'Toc Toc' Song in English: Patrick Sébastien's French Joke Isn't for Kids

The 'Toc Toc' song is in French. It is 'Toc toc', from the 2015 album Ça va bouger ! by Patrick Sébastien, the French television entertainer. Toc toc is how French spells a knock at the door, the way English has knock knock, and the hook people hop to, “Toc toc, on frappe à ma porte”, means 'knock knock, someone's knocking at my door'.

Outside France, many of the people dancing to it have probably never heard of him, which is why the question keeps coming. The dance clips have carried the track far from where it was made. On 25 October it sat in 17 national Shazam top 100s, 18th in Czechia and around 30th in Austria, Poland and Germany. In France itself it reached 73rd at best and has since dropped out.

What language is 'Toc Toc', and what does 'kicékéla' mean?

Every line is French except one word, 'spasiba', Russian for thank you, which comes after the third verse and is followed by the French 'camarade', comrade. The second half of the hook, “Qui c'est qu'est là?”, is casual spoken French for 'who's there?', and sung quickly it runs together as ki-say-kay-la. Dancers who do not speak French write it the way it sounds, kicékéla or kicekela, and Patrick Sébastien himself tagged a Short #kicekela. Nor is this the same song as Macaco's 'Toc Toc', a Spanish song written for a 2017 film of that name.

Patrick Sébastien is the stage name of Patrick Boutot, best known in France for decades of television variety shows. Two people are credited: Patrick Boutot himself, as composer and writer, and Loren Kich, as composer. 'Toc toc' came out on 13 November 2015 as the 13th of 14 tracks on Ça va bouger !, an album whose title track, 'Ça va bouger !', had come out as a single that June. Almost eleven years on, YouTube Music lists 'Toc toc' first among his songs.

'Toc Toc' lyrics in English: four visitors from 9 pm

The song is a running joke in four knocks, each later in the evening. At nine o'clock the narrator grumbles about who is bothering him, and it is Karine, his girlfriend, who is going to wear him out; fine, he says, but not too hard and only for an hour. At ten it is Francis the mechanic, come to show him his car jack. Same answer, one hour, 'of mechanics' this time. Neither visit is spelled out.

At eleven the knock comes from the Red Army Choir, les Chœurs de l'Armée rouge in French, the Russian military ensemble, passing through the region. (The lyric sheet YouTube Music shows spells it cœurs, hearts, which sounds exactly the same.) He could not say no to them either. Here the 'spasiba' comes in, as the narrator thanks his comrades and tells himself he can finally rest, unwind, let himself go and dream. A knock sounds in the distance.

The last caller, after midnight, is the local member of parliament, come to take him off to vote, and he is the one visitor left outside. This time the narrator will not open the door, because, in the crude French verb the song uses, he has been had before. The outro hammers the point home, repeating that life is like that, vote for him or vote for me, you get had every time. Under the dance, 'Toc toc' is a comic song about sex that ends as a joke about politicians. It is not a children's song.

The music matches the joke. Our sound classifier hears ska almost all the way through, swing and an accordion at the start, and tags three stretches of it 'funny music'. Over 3 minutes 32 seconds the knocking chorus comes round four times, at about 0:13, 0:43, 1:13 and 2:04, so a 15-second clip can hold the whole hook and none of the story.

Why 'Toc Toc' is a Shazam hit outside France but not in it

The dance was already crossing borders by 29 September, when Patrick Sébastien posted a Short titled 'Toc toc - Trend Internationale !': he opens a front door to the camera, and the clip then cuts to people hopping on one foot and knocking on thin air. Our daily Shazam readings began on 2 October and first caught the song on 4 October, in Switzerland, Belgium and Austria. By 8 October it was in the top 100 of 14 countries. It faded to six around 20 October, then came back stronger, to 17 countries on 25 October, with Croatia, Israel and Russia appearing for the first time in our readings.

France is the odd one out on Shazam, and what the app is for may explain part of it. People open Shazam to name a song they cannot identify, and in France most listeners can catch the words, and many know Patrick Sébastien's voice from decades of television. Nor have the lookups turned into enough streams to chart, in France or anywhere else we checked. In Spotify's latest daily top 200s, for 23 October, 'Toc toc' was missing from all 15 national charts we checked, France, Czechia, Germany and Poland among them, and from the global chart. So far, people seem to be hearing it in clips and looking it up more than putting it on.

'Toc Toc' is a French song, then, and the dance has borrowed a rude comedy number about three late visitors and a politician who calls after midnight. The 'come back and back' dance clips sent people hunting for a title they could not catch. With 'Toc Toc' the title is easy to find, but the double meanings do not travel with the dance.