A lot of what I learned about music and songwriting came from studying Neil Sedaka’s songs during my obsession from ages 8 to 10. One observation was that many songs have an introduction that doesn’t repeat during the main body of the song (but might repeat at the end).
“Wo wo wo wo, yeah yeah yeah, hey little devil!”
“Tra-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la, happy birthday sweet sixteen!”
As I discovered more about old-time music (or, as I called it then, contemporary music), I saw that Neil Sedaka didn’t invent the song intro.
For example, “My love must be a kind of blind love,” etc., opens “I Only Have Eyes for You,” and I’ve found song intros on songs dating back to the 1920s, tunes like “Ain’t We Got Fun,” “Ramona” and “Stardust.”
In a world full of “Rama Lama Ding Dongs” and “Dip dip dip dip mum mum mum mum mums,” Sedaka did put his own spin on the song intro with the third hit in my obsession, “Breaking Up Is Hard To Do.”
That song, of course, begins, “Come-a come-a down, doobie do down down,” and as far as I know, the incomprehensible song intro was born. (Or maybe it traces back to “Bomma bom bom, ma bomma bom bom, buh buh bomma bom bom a-danga dang dang, a dinga dang ding blue moon.”) Sedaka took it a step further by making the repeated “down doobie do” a part of the song’s background rhythm.
And for his next trick, he took incomprehensible to a new level with the opening of “Next Door To An Angel”:
“Dooba pah pah poh do-bop she down down, dooba pah pah poh do-bop she down down.”
(Tangent: Perhaps this musical trend kept evolving to its ultimate expression in “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida.”)
I have little more to add except that nonsense words were a part of early rock music’s charm. In the immortal words of Barry Mann, “When I say dip da dip da dip da dip, you know I mean it from the bottom of my boogity boogity boogity shoop.”
