I have a couple of reliable earworms: the accordian part from Paul Simon’s Graceland (the track); Popcorn; and Ding Dong the Witch is Dead. I have no explanation for them, but if I bust out whistling, it’ll usually be one of those melodies. Perhaps a good (or creative) shrink could tell something about me from that, but I assign the significance to the drugs ingested by my mom while I was in vitro. I don’t mind them, inexplicable though they may be: they’re comfort songs.
What I object to are the songs I hate that get stuck in my noodle. A very reliable one is one of the two or three worst songs from my youth: We Built This City by those Starship/Airplane farts in their very worst incarnation. (The only upside is that if I even whisper the name of this song to the Info Pusher, it’ll happen to her too. Which is amusing for me and can serve as good leverage in a number of situations.)
I mention this all because this week, I have had two in my head that I do not appreciate. One is an insipid tale of suburban divorce from that sticky Costello/Bacharach album ( the song called Toledo, though most of that album could be substituted). The other is the Counting Crows song Round Here – particularly the line “round here we stay up very very very very late!”
Both songs are awful in a similar way: people being really overdramatic about things that barely deserve mention. Both songs irritate the shit out of me, but there they are, everytime I turn around (in my brain).
And that makes me wonder: Do they say something about me? Am I giving myself a hint? I hope not. That would mean the other earworms mean something too.
0 Responses to “Earworms Can Kill You”