Song of the Day 12/9: Steam, “Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye”

If politics were really sports, Democratic senators would serenade Kyrsten Sinema to this tune like she was a relief pitcher getting yanked from the game.

The song became a sports venue staple in 1977, supposedly prompted by the White Sox sweeping four games from the Twins. Some fans began singing, “Minnesota, Minnesota, hey hey, goodbye,” to the tune, and it wasn’t long before the team organist added it to her set list. It spread from there, even into Congress — Democrats sang it to Republicans who voted against Obamacare in the House in 2017. The Senate’s a bit more sedate.

The song, as with so many infectious hits, started out as a throwaway — not just a B-side, but recorded specifically as a B-side. Singer Gary DeCarlo wrote it with two other guys who had been with him in an early ’60s group called the Chateaus in Connecticut. By 1969 that band’s keyboard player, Paul Leka, had turned to songwriting and production, and scored a hit in 1968 with the Lemon Pipers’ “Green Tambourine.”

He was working on some singles with DeCarlo, hoping to launch the singer’s solo career, and they resurrected an old unfinished Chateaus tune called “Kiss Him Goodbye” to use as a B-side. When Leka reached the chorus, he had no lyrics, so he sang the na-nas. DeCarlo added the “hey heys,” and they recorded the whole thing together in a few hours without a bass or guitar. The drum track came from one of DeCarlo’s other intended singles.

Execs at Mercury thought the result was too good to use as a B-side for an unknown, so they released it through a subsidiary and applied the name Steam to the label. Once it became a hit, Leka screwed over DeCarlo by telling him he couldn’t be the lead singer of a band and a solo artist at the same time, so he hired a bunch of musicians to send out as Steam. DeCarlo’s solo career never took off.

The song reached the charts twice more, by ’80s girl group Bananarama in 1983 and Canadian a cappella group the Nylons in 1987.