Tuesday 10 March 2009

Aural torture

Woo hoo! Looks like I have got many floors available to camp on if I ever get to Ottowa! Now if you could all make sure that those pesky airlines don't go out of business all over the place so that it doesn't cost us one of our children's kidneys to get to Shangri-La Canada, I'll be all set. Frankly I'll go anywhere if I am promised people to blether to coupled with beer and eggs. Throw in poutine and I'll move in with you. You have been warned.

Anyway, back to that title. I am suffering from a terrible affliction at the moment and I figure you lot out there can help me with it. As I think I have previously mentioned, at the time I go to pick up the offspring from school, Radio 2 is playing oldies (most of which don't actually sound that old to me which is, I know, a sign of old age in me more than anything else). The other day I had been happily singing along to something - it might have been "Smells Like Teen Spirit" - and when that ended on came.......I can hardly bear to type it...........*deep breath* "Seasons in the Sun" by Terry Jack or whatever his name is.

Until Katie Mellua was invented (I say invented because I don't think she is human. I think she was grown in a petri dish somewhere as some twisted experiment) I was firmly of the view that Seasons in the Sun was The Worst Song Ever Created. Now, since Katie came along, there has been a challenge to that title and I haven't quite worked out who is ahead (or behind) in the contest. It doesn't really matter because hearing Seasons in the Sun still makes my teeth hurt and my toes curl and everything else clench and I immediately have the urgent desire to open up my skull and scrub my brain with bleach. I don't like it that much is what I am saying.

The trouble is it has been in my brain now for about three days and if it doesn't leave soon, I am going to break something or hurt someone or leave teethmarks in the steering wheel of my car. Which is where you come in. Tell me I am not alone. Tell me there are earworms of songs that do this to you too. Tell me what they are because believe me, no matter how awful they are, I would rather have them in my head than SITS. Thank you.

16 comments:

  1. Oh dear, you poor thing. I understand your pain. There are many, many songs that make me want to bleach my brain. I currently DETEST 'I'm Yours' by Jason Mraz (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zut0TznmSu0). It's so awful, it makes me want to cry. :'(

    ReplyDelete
  2. Don't ask me why but I just watched the video I mentioned above and now I am so irritated, I just want to kill him. Especially when he sings the word 'hesitate'. AAAARRRRGGGGGHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!! I think I might go and listen to SITS to take my mind off it.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Perhaps you should enjoy the Jacques Brel original, rather than torture yourself with such head cracking nonsense.

    Or else get the collected works of Jonathan King to boil your head:

    Enjoy the culturally diversity of "Johnny Reggae" (he's a real tasty geezer, you know)

    Put extra syrup on the sweet "Sugar Sugar"

    Let the tears well with "The Sun Has Got Its Hat On"

    Slip into reflective melancholy in "Leap Up And Down Wave Your Knickers In The Air"

    Struggle with dysmorphia in "Fattie Bum Bum"

    Or just glow with the simmering inter textual complexity of "Una Paloma Blanka"

    Yes, Jonathan has the cure, but was the disease really that bad?

    ReplyDelete
  4. Oh yes. Earworms. All the time. Music from the '40s and the '50s that you will have less clue about than I do about later music.
    For instance, 'Ghost Rider in the Sky'. Don't google it because if you find it your previous affliction will be as nothing.
    There is no cure, she wailed.

    ReplyDelete
  5. I suggest anything by Enrique Inglesias, Brian Adams or Dolly Parton.

    Usually, I have songs playing in my head too, happily they change each day lol.

    Poor you {{Loth}}

    ReplyDelete
  6. Yes, I get them all the time - usually if I only know the words to a couple of lines. Then the couple of lines go around and around in my head, forever. If I know the whole thing, I can just sing it (out loud or mentally) and get it over with.

    As a result, I rarely know what the song actually is. But recent offenders contain the words "Been around enough to knoooow, it's a better world when it's upside down" (what?) and "Does he wash up? No he never wash up, does he clean up? No he never clean up".

    There aren't many songs I genuinely loathe like you loathe S in the S, but Britney's "Hit me Baby One More Time" is pretty close.

    Isabelle has similar trouble with "McArthur Park" and "A Whiter Shade of Pale".

    ReplyDelete
  7. I recommend The Hampster song - go on, youtube it, I dare ya!

    Hubby has been humming/whistling it for days and now I cannot stop the mental torture!

    ReplyDelete
  8. Letterland advanced songs - will have you singing the "Mr Mean E" in your sleep (who ways "a" in the word they and is glad when you spell it wrong if you're interested...). Oh, and Puccini's Messa di Gloria. Good luck...

    ReplyDelete
  9. Oh dearie me.
    Reading this has infected me with the earworm too.

    The only way I know how to get rid of such things is to do some violent exercise whilst wearing an ipod, listening to drum'n'bass or something equally noisy.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Too late to apologise

    It certainly is Mr Timbaland, you have now given me earworms with the most god awful song in the world which I now can't stop singing.

    Humph.

    ReplyDelete
  11. I like K Melua (though I can't spell her name, I think) and her sweet little songs. So there! At least, I like the ones that Terry Wogan plays, though can't pretend any closer acquaintance with her oeuvre. There are lots I hate, though I can't think of any apart from the ones named above by K. But I hate anything shouty by people who can't sing, like Rolling Stones or Rod Stewart.

    ReplyDelete
  12. I definitely get earworms all the time. I'm so grateful the girls have moved beyond the children's shows, because I'd always get those themes in my head (I won't name them for fear of infecting anyone with a bad earworm).
    Right now, I'm listening to Wicked. GREAT earworm.

    ReplyDelete
  13. Thanks to a friend's status line on Facebook, I've been wandering around with Corey Hart's "Sunglasses at Night" stuck firmly in my mind. If I was planning on reliving the 80s mentally, Corey Hart is not where I would want to start.

    ReplyDelete
  14. Well, thanks a bunch. After reading your post, I keep hearing "we had joy, we had fun, we had seasons in the sun!" over and over ;p

    ReplyDelete
  15. Funny story about Seasons in the Sun. I once thought that was a meaningfully deep song and set out to memorize all the words. I wrote them out several times to embed them in my brain. My parents found one copy and thought it was a suicide note and got all freaked out and held an old world intervention (screaming and beating the living tar out of me). Eventually I was able to play them the tape and convince them it was a song. I can still sing all 14 verses and will do so when/if I meet you in person by way of revenge for dredging up this happy memory.

    ReplyDelete
  16. Loth, you are so right. It is terrible, in a way, and so, so perfectly told. Carry earplugs at all times!

    ReplyDelete