'Shabadaduba': The lyrics of TikTok's latest song trend are in gibberish, following the app's trend of surprising popular sounds
- A sped-up snippet of a song full of gibberish lyrics went viral on TikTok.
- Fans are using the audio as the soundtrack to clips of them explaining messy or surreal scenarios.
- Dville Santa's "Laboratory" is the latest in a long line of surprising or silly TikTok hits.
"Ya ma nama doo," the audio begins. "Yama namama, llama gamagoot, Yaba dababada when the beat drop!"
Next, there's a pause, and then a cascade of angelic warbling begins: "Ayabadaba doobop, ayadaba babada wadawoowop, a woowa dasoowa damala woowop!"
These are the nonsensical lyrics of one of the hottest TikTok sounds of the summer.
The TikTok snippet, which has generated over 120,000 videos and counting on the app, is a sped-up sample from Dville Santa's song "Laboratory," which was released in April. The original track also briefly circulated on TikTok in May and has garnered over 2 million plays on Spotify.
The song's surprising fame is a sparkling example of how any song can go viral on TikTok as long as it seizes your ears for 15 seconds. Though the lyrics are incoherent, the Georgia rapper's melodic voice is hypnotic, like a jazz singer scatting in auto-tune over a lush trap beat.
The song became the soundtrack to a meme
A crucial reason why the song exploded is that it has been folded into a meme trend. TikTok creators are using it to soundtrack clips where they pretend to explain embarrassing, complicated, or surreal scenarios.
"Me explaining why its [sic] okay for me to also use she/her pronouns even though I'm not a girl because pronouns don't equal gender," the user @stapleyourmouthshut wrote in one of the sound's most popular videos. Below the text, they lip-sync to the audio and gesture around in vague motions as if they're trying to work out the confusing issue with a therapist.
The post has over 1 million likes.
In another video using this sound, the user @lil.laila.vert pretends to explain to her parents why "kissing pranks" was in her search history when she was a kid.
Another clip shows TikTok comedian @chadio in a skit where he tells his parents that you can't "pause an online game," because there are multiple people playing it at once.
The comment sections of the most popular TikToks using the audio are flooded with people trying to decipher the lyrics and asking how the song sounds "so good" even though it's full of strange words.
Another user said the "sound is godly."
The song's lyrics are also being memed elsewhere on the internet
You can find lyrics for "Laboratory" on the music information website Genius, though it is unclear whether they were verified by the artist. The track's description on the site reads, "The song follows the perils and hardships that Dville Santa has faced throughout his life."
Many listeners had fun with Genius' annotation feature, which allows fans to provide a brief description of what song lyrics mean on a deeper level.
One user said the first verse, which begins, "Yabadee boobeedee," is all about the history of the Berlin Wall. Another person wrote that the line "Yaga damaga labaga bargourt" is a reference to the Roman-Etruscan Wars.
'Laboratory' isn't the first strange TikTok song, but it may be the weirdest of all time
This year, TikTok has become a hub for bizarrely alluring audio snippets that would never get radio play but are addictive in short 15-second bursts.
The app year has had several madcap audios go viral this year. "Castaways" from the 2004 animated show "The Backyardigans" stormed the app in May and fart-laden remixes of Super Mario soundtracks blew up in January.
The "Laboratory" sample may just be the strangest of them all.
In the words of the artist: "Llama looma llama llama."