In the mid to late 1990s, the U.S. music scene saw a boom of songs created by European dance artists that used English as a second language and became legitimate hits, despite not really making any literal sense. But there’s a history to nonsense in pop music, and we’re still seeing its influence on the Billboard charts today.
This week, NPR Music critic Ann Powers and editor Daoud Tyler-Ameen discuss an example of a gibberish song that took over the mainstream for a moment: “Blue” by Eiffel 65, from 1999.
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