Amazing song recommendations by speaking gibberish to Google speakers

If you have smart speakers at home, you know how incredible it is to have the entire world of music available at your mere request. Just speak the the title, and boom, the song plays. Our household LOVES it. We play so much more music now.

My four-year-old daughter and I like to have fun with requesting random words to see what songs Google/Spotify comes up with.

Then we took our requests to a new level. We spoke complete jibberish. I said: “Ok, Google please play tootily doot-doot, da-toot-doot, da-tootily doooooo.” Here’s the original audio recording of my request:

Google actually came up with an incredibly groovy song! In answer to our request, Google played a completely delightful funk electro song from 1982: “Doo Wa Ditty” by Zapp.

Oh man! The vocoder talk boxes and bumping grooves! My four-year-old and one-year-old daughters were completely jamming. Everyone loved it!

The YouTube comments on this song are just so wonderful and positive:

• if you listen to this kind of music, you’re my kind of people.. —ai papi
• Play this in the summer while drinking lemonade, popping your bubblegum, and jumping double-dutch! —Samantha Morris
• How can anyone hold still during this song? When I’m too tired, just put this on and I’m moving.. it’s like an instant shot of energy —Patricia Scott
• You cannot be in a bad mood while listening to this song, so play it loud and play it proud! Underachiever and proud of it, it’s all good! Spencer this is music son! —Pam S
• I had to dance to this song in front of my church it was awesome –SkiddyMux
• OMG i LOVE THIS SONG im only 16 and whenever i hear this song i cant help but feel happy and dance love it –Red dragon

The single peaked at No. 10 on the Billboard R&B singles chart in 1982.

Thank you, Google and Spotify!

Next time you are in need of a fun song, try speaking gibberish to your smart speakers. You might be pleasantly surprised by the results.

The amazingness didn’t stop there. Today Google decided to be a comedian.

To make this blog post, I downloaded my original audio request from Google. Yes, Google stores all your voice commands as mp3 files.

As I was playing all my various voice commands on my laptop speakers, our Google speakers heard my laptop. Google started to play music started to play music on its own!!!

One of my audio requests said, “Hey Google, play Skip to my Lou”.

All of the sudden I hear “Skip to my Lou” being played on our speakers. I was like, WHATTHE?! Why is this song playing? Then I realized, OOOOOOH. Google is HEARING me playing these files. Hahaaaaaa.

All day long I work at home alone. It’s normally very quiet here. Google randomly playing these goofy songs felt like I had a roommate in the house being a comedian.

Google’s hijinks continued when I finally found my original audio request with “Ok, Google please play da-toot-doot, da-tootily doooooo.” I played the file over and over, because I wanted to accurately transcribe what I said. Did I start it with “tootily doot-doot” or “tootily toot-toot”? Over and over I played it.

Remember, this is me playing a file on my computer. At that moment, my mouth is shut. I’m merely listening to audio files on my computer.

Every time I played the audio, Google would jokingly respond by playing a different song on my home speakers. “Diddley-Dee” by Cartoons then “Doodle Doo Doo” by Jack Lynx and several other songs.

Legit. Google is a freaking comedian.

All the songs Google played while transcribing my request:

• Diddley-Dee by “Cartoons” (from Toontastic)
• Doodle Doo Doo by Jack Lynx and His Society Serenaders (from Roaring 20s Unplugged, Vol. 3: Acoustic Recordings 1922-1928)
• Doodly Doo by Headstrum (from Away Too Long)
• Diddly Doodly Moves by The Wedding Day Band (from The Reception Sessions, Vol.1)
• We Are The Dinosaurs by Laurie Berkner (from Whaddya Think of That?)
• Shake My Sillies Out by Raffi (from More Singable Songs)

I have no idea how it got “We are the dinosaurs” or “Shake My Sillies Out”. Google started to really freestyle there.

Two action points:

1. If anyone plays my audio recording out loud by a Google speaker, please let me know what song starts playing!
2. Listen to DJ Google’s picks in one Spotify playlist named “tootily doot-doot, da-toot-doot, da-tootily doooooo“.

Update January 7, 2022

A year after writing this blog post, David Friedman tweeted:

I pulled up this very blog post to share with him. I couldn’t resist the urge to play the six-second track of me requesting “Ok, Google, please play tootily doot-doot, da-toot-doot, da-tootily doooooo.”

Of course, as soon as I play that recording out loud, my Google speaker heard the recording. Google started to play “Doodly Doo” by John Spencer.

It’s actually a decent song. Well done, Google. Well done. Continuing on with the joke a year later. I love it. Revisiting an old joke, and coming up with a fresh new song to recommend.

March 8th is officially now “National Ask Your Smart Speaker to Play [Some Gibberish Sounds] Day”

Now I’m going to make this into an annual tradition. My calendar now has repeating event for: Say this out loud: “Ok, Google, please play tootily doot-doot, da-toot-doot, da-tootily doooooo.”

March 8th is now the official holiday: National Ask Your Smart Speaker to Play Gibberish Day.

Add it to your calendar today!

The official hashtag #AlexaPlayGibberish

We should use a hashtag so people can post the results on social media. What should the hashtag be?

• #AlexaGibberish
• #AlexaPlayGibberish
• #AlexaPlayGibberish
• #AlexaPlayGibberishSounds
• #SmartSpeakerGibberish

Putting “Smart Speaker” in the hashtag doesn’t have the same ring as just saying Alexa. I kinda lean towards #AlexaPlayGibberish