The group never got close to having as big a smash for the rest of their careers.įor most forgotten hits, that would be the end of the story. The track was released under the aforementioned band name Steam, which was dreamed up as a way to distinguish the song from solo material DeCarlo was working on at the time.

1 for two weeks in December 1969 and knocking the Beatles’ “Come Together”/“Something” from the top spot. Trying to make the girl realize that he’s not the guy for her.”įor a song that was always meant to be filler, “Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye” ended up being far more successful than DeCarlo’s hyped-up singles, landing at No.

“Anyone who’s been in a love triangle can identify with this. “It was and still is about the love factor,” DeCarlo would say. As for the lyrics, they concerned the singer trying to convince a girl that he loved her more than another guy did. … We agreed the song was just a B-side and said … let’s leave those lyrics in.” According to DeCarlo, he came up with the “hey hey” part. “Everything was ‘na-na’ when you didn’t have a lyric. “I started writing while I was sitting at the piano, going ‘na na na na, na na na na…’” Leka once recalled. I played percussion on a board and then we did the background parts.” “It was just piano overdubs, organ overdubs, vibes. … Everything was laid on top of it,” DeCarlo explained. Maybe there was something worth salvaging? “We went into the studio that night, took a drum track from Neil Sedaka song that I had recorded. “It was just a blues shuffle,” DeCarlo later said, an abandoned track that he and his co-writers revisited when DeCarlo needed throwaway B-sides to accompany potential singles for his burgeoning solo career at Mercury Records. One of the songs they had worked on was something called “Kiss Him Goodbye.” Except, there really wasn’t a Steam : It was just three guys ( Paul Leka, Gary DeCarlo and Dale Frashuer) who played together in bands earlier in the decade but had gone their separate ways. The song is “Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye,” a sugary, slightly psychedelic track that was released by a group called Steam in 1969.

That it became a stadium anthem is, in some ways, as unlikely an occurrence as the fact that it became a radio smash in the first place. And so, it’s very possible that many people don’t even know that the “Na na na na” chant is from an actual song - a song that went all the way to No.

Jack White was just an indie-rock dude before “Seven Nation Army” was suddenly embraced by the masses, becoming the biggest jock jam of our age. Ray Charles’ version of “Hit the Road Jack” has been a staple for fans bidding adieu to a player who’s fouled out. Sports have created unexpected new context for plenty of hit songs.

Oh na na na na eh eh eh eh