Okay
sonny, sit down and listen up. I'm sick of listening to your so-called
"music" with your so-called "lyrics" that are supposed to inspire me.
Real music died in 1979, dammit, and no amount of
angsty
teen glitter dildo pop can convince me otherwise. Back in my day,
boy, we had lyrics that made a man want to get up and change the world--because
the song was telling him to, DAMMIT, and that's just the way it was.
In 1961, a young man named
Barry Mann wrote a song with
Gerry Goffin
that epitomized an entire era of American life.
American Pie don't
got nothing on this bad boy. The lyrics were so inspired, so imaginative,
SO PERFECT as to make even the common gutter animal want to get up and serve
his country. Add to this a backbeat that makes
Stairway to Heaven
look like
child's play. Statistics don't lie--93% of left-handed
Americans without noses consider this song their personal anthem, using it
to guide them through the dark times of life without olfactory senses.
Without further ado, the lyrics (helpfully explained by yours truly for those of you too stupid to appreciate fine music):
I'd like to thank the guy
Who wrote the song
That made my baby
Fall in love with me
Here, we can clearly see Mann and Goffin paying homage to themselves with
an amazingly prophetic sense of
irony. They KNEW, you see, that this
song was going to motivate a generation of young women to embrace
free love
and usher in the '60s, and so they
pat themselves on the
back for deftly engineering a
cultural revolution.
Who put the bomp
In the bomp bah bomp bah bomp?
Who put the ram
In the rama lama ding dong?
Who put the bop
In the bop shoo bop shoo bop?
Who put the dip
In the dip da dip da dip?
Who was that man?
I'd like to shake his hand
He made my baby
Fall in love with me (yeah!!)
And here it is, the
crux of the matter. Who DID put the bomp in the
bomp bah bomp ba bomp? Was it the same guy who put the ram in the rama
lama ding dong? Before these hard-hitting questions were overshadowed
in 1963 by the assassination of
John F. Kennedy, they piqued the curiosity of America and were the topic of
dinner table conversations
across our great land.
When my baby heard
"Bomp bah bah bomp "
"Bah bomp bah bomp bah bomp bomp"
Every word went right into her heart
And when she heard them singin'
"Rama lama lama lama"
"Rama ding dong"
She said we'd never have to part
So
GENIUS!
PURE GENIUS! This verse explores just how the magical
phrase, "bomp bah bah bomp," created enduring love in couples and orgies:
- One's baby hears "bomp bah bah bomp/bah bomp bah bomp bah bomp bomp"
- One's baby hears "rama lama lama lama rama ding dong"
- One's baby knows that they will never have to part.
Also note the brilliant segue--"so"--at the end of the verse. My 9th
grade English teacher told me that transitions between paragraphs are important,
and the Mann/Goffin creative powerhouse clearly learned this lesson and quite
adeptly noted it could be applied to music as well as prose.
Who put the bomp
In the bomp bah bomp bah bomp?
Who put the ram
In the rama lama ding dong?
Who put the bop
In the bop shoo bop shoo bop?
Who put the dip
In the dip da dip da dip?
Who was that man?
I'd like to shake his hand
He made my baby
Fall in love with me (yeah!!)
One's first impression might be that this is a simple duplication of the
song's chorus, but one would be WRONG and EXCRUCIATINGLY STUPID. The
repetition here is actually the English translation of the American lyrics--for
our friends in the
United Kingdom.
Each time that we're alone
Boogity boogity boogity
Boogity boogity boogity shoo
Sets my baby's heart all aglow
And everytime we dance to
Dip da dip da dip
Dip da dip da dip
She always says she loves me so
So
Mann and Goffin, knowing that 1961 America was still quite prudish, had to
really work to get the obligatory--and I would venture to say necessary--pornographic
content into their song without causing an uproar. But rest assured,
the song managed to hit the airwaves without the censors ever catching on
to what "boogity boogity boogity boogity boogity boogity shoo" was
really referring to (what Mann and Goffin do to each other when they're alone).
Who put the bomp
In the bomp bah bomp bah bomp?
Who put the ram
In the rama lama ding dong?
Who put the bop
In the bop shoo bop shoo bop?
Who put the dip
In the dip da dip da dip?
Who was that man?
I'd like to shake his hand
He made my baby
Fall in love with me (yeah!!)
I bet you're trying to upstage me by pointing out that this is the
Australian-translated chorus? WRONG.
(It's the
New Zealand translation. Look closely--the subtle (yeah!!) at the end of the verse is the
dead giveaway.)
I would like to present, as a special BONUS, the pronounciation hints from
the website (http://lyrics.coolfreepages.com/Lyrics/1961/801961.html) from
which I stole the actual lyrics:
"while most backups do a series of 4 (bomp bah bomp bah bomp, rama lama ding dong, dip da
dip da dip, boogity boogity shoo)'s and one solo backup is singing "oh-oh-oh"'s> END OF
MIXTURE
Backups conclude with 3 more (bomp bah bomp bah bomp, rama lama ding dong, dip da dip da
dip, boogity boogity shoo)'s with that same soloist overlaying "oh-oh-oh"s
FADE in the middle of the second one."