"Make Your Own Kind of Music" is a song by American singer Cass Elliot released in September 1969 by Dunhill Records.
Elliott recorded "Make Your Own Kind of Music" after she had a hit in the summer of 1969 with "It's Getting Better", another Mann/Weil song and the second single from her second solo album, Bubblegum, Lemonade and... Something for Mama.
"[1] Barri also attributed the bubblegum music focus of his output with Elliot to a desire "to capture who she was... this real fun-loving positive... person I couldn't imagine anybody... not loving.
"[2] In a September 1969 Melody Maker interview a week prior to the US release of the "Make Your Own Kind of Music" single, Elliot stated: "Bubblegum music is very pleasant to listen to... but it's like they say about Chinese food: half an hour after tasting it you are hungry again", although she did concede, "maybe [bubblegum] is what I am supposed to be doing [since] my voice is very light...
[7] Steve Barri considered "Make Your Own Kind of Music" to be a guaranteed Top Ten hit; the single would garner heavy radio airplay but comparatively meager sales,[1] stalling at #36 on the Hot 100 ("Make Your Own Kind of Music" would reach #6 on the airplay driven Billboard Easy Listening chart).
[citation needed] Elliot's recording of "Make Your Own Kind of Music" was featured prominently in the television show Lost, first appearing in the episode "Man of Science, Man of Faith", and was rated as one of Spin magazine's "Best Musical Moments From TV's Latest Golden Age".
In 2015, in the Season 6 finale of The Middle, the song was used during a montage, as the overlooked character Sue Heck gets recognition from her students at graduation.
After a viral mashup featuring "Make Your Own Kind of Music" with a clip from the 2022 film The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent became a meme on TikTok, the song was used in 46,000 videos.
These trends were satirized on Saturday Night Live's December 2, 2023 episode, with Chloe Troast playing Cass, and Emma Stone as the song's recording producer.
[15] In 1997 a remixed version by Carmen Cacciatore and Louie "Balo" Guzman titled the "Yum Club Mix" was released officially on the re-released single "California Dreamin'" by The Mamas & the Papas.
It depicts her struggling to fit in as a young child to performing to empty pubs, to an iconic moment early in her career where she rebukes a music executive for not listening to her sing.
The first recording of "Make Your Own Kind of Music" was on a 1968 single by the New York City-based trio the Will-O-Bees (Janet Blossom, Steven Porter, and Robert Merchanthouse), who regularly performed Mann/Weil compositions.