About Shang-A-Lang

"Shang-a-Lang" is a song from the Bay City Rollers 1974 debut album Rollin', from which it was the second advance single, the track being produced by the song's writers Bill Martin and Phil Coulter.

Songwriter Bill Martin described "Shang-a-Lang" as an attempt to combine Brill Building songwriting - in particular the partly onomatopoeic lines of "Da Doo Ron Ron" - with the clanging sounds he'd long heard emanating from the shipyards in the Glasgow burgh of Govan where he'd been born and raised. (Bill Martin quote:)"I couldn't write clang clang because [of the well-known] Judy Garland [song lyric from] 'Trolley Song': 'Clang clang clang went the trolley'. So eventually I came up with: 'We sang shang-a-lang'". Martin also recalled "shang-a-lang" as a minced oath he'd been wont to use when his mother was in earshot. Martin's collaborator Phil Coulter created the track's clapping sound by hitting two pieces of wood together as he had in their 1970 writing success, "Back Home", by the England football team.