Some VERY earwormy picks for me in De DoDo Do, Da Da Da and Mmmbop.
A couple immediately come to mind for me. The first is a dreaded earworm for me, “A Decade in Blue” by Eiffel 6
The second is one of my most memorable dancehall earworms and hopefully cancels out the first choice on my inner turntable. Barrington Levy’s “Here I Come” is sprinkled with gibberish from the “double double doble” to the liberal use of “shouldldywaddlydiddlywoah”.
There’s a LOT of gibberish in dancehall (not including the patois which to many people might sound like gibberish but is in fact understandable and “translateable” for lack of a better term).
In a similar vein to MMMBop, the Spice Girls’ Wannabe has this (presumably) gibberish phrase in the refrain: zig-a-zig-ah!
A lot of different meanings have been attributed to it throughout the years: cigarette, drugs, sex, the female orgasm, etc.
The girls later revealed that, in the studio where they were working at the time, they had to share the toilet with another musician, a guy who had this nasty habit of shitting the foulest shit you can imagine whilst smoking a cigar. The toilet stank of shit and cigar all the time.
They jokingly gave him this affectionate moniker, “shit and cigar”, which later turned into zig-a-zig-ah and found its way into the song.
Elizabeth Fraser (Cocteau Twins is one of my all-time favorite bands) sings a lot of made up words, or nonsensical phrases and even some lyrics spelled backwards. Also, I can't understand her half the time even when she is singing lyrics. Michael Stipe mumbles a lot of lyrics. Sometimes you take deep meaning from gibberish! Maybe this is a different fun topic- earworms where you've had the lyrics all wrong for years!
Haha! Michael Stipe is a brilliant suggestion! I suppose "End of the World as We Know It" is not gibberish per se, but fits my loose definition! I did mention my reasons for not choosing Cocteau Twins, mainly for earworm reasons. But I'm a huge fan as well. I have "Mahanamahna" in my bonus tracks! It almost made the top 5....
Ha! In my defense, I'm still learning how to read.
Oh, and i think lots of of heaven or las vegas and four calendar cafe are earworms, but those are also albums that have the most understandishable lyrics. I nominate Bluebeard as an earworm.
I wrote a book about the sound of nonsense that had a chapter on gibberish in pop music, so I have quite a long list of examples. Some faves: Vivian Stanshall, ‘Labio-Dental Fricative’; Talking Heads, ‘I Zimbra’; Senay, ‘Honki Ponki’ (song by Turkish singer also covered by the Japanese band OOIOO who have many gibberish songs of their own); Larry Williams, ‘Heeby Jeebies’; The Penguins, ‘Ookey Ook’; The Bobbettes’, ‘Um Bow Bow’(and pretty much anything on the Great Googa Mooga compilation); pretty much anything by Slim Gaillard; Shirley Ellis, ‘The Name Game’; Barry Mann, ‘Who Put the Bomp (in the Bomp, Bomp, Bomp)’; The Trashmen, ‘Surfin’ Bird’; Yellowman, ‘Zungguzungguguzungguzeng’; Magma; and Dylan parodies such as ‘Like a Dribbling Fram’ by Race Marbles, ‘Bob’ by Weird Al Yankovic and ‘Blues in Bob Minor’ by Robert Wyatt.
That's amazing! I'm gonna have to read your book for sure. International gibberishness is a subcategory for sure -- most of the western references are English gobbledygook I would imagine. I was reminded of Sigur Ros who took Icelandic and made their own Hopelandic variation. I did read that Adrian Belew was inspired by 'I Zimbra' when he titled 'Thela Hun Ginjeet.'
I'll take a look at your video. Is the book available to order?
Thanks Steve. Here's the publisher page: https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/sound-of-nonsense-9781501324543/. Also should be available via other online retailers. I'd be happy to send over a PDF of the chapter on pop if you like. The other chapters are about how sound adds sense (or nonsense) to nonsense literature and about sound poetry.
Definitely. What was it about '50s/'60s doowop and R&B that led to so many great gibberishy songs? I'm betting that Richard Elliott, who commented above and wrote a book on this topic (!) has a chapter on this.
The Chips' original is quite fun, with "Kenrod" Johnson spitting out the novelty lyrics and those weird spoken breaks ("Two pieces of bread and WISH you had some meat!").
I gave MMMBop a try - watched the video - and all that did was remind me how much I hated the song and video (not exactly ‘November Rain’ production values) at the time!
