As someone who writes songs in his spare time, I completely understand how difficult it is sometimes to come up with lyrics to a song that's otherwise totally finished. It can be very tempting to just fill up the melody with a bunch of nonsense and call it a day. Here are 10 songs where the songwriters did just that and got away with it.
1. Simon & Garfunkel - "The Boxer" (1970)
If you've written a song with as many words as "The Boxer", you've earned the right to throw a couple of "lie la lie's" in there. Although the melody in the verses is beautifully written, it is very dense, so these poppy choruses are quite welcome.
2. Fleetwood Mac - "Second Hand News" (1977)
The people who prefer Fleetwood Mac's rock era to its pop era are either rockist elitists or in denial, because all Lindsey Buckingham needed for a catchy chorus was the word "bow" and a three-note melody.
3. Misfits - "Some Kinda Hate" (1978)
As great a songwriter as Glenn Danzig is, he's not really one for lyricism. The chorus to this early Misfits classic is simply "woooooah" with a few throwaway phrases in between ("and it's a woah... I said woah...baby it's a woah...").
4. The Smiths - "The Headmaster Ritual" (1985)
For some reason Morrissey loves yodeling, even though he's not that great at it, but he uses the technique to great effect in the chorus to the opening track from Meat is Murder.
5. Pavement - "Cut Your Hair" (1994)
The chorus to Pavement's only hit song consisted of guitarist Scott Kannberg (aka Spiral Stairs) singing a quirky falsetto melody that was clearly out of his range. Maybe if he did that more often, they would have had more hits.
6. The Promise Ring - "Why Did We Ever Meet?" (1997)
The Promise Ring is no stranger to making no damn sense whatsoever (what exactly does "Delaware are you aware of air supply" mean?), so whenever they choose to break out the "ba-bas" and "doo-doos", it's pretty much the only thing that does make sense.
7. Joanna Newsom - "Peach, Plum, Pear" (2004)
Joanna Newsom is famous for writing songs that are 12 minutes long because they have so many verses, but the poppiest moment in any song she's ever written is the wordless chorus to this track off her debut album. It might have ended up being a hit if she hadn't played it on a harpsichord, but probably not.
8. Devendra Banhart - "Santa Maria da Feira" (2005)
Being of Venezuelan descent, Devendra Banhart occasionally likes to sing in Spanish, but even though he has two languages to choose from when writing lyrics, he still chose "la-di-da" for the chorus to this South American-style folk song.
9. Kanye West - "Black Skinhead" (2013)
"Black Skinhead" proved to be one of Kanye's most lyrically provocative songs in years (just look at that title) but the part of the song that gets stuck in everyone's head is that heavily distorted opening hook.
WARNING: Explicit Lyrics (obviously)
What are some of your favorite songs with wordless hooks? Sound off in the comments section below!
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