"I remember getting the award from Aerosmith and I went to an afterparty with Bono. It was all mad." How a comedy song about a posh lady getting her kicks from the homeless community became an impossible hit

The 90s were the ultimate decade for novelty one-hit wonders, but there was arguably nothing weirder or more obnoxious released in that decade than Whale’s Hobo Humpin’ Slobo Babe, a song made by a Swedish shock jock comedian and a TV presenter about a posh girl’s desire to have sex with homeless people. It mixed the sounds of Red Hot Chili Peppers and Bjork and ended up becoming such a big hit that it pipped U2 and Beastie Boys to win the first ever MTV Europe Video of the Year Award.

In the early 90s, record producer Gordon Cyrus and radio host Henrik Schyffert, an infamous, Howard Stern-esque prankster in his native Sweden, were working together on a TV advert. Bored, the pair decided to write a piece of music of their own.

“I always thought the point of pop, sonically and in terms of meaning,” Schyffert deviously told Melody Maker in 1995, "is to create a sense of confusion.”

So that’s what they did, writing a song that was a musically bizarre mix of riff-heavy funk metal, dreamy pop and trip-hop beats. They now needed a singer, however, so Schyffert decided to get his then-girlfriend Cia Berg, former vocalist of 80s new wave band Ubangi and current host of the Swedish music TV show Bagen, to join his new project.

“Cia is well known here for TV, theatre and film,” continued Schyffert. “So we didn’t tell anyone who we were. We just made up this band name.”

Much like her other half, Berg seemed to be well aware that the newly christened Whale were nothing more than a bit of fun. “We started as a joke,” she said to public access TV show On Patrol. “They called me up and it worked well, so we thought ‘Let’s start a band’. I’m very happy we did.”

They called their song Hobo Humpin’ Slobo Babe. If the music was an unusual enough sonic soup, it was cranked up several notches on the WTF-ometer when Berg’s lyrics were introduced. Her high-pitched, sickly-sweet vocals, spinning a tale of a young, well-off lady “seeking candy” who “sleeps around” with homeless people, were paired with her bandmates' screaming cries. Couple this with the Swedes' misunderstanding of a common UK colloquialism and it made the song something of a headfuck to listen to.

“It was a misunderstanding from me,” Laughed Schyffert to Melody Maker when questioned what exactly a “Slobo Babe” was. “I heard ‘Slobo’ was a nickname for Chelsea girls. Hobo Humpin’ Sloane Babe would have been right. So, there’s a cute misunderstanding for you!”

Incredibly, when Whale sent the song out to labels, it was jumped on immediately. They penned a deal with Warner subsidiary East West, making these Swedish jokers labelmates with the likes of En Vogue, Chris Rea and Simply Red.

“We had one song and no intention of playing live and suddenly people were telling us it was good and they wanted to release it,” Schyffert laughed

He also believed that in the aftermath of Nirvana’s explosion, labels were willing to try anything to replicate the success of alternative rock’s biggest behemoths.

“When Nirvana came and indie started to have the charts, all the record labels were lost,” he said in an interview with Adam’s World in 2025. “They had recipes for how to do this, and suddenly it didn’t work that way. We were a very 90’s phenomenon; just the way we sounded, the whole sort of Pixies, quiet-loud-quiet thing, the first sort of mix of hip-hop and guitars, the nonsense lyrics. It was only in the 90s I think that could happen.”

The band decided to make a video for the song, costing a mere £300, with director Mark Pellington. At the time he was well known for his work on Jeremy by Pearl Jam, Drive by R.E.M. and One by U2. He’d go on to direct feature films Arlington Road and The Mothman Prophecies, starring the likes of Richard Gere and Tim Robbins. What the hell was he doing with Whale?!

“It was a shot in the dark that I contacted him, and asked him if he could do it,” Schffert told Adam’s World. “He said, ‘Well, I’m shooting a commercial Thursday, and Friday, and I can tell them that we can’t return the gear until Monday.’ He asked some of the skeleton crew to stay on for a day for pizzas and beer, and they did, because they wanted to work with him, because was a big name.”

The video, you’ll be shocked to learn, was also pretty weird. Cyrus, dressed in just his pants, and Schyffert, in a flowery dress, both prance around gurning, while Berg, all big hair and braces, licks the armpits of a bunch of half-naked men. It might have been simplistically silly, but it was unforgettable and launched the band across Europe.

In fact, it did so well on the continent that, against all odds, on November 24 1994, Hobo Humpin’ Slobo Babe won Best Video at the first ever MTV Europe Music Awards, beating heavy hitters such as U2’s Stay (Faraway, So Close!) and Spike Jonze’s now iconic promo for Beastie Boys' Sabotage.

“I remember getting the award from Aerosmith,” recalls Schyffert. “So that was a big night, to get to meet them. I went to an after party with Bono. It was all mad.”

It would have been particularly mad for UK audiences to see, as when Hobo Humpin’ Slobo Babe was initially released in March 1994, it failed to trouble the UK charts, peaking at number 46, spending just three weeks in the top 100 and then falling away.

Post-MTV Awards, Whale started getting some attention from both sides of the Atlantic. Melody Maker called the song “a cure for all known diseases and the greatest record ever made by Swedes.” US music mag Cash Box praised its “wildly eclectic Beastie Boys/Ministry/Sugacubes bastard sound.” The Guardian, meanwhile, described it as a “fantastic debut single with loud, heavy, distorted guitars, synth-bass and cooing female vocals”.

But the only reviewers that mattered in the 90s were Beavis and Butthead. In the episode of their show that featured Whale’s video, the duo were unsurprisingly enthusiastic about a song as wilfully dunderheaded as them, Butthead proclaiming “this rocks!” before adding: “this chick loves me... and I love her.” It was a massive cosign.

“That’s, of course, the biggest thing ever,” laughed Schyffert. It’s bigger than my three kids.”

Whale live at MTV's Most Wanted – „Hobo Humpin' Slobo Babe“ - YouTube

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Yet despite the band touring with Britpop royalty Blur and appearing at the 1995 Reading festival, Whale's debut album We Care, and three subsequent singles, did no business in the UK. Still, East West decided to give Hobo Humpin’ Slobo Babe one last crack at the charts in late 1995.

Incredibly, this time it entered the UK Top 40 at an impressive number 15, gatecrashing a top 20 filled with the likes of Blur, Oasis, Whitney Houston, Queen, Boyzone, East 17 and, erm, Robson and Jerome.

The band performed on UK institution Top of the Pops a week later, with Berg dressed as a Star Trek cast member, Schyffert spending more time humping a feather boa than miming playing the guitar and Cyrus in a comedy bald wig and fake glasses. It was a beautiful shambles that left an indelible mark on anyone that saw it.

Things would never be as good for Whale again. Their follow up album, All Disco Dance Must End in Broken Bones came and went without any fanfare in 1998, and the band called it a day a year later.

“We wanted to continue, but the album bombed,” Schyffert shrugged in 2025. “No one liked it, and it didn’t make a dent, so we were dropped by the record company. There were discussions about another record company, and then we just looked at each other, and said, ‘Well, fuck this. It’s not that important.'”

It may have been quick, it was incredibly strange, but it’s impossible to deny that this odd bunch of misfits from Sweden made the most out of their 15 minutes of fame.