“Be My Yoko Ono” by Barenaked Ladies

"Be My Yoko Ono" was the first single from Barenaked Ladies, though the Canadian band had been carrying it around for a while: Steven Page and Ed Robertson wrote it, it first showed up on their 1989 demo tape Buck Naked, and it later made their major-label debut, Gordon. It's a goofy, lovestruck pledge from a narrator ready to give up everything for the one he loves, measuring his devotion against John Lennon and Yoko Ono.

In 1991 they entered it in CFNY-FM's annual Discovery to Disc contest. Asked for the master, Page couldn't bear to say the station already had it, a cassette made in his basement, so he promised it by the next week and handed in a fresh studio recording before the week was out. That take ended up on The Yellow Tape, which went platinum in Canada, and it won the $100,000 grand prize that bankrolled Gordon.

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