Asereje, ja deje tejebe tude jebere seiunouba majabi an de bugui an de buigidipi.”

From a pop tune nicknamed “The Ketchup Song” by Las Ketchup: the most intelligent words ever spoken.

Well, maybe it’s nonsense, but it’s pretty fitting that the three girls who sing one of the most popular songs in the world have a hook that no one in the world can understand. And no N’Sync or Christina Aguilera in the United States would have ever thought of doing it. Why? Because we don’t think globally and the only time we tune in music from outside our fogged-up Clear Channel bubble is when it’s the flavor of the month.

This song is stupid, but at least it’s cooler than that frozen food commercial using “Macarena” as its theme. About half of the lyrics are in English and the last few of each line are in Spanish. The music is pretty much the standard Latin dance fare. It’s pop, take it or leave it — the cheesiness sells as well as the sleaziness.

Actually, it apparently sells better than the sleaziness in places such as Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Holland, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland — all places where the song hit the top of the charts this summer.

Meanwhile we sit on our couches unaware. Not that we should care. I don’t think “Asereje (The Ketchup Song)” is a good song. Nor do I condone turning on your radio when there is a mass of perfectly good vinyl or CDs sitting in your room.

I repeat: Turn off the radio and listen to your own choice of music.

It’s just a sad fact of American pop culture life that we don’t hear anything from outside our borders unless it: A. Is sung in English, B. Is translated to English, or C. Has Rob Thomas of Matchbox 20 collaborating on it.

Ours is not a culture where a major radio station can experiment by playing a song with lyrics in a different language. Only phrases such as “Sk8er Boi” and “Word of Mouf” make the masses smile (misspelling a name, consequently, is a commonly-used way for corporations to strengthen their copyright on the name of a product).

It’s a bad situation we’ve cornered ourselves into. We couldn’t get an Austrian pop song or a South Korean rock anthem on corporate radio no matter how hard we tried, but in other countries they have the choice of songs from all over the world.

It is not about the language a song is sung in. Music is much bigger than that, or at least it should be. Lyrics on the modern radio dial usually don’t have much depth, but instead have the biggest, most catchy hooks possible. What does that have to do with understanding what the singer is saying?

Whatever genre of music it is, there is more out there than just in our small corner of the world and you are almost guaranteed with the number of musicians who don’t live in the United States to find something worthwhile.

It’s a hopeless battle, though.

With each independent record store turned into a Sam Goody and each radio station the Clear Channel wipes out, American musical vision becomes more shortsighted.

It’s taking a song by three Spanish girls named after tomato sauce singing about a fashionable Rastafarian fan to shake the charts again. When you hear the stupid thing, think about how long it took us to catch up with the rest of the world, try to learn a few of the words that are in Spanish, then turn your radio off.

Jeff Mitchell

is a senior in journalism and mass communication from Urbandale. He is the arts and entertainment editor of the Daily.