Louie Louie

"Louie Louie"
Song by Richard Berry
A-side	"You Are My Sunshine"
Released	April 1957
Recorded	April 1956
Studio	Hollywood Recorders
Genre	Rhythm and blues
Length	2:09
Label	Flip 321
Songwriter(s)	Richard Berry
Richard Berry singles chronology
"Take the Key" (1956) "Louie Louie" (1957) "Sweet Sugar You" (1957)

Louie Louie is a rhythm and blues song written and composed by American musician Richard Berry (no relation to ol' Chuck) in 1955, recorded in 1956, and released in 1957. The simple song tells, in simple verse–chorus form, the first-person story of a "lovesick sailor's lament to a bartender about wanting to get back home to his girl". It's a pretty unknown but still great R&B song that can go toe-to-toe with the greats, and it is one of Richard Berry's most well known songs. Why is this? Well, look no further to than northwest, to Portland. No, not the Maine one.

YOU ARE ENTERING HELL⌄

You're not turning back? Well, damn, okay.

...

No? Really?

...

We all know this is a stupid song, right? No need for a dramatic introduction.

...

I heard UnNews has some cool stories.

...

You, <insert name here>, are a sad, strange little man

...

You are getting VERY sleepy...

The Kingsmen version

"Louie Louie"
Single by The Kingsmen
from the album The Kingsmen in Person
B-side	"Haunted Castle"
Released	June 1963
Recorded	April 6, 1963
Studio	Northwestern Inc.
Genre	Garage rock, proto-punk, Rhythm and blues
Length	2:42
Label	Jerden 712
Songwriter(s)	Richard Berry
Producer(s)	Ken Chase and Jerry Denon
The Kingsmen singles chronology
"Louie Louie" (1963) "Money (not Pink Floyd)" (1964)

"Louie Louie", the version that we all know, was first made when The Kingsmen, a rock and roll group that nobody knew due to the fact that they were still upset about Buddy Holly dying in a plane crash or whatever the hell they talk about on American Pie. It's too long. The one-hour session was recorded by Ken Chase, who coincidentally also owned a teen night club down the street where they were playing, uhh, I dunno, Phil Spector. The Kingsmen's lead vocalist, Jack Ely, unintentionally reintroduced Berry's original stop-time rhythm of 1-2-3, 1-2, 1-2-3, instead of the 1-2-3-4 on an earlier northwestern record by The Wailers. But let's be completely honest, we're not trying to discover the Rosetta Stone here, so just forget about that.

Rumors reveal that everyone in the band had just come out of a real crazy college party and had gotten very, very drunk. When they came into the studio trying to replicate the Wailers' sound, it came out, as Chase put it "probably the worst song I've ever heard in my life.. It's not a real damn song. It's sloppy, unfinished, psychotic, bumbling, plain neurotic track that should've been kept inside the studio. But it just so happens that they wanted to put it on wax. So I guess forget about dignity.." Even after reasons from Chase and Denon, The Kingsmen went ahead and released it on a tiny little local label called Jerden. It just so happened to be picked up by a big big nationwide label named Wand, named so because the thinness of the disc was about the size of president Florence Greenberg's dick.

Contemporary reviews

Critics were not as nice to the song as people thought. Parents hated it, obviously, because parents hate change. Real reviewers however, were very skeptical of the album's sucess and feared a world in which autistic people made every song.

DJ Worcestershire had this to say about the single.

These guys are idiots, no question. I have never seen such a song that is so mindlessly brainrotting and so stupid that I'm adamant on doing a cartoon suicide right now. From the singer's slurry singing that sounds like a black guy trying to recalibrate his speech after being whipped seventeen times in a cotton field, those drums sounding like a 1800s recording of a hurricane, the guitar is like someone bused a man's intestines and played square dances with it so good that he has the same sound when he's playing guitar, which means that he bashes it against the wall in anger and tries to put it as music. The bass is unhearable over the trash, like a racoon you have to dig it, like really dig it. I don't dig this record, though. Don't get my words twisted, these guys are the worst. I fear a world where Cash Box is filled with these stupid songs made by paraplegic Haitians smacked in the head by a sledgehammer and kicked in the nuts so hard they're bubbling in the mouth, mixed in with the saliva to make testicle-spit particles that stink the room and poison everyone in the vicinity and make them stupid like them and start then reciting Mexican tunes and tune their guitar up to about the same as what was sawn on Wray's Rumble a few years ago, what not to do in a rock track.

