“Nasty Habits” by Oingo Boingo

"Nasty Habits" is on Only a Lad, the debut album Oingo Boingo released on A&M in 1981 after their self-titled EP. Danny Elfman wrote it and sings lead, and the band produced it with Peter Solley.

The credits show how big the outfit was: Elfman and Steve Bartek on guitars, Kerry Hatch on bass and vocals, Johnny "Vatos" Hernandez on drums, Richard Gibbs on keyboards and trombone, and a horn line of Sam "Sluggo" Phipps on tenor sax, Leon Schneiderman on baritone and Dale Turner on trumpet. Only a Lad is where Elfman and Bartek's arrangements finished turning the group into new wave rockers, with time signatures and keys that keep shifting and harmonies pinched from jazz and from 20th-century classical music, and Elfman has said a lot of its songs grew out of newspaper stories, written as sarcastic jabs.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz.