Yakety Yak

"Yakety Yak" is a song written, produced, and arranged by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller for the Coasters and released on Atco Records in 1958, spending seven weeks as #1 on the R&B charts and a week as number one on the Top 100 pop list. This song was one of a string of singles released by the Coasters between 1957 and 1959 that dominated the charts, making them one of the biggest performing acts of the rock and roll era.

In 1999, the original 1958 recording on the ATCO label by the Coasters was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.

Song
The song is a "playlet," a word Stoller used for the glimpses into teenage life that characterized the songs Leiber and Stoller wrote and produced. The lyrics describe the listing of household chores to a kid, presumably a teenager, the teenager's response ("yakety yak") and the parents' retort ("don't talk back") — an experience very familiar to a middle-class teenager of the day. Leiber has said the Coasters portrayed "a white kid’s view of a black person’s conception of white society." The serio-comic street-smart "playlets" etched out by the songwriters were sung by the Coasters with a sly, clowning humor, while the tenor saxophone of King Curtis filled in, in the up-tempo doo-wop style. The group was openly "theatrical" in style — they were not pretending to be expressing their own experience.

The threatened punishment for not taking out the garbage and sweeping the floor is, in the song's humorous lyrics:
 * "You ain't gonna rock and roll no more,"

And the refrain is:
 * "Yakety yak. Don't talk back."

In the last verse, the parents order their son to tell his "hoodlum friend" outside in the car, that he will not be allowed to go out with him at all for a ride.

Personnel
Source:
 * Mike Stoller - piano
 * King Curtis - tenor saxophone
 * Alan Hanlon - guitar
 * Adolph Jacobs - guitar
 * Wendell Marshall or Lloyd Trotman - bass
 * Joe Marshall - drums
 * Chino Pozo - congas

Parodies

 * Vince Vance & the Valiants, one of various groups parodying Barbara Ann as "Bomb Iran" in 1980, created a similarly-themed 2005 parody titled "Yakety Yak (Bomb Iraq)".

Other uses in popular culture

 * The tenor saxophone solo by King Curtis inspired the 1963 Boots Randolph song "Yakety Sax".
 * The song's name was used for the code name of Ubuntu 16.10, a Linux operating system with its versions all named after animals.
 * Paul Bettany performs the song in a pivotal scene as Vision in the WandaVision episode "Filmed Before a Live Studio Audience".
 * A video of the song was done in Tiny Toon Adventures (season 3, episode 12), featuring Plucky Duck.
 * The Ripley family sings along to the song in the opening scene of the 1988 film The Great Outdoors.