When she's not quietly, politely, and respectfully driving a stake through the heart of the Obama campaign, neoneocon dallies with a certain number of odd obsessions. Recently she was on a Jello Mold binge, but seems to have turned her attention of late to ancient pop culture. In that capacity, you might want to take a trip through some of the worst songs of decades gone by that are embedded in her essay, Whatever happened to really silly pop songs?
Most of the greats are there: “Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini,” "Purple People Eater," "Monster Mash" and others just as odious. But she misses the Godzilla of silly pop songs, "Louie Louie."
"Louie Louie" is the ultimate "silly pop song" for two main reasons: 1) It is a highly infectious ear-worm that heard once seems to gnaw its way to your brain stem. 2) Nobody in the history of the world really knows what the hell the lyrics are. Until now.
Click and see, at last, the lyrics synched to the song as put together by a great human being; one who had to have subjected himself to untold excruciating repetitions of "Louie Louie" to create this video. He probably died from the effort murmuring "Hey gotta go now," but he did not live in vain.
Posted by Vanderleun at August 21, 2008 12:54 PM | TrackBackI'm shocked. Shocked, I tellya!
Posted by: Dan at August 21, 2008 6:00 PMProbably the greatest silly pop song of all time. And somebody screwed up and missed a cue right after the end of the guitar solo, causing an extra drum riff which adds enormously to the song's appeal. A happy accident indeed. (I'm not a musician so I don't know the proper terminology.)
An earworm, yes, but it sure beats the hell out of most other earworms I've encountered.
One time, I mentioned to a friend, "I've had Song X running through my head all day."
Without missing a beat, he replied, "I'd shoot it off."
Posted by: rickl at August 21, 2008 8:42 PMThat song had actual intelligible words? Who knew!
Posted by: pdwalker at August 21, 2008 8:53 PMI'm grateful to the guy who sacrificed his ears and his sanity so that we could know the lyrics, but I remember reading many years ago that the original lyrics as published were quite different, and not G-rated. A late-1960s/early-1970s book, "The Poetry of Rock", if I remember correctly, had the lyrics going something like, "Louie, Louie, get her way down low..." There were other fairly lewd references as well, lyrics that would not have made AM radio at the time. I don't know if the book had it right or not, but it sounds plausible to me.
Posted by: waltj at August 22, 2008 7:20 AM"It is impossible to speak in such a way that you cannot be misunderstood." -- Karl Popper N.B.: Comments are moderated to combat spam and may not appear immediately. Comments that exceed the obscenity or stupidity limits will be either edited or expunged.
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