wordless melodies

This is the second post in my Things I Like in Music series.

Have you noticed that lots of songs have vocal parts with "la la la..." or "na na na..." instead of lyrics? And have you noticed that these parts are almost always extremely catchy? The best example is probably Hey Jude, but there are many such songs: Land of 1000 Dances, Centerfold, Can't Get You out of My Head, and many more. I posted a quiz a while back about guessing these songs given only the rhythm of the "na na na..." part, if you're interested in more examples.

If you agree that these parts are usually catchy, and you do, you may wonder why this is the case. My guess is that removing lyrics doesn't actually make the melody catchier, but that sometimes a melody is so catchy that the songwriter feels no need to embellish it with lyrics.

A related phenomenon that I also like is when a song has an instrumental solo that is just the vocal melody. Some examples are Come as You Are (or Smells Like Teen Spirit for that matter), Buddy Holly, and Paint It Black, in which the vocal melody is both played on guitar and hummed (not simultaneously). You could also count the whistling in Walk Like an Egyptian.

Or you could make an entire song out of weird vocal noises, like this one.