The lifecycle of a song begins long before audiences hear it for the first time. It starts with the initial source of inspiration, whether it’s a dream or a conversation with a stranger. The songwriter then fleshes out that idea, poeticizing it and pulling it together in a notes app or on a piece of paper. The song goes through drafts, live shows, studio sessions, and collaboration with band members and producers before reaching finalization.
Afterward, it might be pressed to wax or uploaded onto streaming services, marking a relinquishment of ownership on the songwriter’s part. Regardless of the original inspiration or personal meaning behind the composition, audiences are free to interpret the track for themselves, often imposing their own meanings on it. This is the beauty of songwriting, but not all musicians revel in the subjectivity that comes with releasing their music. Some artists struggle with the misinterpretation of their lyrics, especially when it affects their perceived songwriting abilities. For Sting, there was one song he penned for The Police that he believed was “grossly misunderstood,” as he once told NME.
Sting’s Misunderstood Song Lyrics: A Case Study in “De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da”
The Police were one of the biggest bands in the new wave scene, with Sting serving as the driving creative force behind both the microphone and the writing sessions. He penned the majority of the band’s biggest hits, including the reggae-infused ‘Roxanne’, the tender ‘Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic’, and the eerie ‘Every Breath You Take’.
Sting’s songs were generally straightforward lyrically, but there was one song that got lost in translation with audiences. In the winter of 1980, following the success of ‘Don’t Stand So Close To Me’, The Police unveiled ‘De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da’. It was a classic Police song, driven by Sting’s voice and distinctive instrumentation, but the lyrics confused some critics.
“De do do do, de da da da, is all I want to say to you,” Sting sings in the chorus, “De do do do, de da da da, they’re meaningless and all that’s true.” According to the songwriter, the song was misunderstood by reviewers who thought the chorus imitated baby talk. “The lyrics are about banality, about the abuse of words,” he clarified.
This becomes clearer when you listen to Sting’s words in the verses as well as the chorus. “Poets, priests and politicians have words to thank for their positions,” the frontman sings in the second verse, “Words that scream for your submission, and no one’s jamming their transmission.”
The gibberish in the chorus isn’t just Sting engaging in baby talk. Instead, he’s using nonsensical sounds to comment on our tendency to accept words and phrases that sound pleasant without giving them deeper consideration. In fact, the response to the song, which barely looked past the choruses, almost served his point.
Rather than considering why Sting filled his chorus with “de do do do”s and “de da da da”s, audiences simply assumed the song mimicked the sounds babies make and lacked deeper meaning. However, a closer listen reveals the true intent behind Sting’s misunderstood song lyrics, making it easy to see why he felt frustrated with audience responses.
The subjectivity of music remains one of the medium’s greatest strengths, but sometimes it requires audiences to look beyond the surface level, especially with a Police tune like this one.
