Posted on 11/18/2023 6:22:49 AM PST by Krosan
ZZ Top - Manic Mechanic (That’s Right! That’s Right! That’s Right!)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LoxlrDmJJqM
I once had a big ugly satellite dish and could pull in foreign programming. For the soap operas, I had zero idea what was being said. But, it was VERY easy to follow the plot.
Perhaps the best American song that used gibberish words was the closing theme to WKRP.
https://youtu.be/MFcA8gA4nD8?si=F6JH2D7eC1iKZn-M
“The closing theme, “WKRP In Cincinnati End Credits”, was a hard rock number composed and performed by Jim Ellis, an Atlanta musician who recorded some of the incidental music for the show. According to people who attended the recording sessions, Ellis didn’t yet have lyrics for the closing theme, so he sang nonsense words to give an idea of how it would sound. Wilson decided to use the words anyway, since he felt that it would be funny to use lyrics that were deliberately gibberish, as a satire on the incomprehensibility of many rock songs. Also, because CBS always had an announcer talking over the closing credits, Wilson knew that no one would actually hear the closing theme lyrics anyway.”
Definitely not the norm however. The vast majority of pop songs in the U.S. are sung in English.
Other examples of nonsense lyrics that got left in a song is "Sussidio" by Phil Collins, "De Doo Doo Doo De Da Da Da" by The Police, and "Ob-La-Di Ob-La-Do" by The Beatles.
Some rock songs have comprehensible lyrics but the singer sings them so badly that nobody has any idea what the lyrics are. Kurt Cobain of Nirvana is a good example and his singing style was famously imitated by Weird Al Yankovich.
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