Dear listeners,
In 1980, when the Police were working on their third album, Sting was thinking about nonsense.
“I was intrigued with why songs like that worked,” he recalled in a 1993 Q interview, citing such classics of pop gibberish as “Da Doo Ron Ron,” “Do Wah Diddy Diddy” and “Be Bop a Lula.” He decided it was “because they were totally innocent. They weren’t trying to tell you anything or distort your vision.” And so he felt inspired to compose his own entry into this canon of claptrap: “De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da.”
Silly as it sounds, nonsense is one of popular music’s most powerful and humbling equalizers. Even our greatest songwriters have found themselves mumbling meaningless phrases as place-holders before they arrive at their eventual lyrical profundities — or, as is the case on a few of the songs on today’s playlist, they become so attached to the mumblings that they leave them in the finished project.
There’s something strangely unifying about nonsense lyrics. They have the ability to transcend cultures, languages and genres in a kind of aural Esperanto. If no one can understand what a phrase like “De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da” means, doesn’t that also mean that anyone can?
What all of the songs on today’s playlist have in common is that their titles are complete nonsense. You’ll hear from the Beatles, the Crystals and the Feelies, plus — I swear! — a handful of artists whose names don’t start with “the.”
Sometimes the world just feels oppressively logical, doesn’t it? So consider this an invitation, in the words of one of the artists represented on this playlist, to stop making sense.
Lindsay
Listen along while you read.
1. Phil Collins: “Sussudio”
Who — or what, exactly — is “Sussudio,” the subject of this jubilant 1985 Phil Collins hit? Even Collins himself isn’t sure. As he explained on a 1997 episode of “VH1: Storytellers,” “Sussudio” was a nonsensical word that popped out of his mouth when he was improvising melodies atop a drum machine beat. Later, Collins recalled, “I went back and tried to find another word that scanned as well as ‘Sussudio,’ and I couldn’t find one.” And so he decided to give one of the characters in this tale of a schoolboy’s crush a very peculiar name. As a result, Collins quipped, “I’m sure there are children all over the world with the name Sussudio, so I apologize for that.”
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
2. The Crystals: “Da Doo Ron Ron (When He Walked Me Home)”
According to Mick Brown’s Phil Spector biography “Tearing Down the Wall of Sound,” the title of this 1963 Crystals hit, which Spector produced and wrote with Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich, was “a piece of gobbledygook made up on the spot until a proper lyric could be written, but Spector liked it so much that he decided to keep it.” Even if it is technically meaningless, something about the heartbeat thump of the phrase “da doo ron ron” is also extraordinarily expressive, evoking the way that love can leave one breathless and dizzily tongue-tied.
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
3. The Feelies: “Fa Cé-La”
Though some people have guessed that it’s a mangling of the Italian verb “farcela” or a riff on “Do-Re-Mi,” the Feelies guitarist Bill Million has admitted that the title of this nervy, sing-songy tune from the Feelies’ 1980 post-punk classic “Crazy Rhythms” is actually “a nonsensical sort of title that grew out of the chorus.”
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
4. The Police: “De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da”
This second single from a 1980 Police album with a made-up title (“Zenyatta Mondatta”) is, according to Sting, “an articulate song about being inarticulate.” Though he has defended the song against those who think its chorus is merely baby talk, he did admit in a 1993 interview that “a lot of kids like it. In fact, my son came up with it. I’ve never paid him — so that’s another possible lawsuit.”
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
5. Talking Heads: “I Zimbra”
Though the song was released in 1979, the lyrics to this lurching, cryptic leadoff track from Talking Heads’ third album, “Fear of Music,” were written in 1916 by the German poet Hugo Ball, author of the “Dada Manifesto” and a founder of the storied Cabaret Voltaire. The chanted rhythms of “I Zimbra,” which features backing vocals from the album’s producer, Brian Eno, are adapted from one of Ball’s so-called “sound poems,” “Gadji beri bimba.” Stop making sense indeed.
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
6. Trio: “Da Da Da I Don’t Love You You Don’t Love Me Aha Aha Aha”
Speaking of Dada(da): The German new-wave group Trio embraced simplicity as an aesthetic philosophy, as evidenced by this delightfully deadpan ditty. Even though Trio recorded different versions in German, English and French, the proudly uncomplicated and linguistically universal chorus of “Da Da Da” is what helped the song become a hit in many different countries, including the United States. (It was a cultural sensation again in 1997, when it was used in a wildly popular Volkswagen commercial.) If you need a three-minute moment of Zen in your day, do yourself a favor and watch this music video.
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
7. Jane Birkin: “Di Doo Dah”
Penned by her then-partner Serge Gainsbourg, this breathy title track from Jane Birkin’s 1973 debut album uses a lilting nonsensical phrase to evoke a kind of shrugging, French-girl cool.
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
8. Dizzy Gillespie: “Oop-Pop-a-Da”
We certainly can’t talk nonsense lyrics without hearing some scat — that “silly language without any reason or rhyme,” as Cab Calloway puts it in his song extolling the virtues of vocal improvisation. But scat does have its own sophisticated logic (or illogic), as some of its greatest practitioners, like Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan and Dizzy Gillespie — who, on this 1950 single puts his own spin on a Babs Brown composition — have shown with precision and flair.
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
9. The Beatles: “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da”
While I can’t say this Paul McCartney tune is one of my favorite Beatles songs, I don’t share the utter distain that some people (including, perhaps, John Lennon and George Harrison) have for “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da.” McCartney lifted the titular phrase from his friend, the Nigerian conga musician Jimmy Scott (“he sounded like a philosopher to me”), who later tried to claim a writing credit on the song. “I sent him a check in recognition of that fact later,” McCartney recalled in 2018, “because even though I had written the whole song and he didn’t help me, it was his expression.”
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
10. Adriano Celentano: “Prisencolinensinainciusol”
Finally, if you don’t know this one, you’re in for a treat. Here’s la madre of all nonsense songs, the Italian musician Adriano Celentano’s daffy 1972 hit “Prisencolinensinainciusol” (if you say it loud enough, you’ll always sound precocious), which Celentano wrote to emulate what he thought English sounded like to a non-English speaker. As goofy as it sounds, though, Celentano said in a 2012 NPR interview that his intentions were quite serious: He wanted to create a song that “would have as its theme the inability to communicate. And to do this, I had to write a song where the lyrics didn’t mean anything.” Makes perfect sense to me.
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
The Amplifier Playlist
“10 Gloriously Nonsensical Songs of Pop Gibberish” track list Track 1: Phil Collins, “Sussudio” Track 2: The Crystals, “Da Doo Ron Ron (When He Walked Me Home)” Track 3: The Feelies, “Fa Cé-La” Track 4: The Police, “De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da” Track 5: Talking Heads, “I Zimbra” Track 6: Trio, “Da Da Da I Don’t Love You You Don’t Love Me Aha Aha Aha” Track 7: Jane Birkin, “Di Doo Dah” Track 8: Dizzy Gillespie, “Oop-Pop-a-Da” Track 9: The Beatles, “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da” Track 10: Adriano Celentano, “Prisencolinensinainciusol”
Read past editions of the newsletter here.
If you’re enjoying what you’re reading, please consider recommending it to others. They can sign up here.
Have feedback? Ideas for a playlist? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at [email protected].
Lindsay Zoladz is a pop music critic for The Times and writes the subscriber-only music newsletter The Amplifier.
The post 10 Gloriously Nonsensical Songs of Pop Gibberish appeared first on New York Times.
