“De Do Do Do De Da Da Da” by The Police

"De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da" came off Zenyatta Mondatta in 1980, the lead single in the US and the second in the UK, and it's the Police playing a smart trick on their audience. Sting wrote it as a comment on why people fall for simple-sounding songs, and when critics dismissed the chorus as baby talk, he argued they'd missed the point entirely: the song is about banality and how words get abused.

Musically it's the trio at their most economical, Andy Summers' ringing guitar, Sting's bass and synthesizer and Stewart Copeland's crisp, jittery drums, all three chiming in on the backing vocals. They produced it with Nigel Gray. The idea stayed with them: the band re-cut it in 1986, though that version stayed in the vault until 1995.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.