Today I probably listened to “Louie Louie” by the Kingsmen for the billionth time.
This 1963 song has become a rock and roll staple, immortalized in the 1978 film “Animal House”.
The beauty of this record is the recording quality is so poor, it was recorded live in one take, and the lyrics are deliberately slurred so nobody knows exactly what they’re singing.
The best anyone can decipher is:
Louie Louie, whoa baby, we gotta go, ya ya ya.
People have been dissecting for decades whether or not the second verse is:
Every night at ten I lay her again.
The Kingsmen performed well into the 80s, usually for drunken college crowds, with everybody drunkenly singing along. But NOBODY knows what they’re singing. Not the band, not the audience, nobody. Of course, everyone is too drunk to notice. That’s the whole idea! Brilliant!
The song is so moronically simple, anyone who ever played in a band can do this.
And for the rest of eternity, they will try.