I’m writing because it’s the only way I’m going to get “We built this city,” the first five syllables from what has widely been accepted to be the worst song of the 1980s, out of my head. It enters my head many mornings when I push one minute and forty seconds on my microwave to heat up my tea.
It’s been like this my whole life – random songs launched in my brain due to bits of tune, tone, key or rhythm. And they stay there until something else takes their place. Which can sometimes last quite a while. Hours. Days. This has often served as fodder for family and friends, clearly not people to be trusted, and I am acutely susceptible to this syndrome, and often completely unaware.
Years ago, when I was a professional chef, I worked in a kitchen with my friend Leo. While I toiled away at my cutting board, Leo would walk near me quietly humming. I was unaware that he’d been doing this until Román, our 50-something-year-old Columbian drug gangster “pot washer” (he put in only enough hours to “have a job” cause that’s not where the real money is) shouted Basta! as he slammed the tang end of a large kitchen knife onto the stainless steel sink rack.
I looked up startled. Turns out I’d been singing a rousing rendition of Thumbelina, but Román wasn’t glaring at me, he was glaring at Leo, now belly-laughing while the rest of the kitchen snickered. I was mystified. As kitchen manager I felt it my duty to ask what was going on.
“He do that to you alla time!” shouted Román in what could best be described as a threatening wail. Then, to Leo, “You stop or I fucking cut you!”
It was only then that I learned that Leo had been implanting songs for months, that I’d been singing them, and that the entire kitchen crew had been contributing to a suggestion box of horrible songs for him to insert into my subconscious as he casually walked behind me throughout the night.
Which totally explained why I’d woken up singing “Mandy” recently, an event that had left me shaken.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9SSyMN75wY
This started early. I was 7 or 8 years old when my mother, in an unintentional moment of irony, snapped “Enough for God’s sake, or I swear I’ll kill you” when I unknowingly sang the Quaker “‘Tis a Gift to be Simple” for the 50th time in the back seat of the car in a traffic jam on the way home from school, where the classroom next to mine had been practicing a Thanksgiving play.
Some songs were weaponized. My father hated the song “Edelweiss” from the Sound of Music, and so my mother and sister would quietly hum it until I was singing it over and over again, causing my normally even tempered father to yell at me to knock it off. “It’s a Small World” could be counted on to annoy anyone within ear reach, much to the delight of my cousin and sister who would embed it during things like funerals and weddings and family gatherings requiring close quarters with no escape.
My ever-growing lexicon of songs, picked up through the ether, contributed to my condition, causing me for example to suddenly burst forth with “Husbands and wives, little bitty children lost their lives, it was sad when the great ship went down” during a fancy table cloth dinner with my father’s boss and family. Actually, I only made it as far as “husbands and wives, little bitty children lost their lives” before the awkward silence stopped me, but I wanted to put it in context. Otherwise it’s just weird.
Machinery can be insidious. One of my first cars was a little Mitsubishi with a broken seat belt buzzer, kind of a wail/ping/beep/screech that would cause me to immediately break into the chorus of Melanie’s “I’ve Got a Brand New Pair of Rollerskates” until I could frantically shove a cassette into the player and blast something to take its place.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JbvFOf9lshI
It was hard to dislodge and sometimes, relieved, I’d turn off the car only to have it return as soon as the cassette stopped playing.
It’s not just cars. One of my son’s phone numbers plays the “DA-da-da-da-DA-DA-DA-da DADADADA” of the Looney Tunes theme song. I always hold the phone away from my ear when dialing, or use my cell phone to prevent hours of Bugs and Daffy hanging around the office.
I recently replaced my Keurig coffee maker, making a German friend happy as the old one’s pump sound caused me to sing Deutschland Uber Alles, or the first few lines of it at least, each time I’d make coffee, which I often do when I’m on the phone with him. Annoying to him, unnerving for me. What the hell?
There have been some watershed moments, when the popularity of a song made for a relentless feedback loop of musical echolalia. I still have not seen The Titanic for fear of getting eternally stuck with my heart going on and on and on and on… and while I’d always enjoyed Dolly Parton’s “I Will Always Love You,” Whitney Houston can be blamed for contributing to my social ostracism due to inadvertent, top-of-lung bursts of AND I-EE-I-EE-I a-WI-ILL ALWAYS LOVE-a YOU-oooOOOOoo in public places, completely unaware until the first horrified glances catch my eye. Though I’ve sometimes looked around me when that happens, there’s just no way to pretend that was someone else.
My children’s blighted childhoods have been scarred by this. They no longer ask for any gear when it’s raining out for fear of triggering Rhianna’s “Um-ber-ella-ella-ella” for the rest of the day. And while they’re pretty used to me, I got a stereo “Jesus mom, WHY?” the day a friend of ours was talking about a recent drive and started a sentence with, “All the motorcycles.” Before he could continue I turned happily, threw my hands in the air and sang “Now put your hands UP, up in the club, we just broke up, I’m doing my own little thing.”
Why? It’s so obvious. “all the motorcycles” sounds exactly like “all the single ladies.” Totally not my fault. Beyonce’s fault. Rhythm’s fault. But not my fault.
And now, as I’d hoped, Starship’s assault on pop music is at least temporarily gone. But something has taken its place.
Uh-uh OH…