The Monstrefact: The Purple People Eater

This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed human. Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeart Radio. Hi, my name is Robert Lamb and this is The Monster Fact, a short form series from Stuff to Blow Your Mind focusing on mythical creatures, ideas and monsters in time. In this episode of The Monster Fact, I'd like to continue our trend of discussing monsters that originate in works of music, a following most recently an episode on the Goo Goo Muck. Unsurprisingly, we turn to another classic novelty song and one that predates the monster match by several years. 1958's The Purple People Eater, which along with 1958's Which Doctor, helped pave the way for even more popular novelty tracks, including Monster Mash, including Goo Goo Muck and so many others. We have American singer-songwriter Sheb Woolley to thank for the track, a successful and highly prolific country and rock and roll performer whose acting credits include such films as High Noon and the Outlawed Josie Wales. But for many, he might be most recognizable as the originator of the so-called Wilhelm Scream and this admittedly stupid song. The lyrics are pretty straightforward. I don't think I really have to walk you through it. A single-eyed, single-horned flying alien descends to Earth with only two goals in mind. To eat purple people and to find success in a human rock and roll band. I don't know if it manages to eat any purple people, but it does find success in a rock and roll band. Again, no one is arguing that there's much to these lyrics and yet a lot has been made out of two key ambiguities in the lyrics. A lot of fun has been had with this. First of all, here's the question. Is the creature's horn indeed a living bony protrusion from the skull? Or is it a musical instrument of some sort? Is it somehow both? Is it a musical instrument that grows out of its head? And then second, is the creature purple or does it just eat purple people or is it somehow both? Let's start with the first question. Interestingly enough, the idea of a horned creature with a horn that produces music is actually nothing new. If you've been listening to the show long enough, this may stir something in your memory because we have the mythical Persian creature known as Shad-Havar. And I have covered this on the Monster Fact before. According to various descriptions, it has a cranial horn with various apertures on it. And when the wind passes over those apertures, the horn produces sweet music. This music is so sweet that it draws in other animals, seduces those animals, and then allows Shad-Havar to kill them and eat them. So it ends up being a tricky form of predation on the Shad-Havar's part. In most tellings, the creature is land-based, but in some tellings, it's described as a marine creature. Go back and look for that older episode of the Monster Fact on Shad-Havar if you want some more details. So obviously, there is a precedent for this sort of thing. So go ahead and imagine the purple people eater is having this horn on its head with apertures that makes sweet music. Music is so sweet that it can find success in rock and roll, at least for a little while. And then there's the issue of purple pigment, which I think is easily addressed by looking at the real-life pigmentation of the flamingo. Obviously, the birds gain their pink or red pigmentation from the bacteria and the beta keratin in their diet of animal and plant plankton, as well as shrimp. Color saturation varies depending on diet, but this is a classic example of you are what you eat, at least with the flamingos. Just a reminder, if you were to eat a flamingo, you yourself would not turn pink. Therefore, we might imagine that the purple people eater here is in fact purple because it acquires the pigments from something in these mysterious purple people. Purple and violet are exceedingly rare in our natural world, and of course, it doesn't occur in humans outside of arguably bruising certain skin conditions and in rare cases of violet irises in the eye. But these instances would seem far too rare to sustain the alien's diet. I'm not sure, you know, we're asking questions involving alien physiology, but I'm not sure that the pigmentation would necessarily carry over into the purple people eater's body. So I think the safest thing is to assume that this alien creature eats other alien humanoids that are themselves purple. I think that's just logical. I think we can all probably agree on this, right? So there you have it. That's my take on the purple people eater. I'm not going to pretend that any of these takes were completely groundbreaking. I think this is the natural direction to go in with these two questions. But if you have other thoughts, if you disagree, certainly write in, I would love to hear from you. And also, if you have other monsters that originate in song that you think I should consider, go ahead and write in as well. Tune in for additional episodes of the Monster fact, the artifact, and the animalia stupendium each week in the Wednesday slot. As always, you can email us at contact at stuff to blow your mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is a production of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts from iHeart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app. Apple podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows. This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed human.