I just thought of one. A few years ago I learned about the 70s Italian musician who wrote a song based on the American rock songs dominating the radio, without being in English: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisencolinensinainciusol
I completely forgot about Parliament Funkadelic/George Clinton! This one for sure will go on the playlist. There’s a lot of concocted words in the Clintonverse.
It might not fit here, but I'm a big fan of Sigur Rós, and while many of their lyrics are sung in Icelandic, they also created sounds that they call their own language, Hopelandic. Gibberish or just beautiful noise?
I actually considered Sigur Ros, Mallie. I just couldn't think of anything that was particularly earwormy. Do you have a Hopelandic suggestion that I could include in the playlist?
I would agree with your sentiments about the Cocteau Twins and Dead Can Dance. The closest to an ear worm from either I can think of would be Sugar Hiccup… but mostly because of the non gibberish lol
Ha - I think earworms tend to appear mostly from the pop songbook. Though any melody can do it for me. I'm not sure I've had any ambient earworms. At least none that I can remember. But the theme to Chariots of Fire? Many, many times.
Some VERY earwormy picks for me in De DoDo Do, Da Da Da and Mmmbop.
A couple immediately come to mind for me. The first is a dreaded earworm for me, “A Decade in Blue” by Eiffel 6
The second is one of my most memorable dancehall earworms and hopefully cancels out the first choice on my inner turntable. Barrington Levy’s “Here I Come” is sprinkled with gibberish from the “double double doble” to the liberal use of “shouldldywaddlydiddlywoah”.
There’s a LOT of gibberish in dancehall (not including the patois which to many people might sound like gibberish but is in fact understandable and “translateable” for lack of a better term).
In a similar vein to MMMBop, the Spice Girls’ Wannabe has this (presumably) gibberish phrase in the refrain: zig-a-zig-ah!
A lot of different meanings have been attributed to it throughout the years: cigarette, drugs, sex, the female orgasm, etc.
The girls later revealed that, in the studio where they were working at the time, they had to share the toilet with another musician, a guy who had this nasty habit of shitting the foulest shit you can imagine whilst smoking a cigar. The toilet stank of shit and cigar all the time.
They jokingly gave him this affectionate moniker, “shit and cigar”, which later turned into zig-a-zig-ah and found its way into the song.
https://open.substack.com/pub/earworm/p/spice-girls-wannabe?r=1046qe&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
You commented on this originally, so I think you’ll remember it.
Oh now I do! Sorry, Steve! How embarrassing 🤣 I’m clearly not a spring chicken anymore!
Hahaha! 🐣🐔🐓 Now there's egg all over your face!
Elizabeth Fraser (Cocteau Twins is one of my all-time favorite bands) sings a lot of made up words, or nonsensical phrases and even some lyrics spelled backwards. Also, I can't understand her half the time even when she is singing lyrics. Michael Stipe mumbles a lot of lyrics. Sometimes you take deep meaning from gibberish! Maybe this is a different fun topic- earworms where you've had the lyrics all wrong for years!
also, Mahnamahna- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zb47CstE7R4
Haha! Michael Stipe is a brilliant suggestion! I suppose "End of the World as We Know It" is not gibberish per se, but fits my loose definition! I did mention my reasons for not choosing Cocteau Twins, mainly for earworm reasons. But I'm a huge fan as well. I have "Mahanamahna" in my bonus tracks! It almost made the top 5....
Ha! In my defense, I'm still learning how to read.
Oh, and i think lots of of heaven or las vegas and four calendar cafe are earworms, but those are also albums that have the most understandishable lyrics. I nominate Bluebeard as an earworm.
Love this! First what came to my mind was a Ketchup Song (Aserejé) 🍅🎶
I wrote a book about the sound of nonsense that had a chapter on gibberish in pop music, so I have quite a long list of examples. Some faves: Vivian Stanshall, ‘Labio-Dental Fricative’; Talking Heads, ‘I Zimbra’; Senay, ‘Honki Ponki’ (song by Turkish singer also covered by the Japanese band OOIOO who have many gibberish songs of their own); Larry Williams, ‘Heeby Jeebies’; The Penguins, ‘Ookey Ook’; The Bobbettes’, ‘Um Bow Bow’(and pretty much anything on the Great Googa Mooga compilation); pretty much anything by Slim Gaillard; Shirley Ellis, ‘The Name Game’; Barry Mann, ‘Who Put the Bomp (in the Bomp, Bomp, Bomp)’; The Trashmen, ‘Surfin’ Bird’; Yellowman, ‘Zungguzungguguzungguzeng’; Magma; and Dylan parodies such as ‘Like a Dribbling Fram’ by Race Marbles, ‘Bob’ by Weird Al Yankovic and ‘Blues in Bob Minor’ by Robert Wyatt.
