Dick in a Box by The Lonely Island feat. Justin Timberlake (2006)

It aired as a Saturday Night Live Digital Short in December 2006, and by the following Monday it was the most-watched thing on the internet. Andy Samberg and Justin Timberlake, in matching silk shirts and Color Me Badd facial hair, perform a pitch-perfect parody of mid-nineties slow-jam R&B in which the romantic gesture on offer is exactly what the title says. The song walks the listener through three steps, and the third step is the punchline every time.

Two things made it more than a sketch. The production is genuinely good, and Timberlake sang it straight, which is why it holds up as a record and not just a clip. And it won: the Creative Arts Emmy for Outstanding Original Music and Lyrics in 2007, meaning the Television Academy formally recognised a song about a dick in a box as the year's best piece of television songwriting, in a ceremony attended by adults. NBC put the unbleeped version online, which at the time was itself news.

Its afterlife is the three steps, which nearly everyone under fifty can recite. It turned the Lonely Island into a band with a record deal, made the Digital Short an institution, and comes back every December as the gift idea nobody should take. It is the most recognised modern song on this subject, and the only one your parents can sing, unfortunately.