Who Let the Dogs Out

Somehow everyone knows the song "Who Let the Dogs Out" — but where did it come from? Ben Sisto fell down an eight-year rabbit hole trying to answer that question, telling the entertaining results in a documentary and a 99% Invisible episode, among other places.

Transfixed by the ever-more-improbable story, I wrote this song telling the story of the song.

Here's a performance with my fantastic musical friends Betsy Branch, Peter Siegel, and Jared Kirkpatrick during Dance Musicians Week at the John C. Campbell Folk School in Brasstown NC. Thanks guys!

(The video starts just after the first verse.)

On a Trinidad trip a barber heard a song

His customer in London made a tape before long

A producer in New York heard it, and smelled a hit

He talked to a Bahamas band he knew and they recorded it

Chorus:

And it went like this:

Who let the dogs out - who who who who

That little line has had a good run

And it’s nice to know where it really came from Cool! I always wondered about that crazy song.

But the song wasn’t theirs, Anslem wrote it before

Calling out men who bother women on the dance floor So that’s who wrote it!

But the hook wasn’t his, it came from his DJ bro

When two guys in Toronto wrote a jingle for his show

Chorus Oh, so it was those Toronto guys, alright.

But two years before was a hook much the same

From a band in Chicago, 20 Fingers by name What? It came from that band?

But hang on ’cause at an even earlier time

Two teens in Florida rapped the same line

Chorus Teenagers! I knew it!

But even earlier, fans in a Michigan town

Were chanting the line as their team took the crown Football fans in Michigan made it up??

But before that in Georgia, New Jersey, and Texas

The fans all were shouting out their chant so infectious

Chorus How could all those people have possibly made up the same thing??

Maybe all of ’em were channeling some cosmic unconscious

A source of creation out somewhere beyond us

Well if it’s there then there isn’t any doubt

It’s full of dogs, and someone let them out

Chorus:

And we all say

Who let the dogs out - who who who who

That little line has had a good run

And we might never know where it really came from

But we love to sing

Who let the dogs out - who who who who

That little line has had a good run

And we might never know where it really came from