If the words I’m blue/Da ba dee da ba di, sound familiar to you, then you know Eiffel 65.
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The Italian dance trio of Jeffrey Jey, Maurizio Lobina and Gabry Ponte made their way to American airwaves with the 1999 hit, “Blue (Da Ba Dee),” with an earworm hook that quickly gets stuck in one’s head. Though it may seem as though the band gets its name from the landmark Eiffel Tower in Paris, France, its origins are much more peculiar.
Meaning Behind the Band Name
Before they were topping charts around the world, the band members were producing and writing music. In an interview with Vice, lead singer Jey admitted he and his bandmates felt as though they were “wasting a lot of time” trying to come up with names for the projects they were working on. To help with time management, they created an Excel document that contained a variety of names they created.
“We made a database on Excel that we were fetching from time to time and when ‘Blue’ came out we fetched Eiffel from the list and that was it,” Jey explained of how they got the first half of the band name.
As for how the number 65 came into play, Jey says it resulted from a misunderstanding with the graphic designer tasked with the cover art for “Blue.”
“Then what happened was we had the label copy [of ‘Blue’] on our producer’s desk and he was writing a phone number that went over the paper he was using and ended up on the label copy,” the singer continues. “The last two digits of the phone number were six and five so the graphic artist thought we put that in our name afterward so it was a really curious way to get to that.”
“Blue” first debuted in Eiffel’s native country in 1998 as the lead single off their debut album, Europop. The song peaked at No. 3 on the Italy chart before making its way to America a year later where it reached the Top 10 on the Billboard Hot 100, as well as the Dance Club Songs chart. It earned them their first and only Grammy Award nomination for Best Dance Recording in 2001.
“It speaks of something I believe in a lot. I think that everyone has their own color you know? They filter their entire lives with that color,” Jey explains of the meaning of the hit song he wrote with bandmate Lobina and producer Massimo Gabutti. “So the things they buy, the houses they buy, the people they want to see, the places they live, the cars they have. They all reflect that color, it’s incredible that everyone has that. So I used a metaphor. It’s a way of saying with my filter I have a blue house, a blue window etc.”
“Blue” inspired Bebe Rexha and David Guetta’s chart-topping 2022 hit, “I’m Good (Blue).” Like its predecessor, “I’m Good” became a worldwide hit, peaking at No. 4 on the Hot 100.
