"Prisencolinensinainciusol" | ||||
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Single by Adriano Celentano | ||||
from the album Nostalrock | ||||
B-side | "Disc Jockey" | |||
Released | 3 November 1972 | |||
Format | 45 rpm single | |||
Genre | Experimental music | |||
Length | 3:54 | |||
Label | Italdisc | |||
Writer(s) | Adriano Celentano | |||
Adriano Celentano singles chronology | ||||
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"Prisencolinensinainciusol" [ˌprizeŋˌkɔliˌnɛnsinainˈtʃuːzol] is a song composed by Adriano Celentano, and performed by Celentano and his wife, singer/actress-turned-record producer Claudia Mori. A very popular performance of the song, broadcast by RAI, shows Celentano with showgirl Raffaella Carrà, who is dancing and lip-synching to Mori's vocals. It was first released as a single on November 3, 1972, and later on his album Nostalrock.
The song is meant to sound to its intended Italian audience like English spoken with an American accent, but the lyrics are actually pure gibberish, with the exception of the words "all right". Celentano's intention with the song was to explore communications barriers. "Ever since I started singing, I was very influenced by American music and everything Americans did. So at a certain point, because I like American slang—which, for a singer, is much easier to sing than Italian—I thought that I would write a song which would only have as its theme the inability to communicate. And to do this, I had to write a song where the lyrics didn't mean anything."
The song was recorded at least twice for television broadcast. The song has been included on the 2008 dance compilation album Poplife Presents: Poplife Sucks.
In 1992, remixes of the song by Molella and Fargetta were released on CD Single, along with the original version, to promote the compilation Superbest.
It was a nascent Internet meme in the early 2000s, having been posted on Boing Boing in December 2009 and subsequently picked up by the Italian press.