Me and You and a Dog Named Boo


"Me and You and a Dog Named Boo" is the 1971 debut single by Lobo. Written by Lobo under his real name Kent LaVoie, it appears on the Introducing Lobo album.

Composition

Lobo recalls: "I was working on several songs, including a tune about traveling around the country with this girl, and I was trying to rhyme 'you and me.' Now 'me and you' would have been easier, but I was trying to do it with proper grammar. I couldn’t find anything to rhyme that fit what I wanted to say in the song. Finally, after I got back home to Florida, I decided to turn the phrase around to 'me and you.' I was thinking about it, sitting in a room that had a big sliding glass door overlooking the back yard. My big German Shepherd dog: Boo, came running around the corner and looked in at me. I said: 'Well, now, that’s kinda freaky. How about putting 'a dog named Boo’ into the song?” That’s literally how it came about. All of a sudden the song really started coming together. I hadn’t been to any of the places mentioned in the song except Georgia, but I just kept putting in places that sounded far away like Minneapolis and L.A."

Impact

The single peaked at number 5 on the Hot 100 and was the first of four of his songs to hit number 1 on the Easy Listening chart, where it had a two-week stay at that top spot in May 1971. The song also reached number 4 in the UK Singles Chart in July 1971 and spent four weeks at number 1 in New Zealand.
Internationally, "Me and You and a Dog Named Boo" was Lobo's second most successful song among more than 15 single releases, surpassed only by "I'd Love You to Want Me" the following year.

Cover versions