Gary DeCarlo, who sang lead on the hit song “Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye,” which topped the charts in 1969 and has lived on ever since as an indelible sports stadium taunt, died on Wednesday in a hospice facility in Branford, Conn. He was 75.
His wife, Annette, said the cause was metastatic cancer.
Mr. DeCarlo wrote and recorded “Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye” with two friends and fellow musicians, Dale Frashuer and Paul Leka. The song was originally intended as the B-side of one of several songs Mr. DeCarlo had recorded with Mr. Leka.
It began as two verses that the friends had written years before, with the opening lines: “He’ll never love you / The way that I love you / ’Cause if he did, no no, he wouldn’t / Make you cry.”)
The song became an earworm thanks to the addition of a repeating playground chant, “Na na na na, na na na na, hey hey hey, goodbye.”
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