Besides that inane ramble, most critics just said it in easy, concise words. Frederick Hernick had this to say back in Jan. 1964 for Record World:

It sucks.

Teenagers, however, being the blind followers that they always are, chimed in their two cents and got it to #2 on Billboard. The Kingsmen actually appeared on Ed Sullivan on 1964, in their premiere the microphone was bolted to the ceiling to redo the effect it got in the studio, as it was actually hanging for the ceiling, for reasons we don't know other than A wizard did it. The audience cheered so hard that they had to be silenced by being threatened that Sinatra was going to sing next if they didn't shut up. They obliged.

Cover versions

After the stupid yet stupidly catchy song spread like wildfire, bands were hungry to capitalize on it. The Beatles did a cover in 1966 in the same session that they recorded "Tomorrow Never Knows". Here are the supposed lyrics.

Lay down all thought surrender to the void..

Louie, Louie, Louie, come back..

Listen to the color of your dreams..

It sounds like blue, blue, blue..

Hustle on out of here...

*seagull sounds*

The Doors did a cover too, but was axed off their first album for being too juvenile. Here was the draft:

LOUIE LOUIE, SHE GET HIGH

OH YEAH, LOUIE SAILOR DELIGHTFUL!

LOUIE SAILOR DELIGHTFUL, I SAY LSD!

*organ solo*

I'M THE MODERN OEDIPUS REX, BABY!

LOUIE LOUIE LOUIE? MORE LIKE, FATHER BETTER BE KILLED

AND MOTHER BETTER BE..

*organ solo overlayed over Jim Morrison reading essay he made of him fucking his mother for 17 minutes*

TAKE ME HIGHER, BABY

LOUIE LOUIE LOUIE!!!!

*guitar solo*

MY END IS THE ONLY FRIEND, BEHIND LSD AND LITTLE GIRLS!!!

Black Sabbath did a cover of Louie Louie on their 1968 album they made before becoming a metal band filled with sunshine pop. That album was sadly wiped from everyone's mind when Ozzy Osbourne flew into the CIA (supposedly because of his powers after eating a bat head) and controlled everyone's mind chips implanted in their brain to forget it.

Hardcore punk band Black Flag covered it for their first album, Damaged, and actually made the cut, to the surprise of no one since the song was basically punk before it was bad. Here is the lyrics.

IF YOU GOT A PENCHANT FOR HAVING TO RUN

AMERICA IS BETTER WHEN EVERYONE GOT A GUN

AND IF YOU GOT A PENNY TO SPARE

WHY NOT SPEND IT ON KILLING A BEAR

LOUIE LOUIE!

If you understood anything on the actual record, however, you're a poser.

Cannibal Corpse had also recorded Louie Louie, but spiced it up for their Death Metal fans so it didn't come off as stupid.

Three nights and days I sailed the sea of blood...

Me think of grotesquely killing girl constantly...

Rip out her eyes, pluck out her skin...

Disembowel everything, wear her on my cock...

*super kool death metal guitar solo*

Actual lyrics

Teenagers have been circulating messages and papers and talking about the real lyrics to Louie Louie. The real answer? It really isn't known. Jack Ely says that he made it up 90%, and the 10% was the real lyrics. The real lyrics that Ely ad-libbed may be the most monstrous, disgusting things we ever heard, but does it really matter if the song already sucks? Ehh, maybe. Louie, Louie, am I right?

Cultural impact

...maybe when it played in the end credits of that Simpsons episode where Homer goes to college. __