several years performing stand-up comedy, Schneider achieved wider success as a cast member and writer for the NBC sketch comedy series Saturday Night Live from 1988 to 1994.
Happy Gilmore is a 1996 American sports comedy film directed by Dennis Dugan, produced by Robert Simonds, and starring Adam Sandler, Christopher McDonald, Julie Bowen, and Carl Weathers.
The Wedding Singer is a 1998 American romantic comedy film directed by Frank Coraci, written by Tim Herlihy, and produced by Robert Simonds and Jack Giarraputo. The film stars Adam Sandler, Drew Barrymore, Christina Pickles and Christine Taylor, and tells the story of a wedding singer in 1985 who falls in love with a waitress. The film was released on February 13, 1998. Produced on a budget of US$18 million, it grossed $123 million worldwide and received generally positive reviews from critics. It is often ranked as one of Sandler's best comedies.
"The Chanukah Song" is a novelty song written by comedian Adam Sandler with Saturday Night Live writers Lewis Morton and Ian Maxtone-Graham and originally performed by Sandler on Saturday Night Live's Weekend Update on December 3, 1994. Sandler subsequently performed the song as part of his stand-up act, later updating it with new lyrics. All variations center on the theme of Hanukkah and of religious Jewish children feeling alienated during the Christmas season, and Sandler's listing of Jewish celebrities as a way of sympathizing with their situation.
Robert Smigel is an American actor, comedian, writer, director, producer, and puppeteer, known for his Saturday Night Live "TV Funhouse" cartoon shorts and as the puppeteer and voice behind Triumph the Insult Comic Dog. He also co-wrote the first two Hotel Transylvania films, You Don't Mess with the Zohan, and Leo, all starring Adam Sandler.
Steve Koren is an American writer/producer and screenwriter. Most notably, he has written for Saturday Night Live, Seinfeld, and Veep. He also wrote or co-wrote the movies Bruce Almighty, Click, A Night at the Roxbury, and Superstar.
Saturday Night Live (SNL) is an American sketch comedy series that was co-created by Dick Ebersol and Lorne Michaels, with Michaels also serving as the producer. The series premiered on the American broadcast television network NBC on October 11, 1975.
Happy Madison Productions, Inc. is an American film and television production company founded in 1999 by Adam Sandler, which is best known for its comedy films. Happy Madison takes its name from the films Happy Gilmore and Billy Madison, written by Sandler and Tim Herlihy, and distributed by Universal Pictures.
Shhh... Don't Tell is the fifth album by Adam Sandler, released on Warner Bros. Records in 2004. It is a collection of songs and skits that feature the voices of Sandler himself, Allen Covert, Rob Schneider, Peter Dante, Jonathan Loughran, David Spade, Blake Clark, Nick Swardson, Maya Rudolph and Molly Shannon. The album's final track, "Stan the Man", is a tribute to Sandler's father, Stanley. It was later played over the end credits of the 2010 film Grown Ups, which starred Sandler himself. This was also Sandler's last comedy album, before the audio version release of his 2018 Netflix special 100% Fresh.
What the Hell Happened to Me? is the second studio album by Adam Sandler, released by Warner Bros. on 13 February 1996. It contains the official recording of "The Chanukah Song", which has become a holiday staple and one of Sandler's best-known works. It reached No. 80 on the Billboard Hot 100 and #25 on the US Modern Rock charts. It spent 57 weeks on the Billboard 200 chart and peaked at No. 18. It has been certified double-platinum, and as of 2011, has sold over 2,124,000 copies in the US, making it the best-selling comedy album since Nielsen SoundScan began tracking sales in 1991. The "Excited Southerner" skits on the album are early versions of what would end up being Sandler's character 'Bobby Boucher' in 1998's The Waterboy.
Lunch lady, in Canada and the US, is a term for a woman who cooks and serves food in a school cafeteria. The equivalent term in the United Kingdom is dinner lady. The role is also sometimes known as cafeteria lady. Sometimes, a lunch lady also patrols the school playgrounds during lunch breaks to help maintain order.
Timothy Patrick Herlihy is an American actor, comedian, screenwriter, producer, and playwright.
The eighteenth season of Saturday Night Live, an American sketch comedy series, originally aired in the United States on NBC between September 26, 1992, and May 15, 1993.
"The Thanksgiving Song" is a song performed by Adam Sandler discussing Thanksgiving. The song was written by Sandler, Ian Maxtone-Graham and Robert Smigel.
Grown Ups is a 2010 American comedy film directed by Dennis Dugan, written by Adam Sandler and Fred Wolf, produced by Sandler and Jack Giarraputo, and starring Sandler, Kevin James, Chris Rock, David Spade, Rob Schneider, Salma Hayek, Maria Bello, and Maya Rudolph with supporting roles done by Colin Quinn, Tim Meadows, Joyce Van Patten, Ebony Jo-Ann, Jamie Chung, and Di Quon. The film tells a story of five lifelong friends who won their junior high school basketball championship in 1978. They reunite three decades later for a 4th of July weekend after learning about the sudden death of their basketball coach.
The following is a list of recurring Saturday Night Live characters and sketches introduced between September 26, 1992, and May 15, 1993, the eighteenth season of SNL.
The following is a list of recurring Saturday Night Live characters and sketches introduced between September 25, 1993, and May 14, 1994, the nineteenth season of SNL.
The following is a list of recurring Saturday Night Live characters and sketches introduced between September 24, 1994, and May 13, 1995, the twentieth season of SNL.
