https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4V1p1dM3snQ
Jack Ely, lead singer of The Kingsmen on their classic hit single "Louie Louie," died Monday at age 71. The song is not only one of the greatest party songs of all time; it is also infamous for Ely's garbled vocals that led to an FCC investigation after Indiana governor Matthew Welsh declared it "pornographic" for its mangled mouthings. The song hit #2 in December 1963 and stayed there for 6 weeks (behind The Singing Nun!), and the FCC later declared that the words were "unintelligible at any speed." (In fact, the only nasty thing is about it is a garbled F-bomb dropped by the drummer at the :56 mark.) While the song's Cookie Monster-isms like "me gotta go" and "think of girl, constantly" weren't exactly poetic, a story on Yahoo! this morning about Mariah Carey's new song "Infinity" got me contemplating lyrics in general. The song's words, which the article's author interpreted as a slam at ex Nick Cannon, probably wouldn't look so stupid if they weren't printed. Seeing as I am now 40 and have earned my crankiness, they seemed so ridiculous as to remind me how the quality of pop declined somewhere around 1989. Let's see, there's "Name hold weight like kilos," which sounds like caveman speak: "Ug club bird for din-din." And then there's the baby talk of "Ain't no come again (duh)/ That's the story, ain't no happy ends." My end is happy right now because I started the day with a good bowel purging, but I doubt that's what Mariah means. I did listen to the song, which I rate a C+ for tolerability. At least you can avoid the trademark Carey air raid siren shriek by stopping it 30 seconds from the end. R.I.P. Jack Ely. Here's "Louie Louie":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4V1p1dM3snQ
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Walburgh's BlogMostly retro, mainly music, but generally whatever's on my mind. Archives
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