Yakety Yak

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.[3] 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."[2] The serio-comic street-smart “playlets” etched out by the songwriters were sung by the Coasters with a sly clowning humor, while the 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.[4]

The threatened punishment for not taking out the garbage and sweeping the floor is, in the song's humorous lyrics:[5]

"You ain't gonna rock and roll no more,"

And the refrain is:

"Yakety yak; don't talk back."[6]

In the last verse, the parents order their son to tell his "Hoodlum Friend" outside in the car, that he won't be allowed to go out with him at all for a ride.

• Québécois duo Les Jérolas recorded in 1959 a French version "Rouspet' pas"
• Billy Sanders recorded a version in German, "Jackety Jack" in early 1959. .[7]
• The song was covered by Jan & Dean and was planned to be released on their album Carnival of Sound in 1968. Carnival of Sound was not released until 2010.
• Lee Perry released a cover version in 1969 (as Lee Perry and the Upsetters), altering the lyric "You ain't gonna rock and roll no more" to "You ain't gonna reggae reggae reggae no more"
• Sha Na Na performed this as part of their set at the original Woodstock Festival and recorded two live covers of the song in 1971 and 1972.
• The Pipkins covered the song in 1970, produced by John Burgess.
• Electronic/disco group El Coco covered this song in 1975 with some comedy elements, taken from their debut album, Mondo Disco, released on AVI Records.
• The song was covered by 2 Live Crew for the 1988 movie Twins. In the film, Julius (Arnold Schwarzenegger) sings along as the song plays in his earphones while flying to the United States.
• Phantom Planet covered this song for the soundtrack of the 1999 film Mumford.

• The song was parodied for use in adverts for Radox bath soak and McCain Micro Chips in the 1980s and 1990s respectively.
• A modified version, "Yakety Yak, Take It Back", was used in a 1990 all-star PSA for the Take It Back Foundation.[8]
• Vince Vance & the Valiants, one of multiple groups parodying Barbara Ann as "Bomb Iran" in 1980, created a similarly themed 2005 parody called "Yakety Yak (Bomb Iraq)".[9]

• The sax solo by King Curtis inspired the 1963 Boots Randolph song "Yakety Sax"[10]
• The song is sung by the Coasters in the 1988 horror-comedy Phantom of the Ritz, in which the four-man group makes a cameo appearance.
• It has also served as the theme to Clive Anderson's chat-show Clive Anderson Talks Back during the 1990s, and as the opening theme of the 1988 movie
• It was the inspiration and theme song for the 2002-2003 Canadian/Australian animated series, Yakkity Yak.[11]
• A music video starring Plucky Duck as the kid tasked with chores, and a group of anthropomorphic yaks in police officer suits, aired on the 90th episode of Tiny Toon Adventures and used in The Plucky Duck Show.
• The song name was used for the code name of Ubuntu 16.10, a Linux operating system with its versions all named after animals.[12]
• Used as the opening theme for Barstool Sports radio show The Yak.
• The song is sung by Paul Bettany as Vision in the WandaVision episode "Filmed Before a Live Studio Audience".

The original recording was also included in films including Stand by Me (1986), The Great Outdoors[13] (1988) and Always (1989) and the Disney+ original miniseries, WandaVision.[14]

• List of number-one R&B singles of 1958 (U.S.)
• List of number-one singles of 1958 (U.S.)

• Lyrics of this song at MetroLyrics