Words and Music by Conrad Askland (ASCAP). “I Like Chocolate” © 2007 Conrad Askland.
I ascribe by the motto of “What was funny in third grade will always be funny.” This is MAYBE the silliest song I’ve ever written, and I’ve written a LOT of very silly songs.
I almost never write a song “just to write a song.” There’s always a reason for a song when I write it. I’m very utilitarian, or practical, in that way. “I Like Chocolate” was written for a very specific reason: to make third-graders laugh. And here’s the story all about that…
Back in 2007, a youth theater group had licensed the play version of “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” but they really wanted to do the musical. So they asked me to write music to turn the straight play into a musical. I did that and almost fully scored the entire show by writing music to the words of Roald Dahl’s original text and also adding underscore music for all the different rooms in the Chocolate Factory. I was a little naive at the time and didn’t realize that all of this is technically illegal. So unfortunately I have all these wonderful songs that I wrote and recorded to Roald Dahl’s text, but I can’t release any of it. (I’m very sad about that because I think the music themes I wrote for each of those wretched characters in the story is really fun and entertaining).
BUT, I also wrote a pre-show song for that performance of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and that song is, you guessed it, “I Love Chocolate”. There were school shows with primarily grade school children (grades 3-5 in the United States). This song was meant to get the kids settled into the theater before the show and give them a good giggle together before the show began.
To my absolute delight, by the time the second verse came in, all the kids were singing along and then yelled the obvious missing rhyme of “underwear” and the theater house broke out into an uproar of laughter. That was a great memory for me and one of the reasons I actually love this song so much. Yes, it’s silly. But I will never forget the beauty of hearing 400 school children all laughing together in the theater.
They say that the human voice is the most beautiful sound of all. The sound of children laughing may be the most beautiful and uplifting of all…
LYRICS
I like chocolate
Yes I do
Even though it kind of
Looks like poo
I like chocolate
everywhere
But I do not like it in my
Ooh-whee-ee-hee
hoo-hoo-hoo
Ooh-whee-ee-hee
hoo-hoo-hoo