Baha Men — "Who Let the Dogs Out"

Released July 26, 2000, "Who Let the Dogs Out" was performed by Baha Men, a junkanoo band from the Bahamas. But the song's real origin is messier and more interesting than a simple novelty track. Trinidadian musician Anslem Douglas wrote and recorded it as "Doggie" in 1998. The twist: according to Douglas, it was never about actual dogs—it was a man-bashing song calling out catcalling men and street harassment. English producer Jonathan King cut a version under the joke name "Fat Jakk and his Pack of Pets" and brought it to producer Steve Greenberg, who had the Baha Men record it for mass release.

The song achieved a strange paradox: it peaked at only #40 on the Billboard Hot 100 (yet hit #2 in the UK) while becoming completely, inescapably omnipresent. The Seattle Mariners were playing it at games from June 2000 onward. It appeared in *Rugrats in Paris: The Movie*. School buses played it. Stadium PA systems made it a staple. Kids chanted it on playgrounds worldwide. The 2001 Grammy Awards honored it as Best Dance Recording. Years later, the song became entangled in a copyright dispute over ownership and royalties that took a long time to settle. The eternal trivia-bar question "Who actually let the dogs out?" has a real answer: a song created as Caribbean social commentary was passed across the Atlantic from producer to producer until it accidentally became one of the most inescapable novelty records of the millennium turn.