History Main / Scatting

* The opening theme to ''Series/FraggleRock'' starts with Gobo (Jerry Nelson) and Wembley (Steve Whitmire) scatting, before the other Fraggles join in for the words.

* The music for the ''Series/SesameStreet'' segment "The Geometry of Circles", composes by Music/PhilipGlass of ''Film/{{Koyaanisqatsi}}'' fame, consists mainly of wordless choral chanting.

* Music/{{Hanson}}'s song "MMMBop".

* One part of ''VideoGame/EarthBound'' features a performance by the famous singer Venus, whose singing consists entirely of going "la la la".

* Music/{{Goldfrapp}}'s songs ''Voicething'', ''Slippage'', ''Oompa Radar'' and ''Felt Mountain''- although the last two have lyrics that are basically 'Do do do do do', ''Slippage'' has her clearly saying, 'La la la la la la la' and 'Oh, yeah' before [[CarefulWithThatAxe screaming.]]

* Ray Barretto's song ''Acid''.
* In a rather epic cross between this and {{Word Puree|Title}} TitleDrop and LoopedLyrics, the chorus of Ece Seçkin's ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2g3-Ba0NA5E Adeyyo]]''. ''Adeyyo lallaleyo adeyyo lallale…''.
* "The Great Gig In The Sky" from ''Music/TheDarkSideOfTheMoon'' by Music/PinkFloyd.
** "Pow R Toc H" from ''Music/ThePiperAtTheGatesOfDawn'' is mostly instrumental aside from a section of really strange scatting.

* Music/SigurRos have a name for their gibberish, ''Vonlenska'' (or ''Hopelandic'').

** In the parody video "[[https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwi8gdvUgd7SAhWN3oMKHQPBDJMQyCkIHjAA&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3D66gSvNeqevg&usg=AFQjCNGhpN9dxGKQi-68tMKxHyaupFGeSQ&sig2=AFo03-yKZj5rgXjuTJp45A The Greatest Hit of Disturbed]], ''all'' lyrics are replaced with "yuh-muh-nuh" and variations on it. David Drainman finds the video hilarious.

** Otherwise, lead singer David Byrne used the same method as Disturbed, singing nonsense over the band's instrumentals and then coming up with lyrics to fit. The title of ''Speaking In Tongues'' is a reference to this.

** Another Mike Patton project, Fantomas, plays this straight. Their self-titled debut features Patton singing on every track without ever uttering a single word. ''Suspended Animation,'' which came after, has him using his voice to emulate sound effects from UsefulNotes/TheGoldenAgeOfAnimation.

* Music/JeanMichelJarre's song 'Zoolookologie'. The whole "Zoolook" album, for that matter, what with all those voice samples.

* The instrumental version of Music/{{Cake}}'s ''Arco Arena''. No real lyrics, just John [=McCrea=] occasionally muttering something or interjecting with his usual {{Lyrical Tic}}s ("Yah!").

** In ''Music/AbbeyRoad'', 'Sun King' segues into 'Mean Mr. Mustard' with a lovely triplet of harmonically sung lines in some kind of mock-Italian.

* Chacarron Macarron, also known as the "Ualuealuealeuale" song, is a dance-esque song that's comprised entirely of...''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQ85cZS0_jY something]]''. The singer originally composed the song using the David Draiman method mentioned above -- he ''intended'' to write actual lyrics, but decided at some point that the mumbling sounded too funny to drop.

* Music/RobbieWilliams' song "Road To Mandalay" has a refrain consisting of him going "dah duh duh dum, da, duh, dum dum" a few times.

* Pendulous Skin by Mastodon has this. The vocals are so unclear that the band actually describes the song as an instrumental.

* "Godspeed" by BT, featuring Jan Johnston. "If, if, if, nyow nyow aah", and "uh hoooo, you you you". The vocables appear to be snippets from their earlier collaboration "Remember".

** And "It's A Fine Day" itself was a cover of Jane's song with the same name from 1983 (!).

** There are other Scatting song versions too, including Katy Perry's "Hot n Cold." Quite a number of the lyrics are also remarkably similar to the original.

* [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RGM0-G8x_pg Haru Mamburu]] by the Russian band Nogu Svelo! has "lyrics" made of vaguely English-like gibberish.
* [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZ2lWyTi0oY Bla Bla Bla]] by Gigi D'Agostino (ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin), and the refrain of [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZjP1Z8ffrbc&feature=related Elisir(Your Love)]].
* Music/{{Nirvana}}'s "Tourette's" from ''Music/InUtero'' has no lyrics, just lots of screaming that sounds vauguely like it might be lyrics. Of course, given that some people think all Nirvana lyrics sound like "[[IndecipherableLyrics garbled, vaguely word-like gibberish]]", many are convinced that is also true of this song, and that there are real lyrics there if you listen hard enough. There aren't. It's just gibberish.
** To make it worse, Kurt Cobain had habits of decending into this anyway. If you listen to a lot of the unreleased stuff on the "With The Lights Out" box set you'll know what I mean.

