Steve Miller Band, The Joker, and the "pompatus" of love

Behind The Song: Classic Rock Chronicles

It’s the song that put the word “pompatus” into our collective consciousness, a made-up word that was actually a mishearing of ANOTHER made up word. But it sounds great in “The Joker,” proving once again that in rock and roll, if it sounds good no one will bat an eyelash to question it. In fact, “The Joker” was the Steve Miller Band’s first number one hit on the Billboard singles chart, and we’ve been singing along to it since 1973. Let’s get into the story of this ever-popular song in this episode of the Behind The Song podcast. 


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It’s the song that put the word “pompatus” into our collective consciousness, a made-up word that was actually a mishearing of ANOTHER made up word. But it sounds great in “The Joker,” proving once again that in rock and roll, if it sounds good no one will bat an eyelash to question it. In fact, “The Joker” was the Steve Miller Band’s first number one hit on the Billboard singles chart, and we’ve been singing along to it since 1973. Let’s get into the story of this ever-popular song in this episode of the Behind The Song podcast. 


Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

2024-08-28 10 min
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