Filler is stuff which is put in just to fill a gap; light-hearted 'human interest' pieces added to bulk out newspapers on a slow news day, tracks added to albums to bring them up to full length dropped into conversations, plaster added to a wall to fill a hole, phrases like 'you know what I mean?' - that kind of thing.
'I think this line's mostly filler'
- Willow Rosenberg, Once More, With Feeling
All but the most confident of speakers pepper their speech with filler, with different languages - and different demographics - characteristically making use of different sounds and words. Such utterances often sound odd or ridiculous to those accustomed to different filler sounds, but this is mainly a question of familiarity - there is nothing inherently stupider or less respectable about, like, the filler used by The Youth Of Today, compared to the, um, the hesitations of the older generation, or those of the, euh, French - tu vois?
Filler is also the name of a track by Teenage Fanclub, from the 1992 single What You Do To Me. Along with a song called B-Side and Life's a Gas (cover version), the title lends a sort of self-disparaging air to the EP, as if really they'd have been happier to just release What You Do To Me without any other songs to back it up. The track consists of what might easily be the longest drum solo ever committed to record which uses just a standard drum kit. That's it. Just drums. I like it.