‘Goo Goo’ Bucks: What a ‘Wednesday’ Synch Is Worth for The Cramps
The psychobilly classic hasn't gone full Kate Bush yet, but streaming royalties are way up.
In the latest example of a stellar synch bringing in a surprise windfall, The Cramps‘ 1981 psychobilly classic “Goo Goo Muck” has become a breakout hit over the past couple of weeks.
Since Netflix’s new Addams Family spinoff Wednesday debuted on Nov. 23, including the series’ titular heroine performing dance sequence set to “Goo Goo Muck”, the track has taken off on streaming services.
In the week following the show’s release, from Nov. 25 to Dec. 1, The Cramps’ “Goo Goo Muck” was streamed on-demand over 2 million times in the U.S. — a more than 8,650% increase from the average 47 weeks before this year. That adds up to $11,089.85 in a single week for the Capitol Records master recording and $2,492.33 in publishing, according to Billboard estimates.
Those numbers dwarf the rest of the song’s 2022 activity — until the Wednesday dance sequence came out, “Goo Goo Muck” this year had generated a total of $130.21 per week for the master and $32.28 for the publisher. Thanks to the Wednesday synch, The Cramps’ “Goo Goo Muck” earned in total almost 78% more money in a single week than it had for the entire year.
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“It’s a really amazing, fun little bonanza,” Jim Shaw, a member of the late country legend Buck Owens‘ Buckaroos, who happens to own the publishing, told Billboard last week.
Early streaming activity suggests “Goo Goo Muck,” a cover of a 1962 single by Ronnie Cook and the Gaylads, could potentially follow Kate Bush‘s renaissance when her minor 1985 hit “Running Up That Hill” landed in Stranger Things and turned into a smash. “Goo Goo Muck” had 2,500 daily on-demand streams as of Nov. 22; by Dec. 1, the track jumped to more than 209,000 daily streams, according to Luminate.
The streaming boost for “Goo Goo Muck” is a bonus on top of the upfront synch fee — the amount of which is unknown — that would have been paid on both the master recording and the publishing for the song.
Capitol reps did not respond to an interview request, but Shaw, who runs the Buck Owens Foundation, said he scored the publishing rights after the original publisher, Dave Bell, felt guilty about owing his friend Shaw “a couple thousand dollars” and offered the song instead. (Bell, who died in 2013, owned a recording studio, label and publishing company in his hometown of Bakersfield, Calif., and put out Cook’s original version of “Goo Goo Muck.”)
“It hasn’t really done much until recently,” Shaw says. “That’s what every songwriter, and publisher, hopes will happen. Anything they put on YouTube, they hope something goes viral.” If “Goo Goo Muck” goes full Kate Bush? “Well,” Shaw says. “[It] wouldn’t break my heart.”
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