170. Yo-ho! Yo-ho! A pirate's life for me!

170. "Elvira" by the Oak Ridge Boys

Can anyone resist singing along with this song? No. They can't. Because this song has three sing-along phrases that few other songs have.

1. Giddy up.

2. Oom poppa oom poppa mow mow.

3. Hi-yo Silver, away!

Each of these phrases individually would be giant fun to sing on their own. The genius of the Oak Ridge Boys is that they took all three and sang them in a row with a deep bass voice sounding out the oom poppa mow mow. With most songs the sing-along challenge is to see if you can strain your voice to get as high as the lead singer on that super-high note (e.g. Freddy Mercury singing "For me!" on Bohemian Rhapsody). This song turns that challenge on its head. The question with this song is "How low can you go?"



I always thought the Oak Ridge Boys sang out the Lone Ranger call of "Hi-ho Silver, away!" But in doing my extensive research for this song, I found a couple Dave Barry columns that say Lone actually yelled "Hi-yo" not "Hi-ho."

http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2000-04-30/news/0005090324_1_lone-ranger-yo-horoscope

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPcap/2000-06/18/093r-061800-idx.html

But even with this revelation, I still may sing "Hi-ho" instead of "Hi-yo," because "Hi-yo" kind of sounds to me like a lyric from a Vanilla Ice rap.

"Hi-yo! Kick it!"