Moo la Moo

Album: Slide On Over Here (2009)
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Songfacts®:

  • "Moo la Moo" is a play on "Moolah," which is a term for money. Azar, who is a Country singer from Mississippi, has some deep and meaningful songs like "Waitin' On Joe" and "You Don't Know A Thing." But especially when playing live, it helps to have lighter fare to balance it out, something he learned when he opened for Bob Seger on his 2006-2007 tour. In our 2010 interview with Steve Azar, he told us: "That's a song that was written years ago. I love playing those crazy guitar parts, I love all that. When I was out on tour with Bob, I said, 'It's time for me to lighten up a little bit.' Because he would go from 'We've Got Tonight' and 'Turn The Page' and all these great serious, heavy, wonderfully just move-the-soul songs, and then he'd go into 'Old Time Rock And Roll' and 'Betty Lou's Gettin' Out Tonight,' and I'd watch the crowd light up. And I'd go, 'I've forgotten to have fun.' So I went back and pulled that song out, and I thought, We're gonna have fun. But I gotta be honest with you, it was written three years before. The economic times were great. And I had made a decision to put that on a record before things got bad. And I said three years before we put it on the record that I would never do that. Never. So we had issues at radio - we'd get this bi-polar reaction; they loved it, or they hated it. I couldn't argue with anybody that didn't like it, because I didn't like it, and I co-wrote it. (laughs) So it took me a long time, and I'd make the joke, 'Listen, it took me three years to finally get into this song. We only have a few months, so if you could just hurry up and like it…' (laughs) But the truth was, it was a very thoughtful little reaction. I was building a record label. I was still hiring out parts and pieces. And then I'd realize I can't depend on those pieces. So the first song on this record was gonna be a victim."
  • Regarding the lyrics, "There's too much month at the end of the money," Azar tells us: "There was another song years ago that was called that. Also, there was a book out years before that that was called that. It's a cliché. I'm not a cliché guy. I like to be the one that invents the clichés. It's harder for something to become a cliché than to get passed through Congress. (laughs) With that said, I have not been a fan of them and the songwriters that use them. I won't say who they are. A lot of them are very successful artists in the rock world and the country world. I just can't handle it. I don't love clichés.

    So I was against this because it was a cliché to me, and something that you'd heard growing up, and then there was another song called that. So that was one of the reasons I wasn't into the song. And I never knew there was a song when I was writing it. And then I found out that there was, and one of my co-writers knew there was, but he goes, 'Oh, it was a book title before that.' That was, I think, another reason why I didn't want to do it. But then I said to myself, 'It's not the title. The title's 'Moo la Moo,' just get over it.' It's just a line in a song. Dave Ramsey's a big money guy that's got a syndicated radio show; he talks about too much month at the end of the money, people talk about that all the time. I saw it on the Allstate commercial, the actor that says, 'Too much month at the end of the money?' There you go. But it did put me back out there. And the video had Gary Valentine from The King of Queens and also Paula Trickey from The O.C. We had such a great time with it, I think it showed us in a light of: Okay, Azar can actually have fun. But the bottom line is it served its purpose. And our song was nothing like anybody else's. I take pride in that."
  • The video stars the comedian Gary Valentine, who looks a lot like Kevin James because they're brothers. Valentine appeared with James in The King of Queens and Mall Cop.

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