Louie Louie

The Tip of the Tongue and the Teeth

Louie Louie by The Kingsmen

"FBI investigated this song."

That's true, and I feel like it needs some explaining.

The FBI received letters from angry parents about supposed indecencies heard in the song. For some reason that I cannot find anywhere online, these concerns warranted a full-on investigation into the lyrics of Louie Louie.

The governor of Indiana even called it "pornographic" (x).

It seems like extreme censorship to get the FBI involved over the possibility of an f-bomb. Shouldn't they have been more concerned with H-bombs at that point? I can't imagine if these 1950s mothers heard the explicit lyrics in some songs today.

Apparently the FBI played it "backwards and forwards, they played it at different speeds, they spent a lot of time on it - but it was indecipherable at any speed." Yet - and this is unbelievable to me - they never interviewed lead vocalist Jack Ely (x).

Ladies and gentlemen, your tax dollars at work.

The FBI eventually realized that The Kingsmen had simply made a new version of a song that had been covered multiple times, and they found that the lyrics are much clearer in the original 1955 version by Richard Berry, "written and performed in the style of a Jamaican ballad" (x).

Those lyrics can be found here if you're interested.

The only reason this got blown so far out of proportion is that The Kingsmen wanted to record the track as cheaply as possible, and the $50, one-take recording session resulted in unintelligible lyrics.

The single actual obscenity is at 0:54 where you can just barely make out the drummer yelling f***! after he drops his drumstick. Coincidentally, this is the one thing that the FBI never pointed out (x).

Thanks for joining me on that wild ride. Gotta love it when there's such a dramatic story behind a catchy, feel-good bop.

Overview:

Genre:
Rock/R&B

Favorite Lyrics: 
aslghoaiwnrij
jwekjaiw.

Verdict:
poor diction choices