* Ghost Bath has officially no lyrics since Funeral, so you'll only listen to harsh screams.

** There's also a lot of it in Freddie Mercury's solo hit 'Living On My Own'.
* The refrains of many Eurodance and Bubble Gum Dance songs used this, such as "oh la oh la eh" (La Bouche's "Sweet Dreams"), "iai iai iai" (Smile.dk's "Butterfly"), "na na na na way-oh" (Alice Deejay's "Will I Ever"), "li da di da di da di" (Amber's "Sexual"), etc.

* Music/MyChemicalRomance has a new song ''called'' "Na Na Na (Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na)". Guess how the chorus goes.

* Music/{{Hanson}} song "MMMBop".
* John Zorn's famous Jazz {{deconstruction}} band Naked City featured Yamatsuka Eye of The Boredoms and Music/MikePatton (see above) doing everything ''except'' singing: screaming, crying, babbling, gurgling, screeching, howling, gargling, barking, snarling, croaking, growling and generally sounding like men possessed by demons.

** Trevor Rabin's ''90124'', a collection of old demo versions of songs he'd later record with Yes, included an excerpt of an acoustic version of "Owner Of A Lonely Heart" recorded before he'd really written any verse lyrics. Needless to say, it's sort of amusing to hear the first few lines rendered as "move yourself, ya da da da da da, ya da dada da da dada".

* "Played" by Mindless Self Indulgence features a part sung/shouted in gibberish.

* Music/LoreenaMcKennitt's [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iijklrtljnw Tango to Evora]] is like this, essentially "lalalala" repeated over and over.

* Ah Oh, a song by the Israeli band Gazoz, is about the band trying to write a song, but only coming up with a tune, but no words. The chorus is basically the band Scatting the tune.
** Similarly, Kaveret, an older and more well-known Gazoz band (that share some band members) have LuLu, another song with a Scatted chorus.
*** Kaveret also got שיר המחירון (The Price List Song). Na Na Na Na Na...
** an even better example will be Doda's (that had most of the same members as Gazoz, but a Different style) שקט שקט הגרסה הפחות משודרת (Quite Quite - The Less Aired Version) , is basically "Quite Quite" , but shorter and all the lines beside the first and the last are Scatting
*** they also have ריקוד הגשם (Rain Dance), which is pure Scatting
* נוף אחר (A Different View) by the Israeli artist Yoni Bloh might be a love duet, but all of the woman's lyrics is "A-ah-a"
** another song of his, תפוזים (Oranges), is mostly the same- but the woman get more variety of sounds (she starts with Oh whoa Whoa, and ends with Badi-ba-da)
* A very unknown song by the Israeli singer Danny Sanderson הגיע ממטולה (Came From Metoola) got a lot of this. But it's not like the parts with REAL WORDS [[WordSaladLyrics make any sense]].

** And there's also Ole Le-La, another song whose chorus is mostly nonsense sounds.
* Mashina's רכבת לילה לקהיר (Night Train to Cairo) also has a chorus of Oh-oh oh oh-oh-oh oh...

* [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oavMtUWDBTM I am very glad, because I'm finally returning back home (Trololo)]] by Eduard Khil, was performed with Scatting in place of the original lyrics, ostensibly for artistic reasons. Since then it's been embraced as the official {{Troll}} song of the Internet. Go figure.

* Scott Walker starts doing this over the fade out of "The Old Man's Back Again (Dedicated To The Neo-Stalnist Regime)".
* Towards the end of Music/TheDoors' "Cars Hiss By My Window" from ''Music/LAWoman'', Jim Morrison takes a wordless vocal solo where he imitates a harmonica: "whoooh, wha-wha-whaoo-ooh...".

* Music/PhilCollins redid "Trashin' The Camp" for ''WesternAnimation/{{Tarzan}}'''s soundtrack and employed Music/{{NSYNC}} to help him pad it out.

** The Hillsong worship song "Every Move I Make" purposely has "na na, na na na na na" sung between the verses.

* Zapp & Roger songs tended to have scatting in them in the vain of 1950s Doowop groups. Examples include "Heartbreaker", "Computer Love", and "Slow & Easy".

