Every once in a while, along comes a pop song whose sheer stupidity is truly staggering. And then, on top of that, it sells four million copies worldwide.
--Jane Stevenson, Toronto Sun
Infectious, annoying
dance song with music by Maurizio Lobina,
lyrics by Jeffrey Jay.
The song, first released in 1999 by the Netherlands' own Stay-C, and it became a hit in South Africa, South America and Japan. When the Italian trio Eiffel 65, who wrote it, released their version later in the year, the song climbed the pop charts in Italy (at one point it was being played somewhere in the country every two and half minutes), Germany, The U.K., France, Spain, Holland, Sweden, Finland, Austria, Switzerland, Mexico, Brazil, Canada, Singapore, Taiwan and Hong Kong. In 2000, it hit the U.S. charts, and the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences saw fit to nominate the song for a Grammy award for Best Dance Recording, although they do admit the song is "cloying." Here, for the purposes of review and discussion, is the first verse:
Yo listen up, here's a story
About a little guy that lives in a blue world
And all day and all night and everything he sees
Is just blue like him inside and outside
Blue his house with a blue little window
And a blue Corvette and everything is blue for him
And his self and everybody around
'Cause he ain't got nobody to listen to...
"It means that everybody, at a certain point in their lives, ends up having a
lifestyle. So you choose everything with that lifestyle -- that's your colour. That's exactly what 'blue' means. When you hear the lyrics that say, 'I have a blue house with a blue window, blue is the colour of all that I wear,' it's talking about someone who is seeing and choosing things with his lifestyle."
-singer/
lyricist Jeffrey Jay
So is it this kind of social commentary that made the song such a hit? Not really. This Ohrwurm really hangs on its insipid but eminently danceable chorus (best sung through a vocoder):
I'm blue, da ba dee da ba dai da ba dee da ba dai
Da ba dee da ba dai da ba dee da ba dai
Da ba dee da ba dai da ba dee da ba dai
Da ba dee da ba dai (repeat)
(Apparently, in Scotland, the lyrics were
misheard as "I'm blue da ba dee I will die in
Aberdeen" (
Am I Right Web site. <http://www.amiright.com/misheard/stories/story_e.shtml> (20 October 2003))
Celestino Gianotti directed the music video for Eiffel 65.
CST Approved