If you have n’t fancy Eduard Khil in the figure , you may have seen any number of parody videos acknowledging his cyberspace opprobrium . Shows likeFamily GuyandJimmy Kimmel Live!have referenced Khil ’s peculiar 1976 performance , where the Russian Isaac M. Singer performs a non - lexical , vocable version of a song — a wordless , carbonated babble baritone that ’s better seen than identify .
Khil is the late subject of aGoogle Doodle , the hunting engine ’s landing page limelight on interesting figure in history , and it ’s led to another wave of packaging in what could be view a third act in his retentive life history .
Born in 1934 , Khil ’s hometown of Smolensk was finally occupied by Nazi Germany : Abudding performer , he talk for wounded soldiers at sphere hospitals . Though he later study opera at the Rimsky - Korsakov Conservatory , he fell in love with pop music and engage it as a vocation . In the Soviet Union , however , the kind of provocative language and carrying out being see in America were simply not possible : Anything even remotely intimate or revelatory would be censored . When he select to sing about a cowhand twit home to his married woman on the farm , he substituted the actual lyrics for gimcrackery syllables like “ tra la la ” or “ trololo . ”
Footage of his 1976 performance — where Khil come along in a muddy brown suit against a wan background while singing with great enthusiasm — eventually made its way online . Viewers were taken with his stage bearing ( he sometimes matched his eyebrows to the beat ) and the fact that his “ trololo ” was an anachronic reference to “ trololol , ” internet shorthand for trolling . American entertainer like Stephen Colbert latched on to the footage , and Russia even took short letter of the stake : The song wasplayedduring the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi .
In 2010 , just two geezerhood before his destruction at age 77 , news program retail store began to progress to out to the now - retired vocalizer to get his response to the sudden surge in interest . " I ’m very proud of , but I was n’t surprised because it is really a beautiful tune , " he toldRadio Free Europein 2010 . " I tried to make it upbeat . It ’s such a radiant song . Even though it was compose in 1966 , it does n’t vocalize superannuated . "