* Music/{{Eurythmics}}' "There Must Be an Angel (Playing With My Heart)" opens and closes with Annie Lennox scatting something like this: "Doo da da da doo da". Even the [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CmPJu15bgpo karaoke version]] includes that!

* The Music/RedHotChiliPeppers song "Around The World" replaces two lines of its last chorus with scatting. Singer Anthony Kiedis will use scatting as a placeholder for unfinished lyrics, and for "Around the World" they left some scatting in the finished song on urging from Flea's daughter Clara.

* The Silhouettes' 1958 hit "Get A Job" has a chorus that is entirely scatting apart from the title.

* A common variation of the Irish TrainSong "(Poor) Paddy Works On the Railway" uses the vocables "fill-i-mi-o-ri-oo-ri-ay" for the first three bars of the chorus.

* Music/MichaelJackson

* "Music/RememberTheTime" in particular features one of Jackson's more iconic examples of scatting towards the end, while he is repeatedly asking "do you remember?"

* The song "Davnesaur," by To Slay Zombie Newton, contains a few genuine lyrics, but mostly it's nonsense that the band members claim is an ancient Scandinavian language... but were actually written by a random syllable generator on a graphing calculator.

* The much-covered song "Land Of A Thousand Dances" consists of pretty much nothing but "na na na na na na". Creator/DaveBarry once commented on how easy it was to make song lyrics by quoting the chorus in its entirety.

* The plurality of Roxette's "The Look": "Na." I.e, "Na na na na na, na na na na na, na na na na na na na, na na na na na, na na na na na na na na, she's got the look."

* Eiffel 65 has the song "Blue (Da Ba Dee)". The lyrics are ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin.

* Ah Oh, a song by the israely band Gazoz, is about the band trying to write a song, but only comeing up with a tune, but no words. the chorus is basically the band Scatting the tune
** Similarly, Kaveret, un older and more well-know israely band (that share some band members) have LuLu, another song with a Scatted chorus.

* נוף אחר (A Different View) by the israely artist Yoni Bloh might be a love duet, but all of the woman's lyrics is "A-ah-a"

* a very unknown song by the israely singer Danny Sanderson הגיע ממטולה (Came From Metoola)got a lot of this. but it's not like the parts with REAL WORDS [[WordSaladLyrics make any sense]]

** and there's also Ole Le-La, another song whose chorus is mostly nonsense sounds

* Several songs from ''VideoGame/SyphonFilterLogansShadow'', which was soundtracked by Azam Ali, have this type of vox.

%% Please move any examples involving screaming over to CarefulWithThatAxe.

%% Image removed per Image Pickin' thread: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=16812535110.66677200
%% Please see thread to discuss a replacement.

[[quoteright:250:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/ella_fitzgerald_in_september_1947_cropped_9.jpg]]
[[caption-width-right:250:Jazz singer Ella Fitzgerald was a creative innovator with scat soloing. ]]

* ''Series/MysteryScienceTheater3000'': During The "Master Ninja Theme Song", Crow beatboxes the drum line, Servo makes wah-wah pedal noises with his mouth, and [[LarynxDissonance Gypsy]] [[CuteButCacophonic scats]] through the whole song.
-->'''Gypsy:''' [singing] Ba ba BA ba ba-ba baa!

'''Gypsy:''' [singing] Ba ba BA ba ba-ba baa!

** One case that even became internationally known is Jorge Ben's [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8AuG1W59ig "Taj Mahal"]], whose runtime is mostly a rhythmic "te te te te re te te", which was copiously borrowed by Music/RodStewart in "Da Ya Think I'm Sexy?"

[[caption-width-right2350:Jazz singer Ella Fitzgerald was a creative innovator with scat soloing. ]]

[[caption-width-right:350:Jazz singer Ella Fitzgerald was a creative innovator with scat soloing. ]]

Not to be confused with anything regarding bowel movements of animals or humans. Although the root word ("scat") is the same, the etymology is different.

Not to be confused with anything regarding bowel movements.

[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/ella_fitzgerald_in_september_1947_cropped_9.jpg]]
[[caption-width-right:150:Jazz singer Ella Fitzgerald was a creative innovator with scat soloing. ]]

[[caption-width-right:250:Jazz singer Ella Fitzgerald was a creative innovator with scat soloing. ]]

[[caption-width-right:350:some caption text]]

[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Jazz singer Ella Fitzgerald_in_september_1947_cropped.jpg]]

** Similarly, "[[NamesTheSame Scatman]]" [[Music/ScatmanJohn John Larkin]]. What makes him particularly amazing is that he had a stutter... which incidentally [[DisabilitySuperpower gave him amazing scatting abilities.]]