"Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye" is a song written and recorded by Paul Leka, Gary DeCarlo and Dale Frashuer. Attributed to a fictitious band they named "Steam," it was released under the Mercury subsidiary label Fontana. It became a number one pop single on the Billboard Hot 100 in late 1969. Although subsequent recordings and a quickly assembled touring band Steam met with little success, "Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye" remains a perennial favorite.
Paul Leka, Gary DeCarlo and Dale Frashuer wrote a primitive version of the song in the early 1960s when they were members of a band from Bridgeport, Connecticut, called The Chateaus. The Chateaus disbanded after several failed recordings. In 1969, DeCarlo recorded several singles at Mercury Records in New York with Paul Leka as producer. The singles impressed the company's executives, who wanted to issue all of them as A-side singles. In need of "inferior" B-side songs, Leka and DeCarlo resurrected an old song from their days as the Chateaus, "Kiss Him Goodbye" with their old bandmate, Dale Frashuer.
With DeCarlo as lead vocalist, the three musicians recorded the song in one recording session. Instead of using a full band, Leka spliced together a drum track from one of DeCarlo's four singles and played keyboards himself. "I said we should put a chorus to it (to make it longer)," Leka told Fred Bronson in The Billboard Book of Number One Hits. "I started writing while I was sitting at the piano going 'na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na'...Everything was 'na na' when you didn't have a lyric." Someone else added "hey hey." (Bronson,2003). Considering that the verses could easily win a prize for Most Meaningless Lyrics in the 20th Century, Paul Leka's nonsensical na na hey hey chorus must receive full credit for the song's commercial success because that is the only part of the song that people can sing and remember.
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