I included some of these in a nonsense mashup video I made to promote the book: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HzDuLgPjeJw.
That's amazing! I'm gonna have to read your book for sure. International gibberishness is a subcategory for sure -- most of the western references are English gobbledygook I would imagine. I was reminded of Sigur Ros who took Icelandic and made their own Hopelandic variation. I did read that Adrian Belew was inspired by 'I Zimbra' when he titled 'Thela Hun Ginjeet.'
I'll take a look at your video. Is the book available to order?
Thanks Steve. Here's the publisher page: https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/sound-of-nonsense-9781501324543/. Also should be available via other online retailers. I'd be happy to send over a PDF of the chapter on pop if you like. The other chapters are about how sound adds sense (or nonsense) to nonsense literature and about sound poetry.
I'd love a PDF Richard! I'll check out the book too, but it would be great to jump to the pop chapter. Thanks!
Enjoy the Beat show!
It was a great show! They were surprisingly tight for a first show of the tour. Here’s a clip I found of Indiscipline.
https://youtu.be/xJYkVwdQoeA?si=gZK4NSJ4kaydkLc7
Thx!
An old favorite: We Go Together from the Grease soundtrack.
Definitely. What was it about '50s/'60s doowop and R&B that led to so many great gibberishy songs? I'm betting that Richard Elliott, who commented above and wrote a book on this topic (!) has a chapter on this.
"Do-Wa-Diddy-Diddy-Dum-Diddy-Do'
For sure. That will be on the playlist. If I chose a top 10 it would be in there. That era of music had a lot of those kinds of songs.
The Chips' original is quite fun, with "Kenrod" Johnson spitting out the novelty lyrics and those weird spoken breaks ("Two pieces of bread and WISH you had some meat!").
Dammit. I thought the Chipmunks song had finally left my head and then I saw the link to the previous post … and it’s BACK! 🤪🤪
Won't Rubber Biscuit drown it out? Or maybe MMMBop?
I gave MMMBop a try - watched the video - and all that did was remind me how much I hated the song and video (not exactly ‘November Rain’ production values) at the time!
I just thought of one. A few years ago I learned about the 70s Italian musician who wrote a song based on the American rock songs dominating the radio, without being in English: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisencolinensinainciusol
That’s hilarious! I was not familiar with him or the song. But from the 20 second snippet on Wikipedia, I can tell it’s a banger.
It's genuinely great: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VsmF9m_Nt8
[Edit] The comments on the YT video are hilarious.
"And it still absolutely blows my mind. My brain is screaming he's speaking English, but it is literally dying trying to process it."
or
"He can actually sing in Doctor’s Handwriting."
I completely forgot about Parliament Funkadelic/George Clinton! This one for sure will go on the playlist. There’s a lot of concocted words in the Clintonverse.
https://youtu.be/Q1Y-XZ3Jl5Q?si=5ly0bCxmKhSHQvk-
The Key & Peele funk parody is great: https://youtu.be/ccvB00h6EnI?si=ar2qJ6xWNiej1oRm
That Key and Peele sketch is essentially the pinnacle of everything I’m writing about in this piece. Mic drop.
It might not fit here, but I'm a big fan of Sigur Rós, and while many of their lyrics are sung in Icelandic, they also created sounds that they call their own language, Hopelandic. Gibberish or just beautiful noise?
I actually considered Sigur Ros, Mallie. I just couldn't think of anything that was particularly earwormy. Do you have a Hopelandic suggestion that I could include in the playlist?
Here's another: "Wooly Bully" by Sam the Sham (Domingo Samudio) 1964
Yep. I could choose 50 songs from that era -- it seems to be the peak time for gibberishy lyrics in pop songs.
True dat.
Great list!
I would agree with your sentiments about the Cocteau Twins and Dead Can Dance. The closest to an ear worm from either I can think of would be Sugar Hiccup… but mostly because of the non gibberish lol
Ha - I think earworms tend to appear mostly from the pop songbook. Though any melody can do it for me. I'm not sure I've had any ambient earworms. At least none that I can remember. But the theme to Chariots of Fire? Many, many times.
Ooh yes! That theme for me too!!
another good one!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Gc4QTqslN4
I actually considered that one, but thought it was too much in the vein of rubber biscuit. So good though