You and Me and the Moon

Joyous and sad. Certain Magnetic Fields songs will always remind me of Amber. She's moving into her new place this week. There are boxes of books stacked up in the hallway with labels like "Deutsche Literatur" and "Feminist Theory" written in Sharpie. Despite the complex circumstances of our break up,

The sound of your voice [still] sends shivers up my spine.

Artist: Magnetic Fields
Year: 1995
Rating: Hot!

Ramblin' Man

Not sure what dusting the cobwebs outta my room has to do with "rambling," but that's when the song struck. When it's time for dusting, I hope you'll understand...

Artist: The Allman Brothers Band
Year: 1973
Rating: Warm

The Middle

Damn catchy song. My mental jukebox is focused squarely on my emotional wranglings of late. I suspect it's true that everything (everything) will be all right, (ultimately). But it's indeed taking some time.

Artist: Jimmy Eat World
Year: 2002
Rating: Warm

Note: Wow, this video is douchey.

Wonderwall

Oh, Oasis, I don't believe that anybody feels the way they did about you now.

Artist: Oasis
Year: 1995
Rating: Warm

Glory of Love

Amber and I are immersed in training our new dog this week. Behavior issues, peeing in the house; naturally, we did it all for the Dorrie of love.

Artist: Peter Cetera
Year: 1986
Rating: Lukewarm

Edit: Oh my god! It's Ralph Macchio's birthday today! What an awesome coincidence! Happy 48th, you.

After the Lovin'

Oh, smooth schmaltz at its best. Did you know that Engelbert Humperdinck actually chose his name? He was born with the hum-drum Anglo name Arnold George Dorsey and decided to name himself after a German opera composer. Apparently, that's when his music really took off.

Artist: Engelbert Humperdinck
Year: 1976
Rating: Warm

Note 1: Another easy listenin' song from the Bicentennial year!
Note 2: The above video provides us with an apt circumstance in which to ask the question: Does Barry Manilow know that you raid his wardrobe?

All My Loving

In my head 'cause Amber's going away this weekend (pouts!) Also fits right into the cultural zeitgeist, since, as you all well know by now, the Beatles Rock Band and the Beatles stereo/mono box sets are out this week. All my money I will send to you...

Artist: The Beatles
Year: 1963
Rating: Warm

All I Am Is All You're Not by Sloan

This one appears on Sloan's album Parallel Play, released last year. It's a fine tune, though not as memorable as some others on the album. It's a weird one to have in one's head, 'cause the chorus is strong and pedantic, and the verses are almost labyrinthine and hard to keep track of. So mostly I'm just singing in my head, "All I am is all you're not/All you want is all I've got" over and over again. And as Sinead O'Conner has said, "I do not want what I haven't got, so that's all I got.

Year: 2008
Rating: Warm

What it's About

The Songs in My Head started as a note on my Facebook page and begged to be transformed, as Virginia Woolf might have said (had she known about the internets) into a "blog of one's own."

The background is that I wake up nearly every day with a song in my head, or if I don't come into waking consciousness with a melody of some sort, a song will invariably form itself by the time I hit the shower, and I'll either sing it or whistle it or just play it in a repeat-loop in my mind for hours after that. On February 9th, 2009, I started keeping a list of these songs in an ongoing FB note, and on February 15th, I figured "why not start a blog?"

So the premise of this blog is deceptively simple: I will create an entry for every song that pops into my head in the early waking hours, try to find a good visual or audio link to the song, and provide a bit of commentary. In order to make this a tenable task for myself, I will have to exclude the many dozens of other songs that float through my head throughout a given day and keep to posting entries about the songs that either I wake up with or come to mind in the first few hours of cognizance each day. As many of you know, songs in one's head can be very welcome companions, and they can also be incredibly annoying. The Songs in My Head will welcome all, from the hippest and most influential to the schmaltziest tunes imaginable. They're all in there somewhere.

Comments, reactions, associated memories, related song knowledge, and really any kind of friendly participation are all strongly encouraged. You don't need a Blogger account to leave a note.

Thanks for reading, and for singing, whistling, and fist-pumping along.

--Sooze

Land of Confusion by Genesis

Oh, dear readers, if you only knew how many times I've been punished by the infinite-loop that this "we've jumped the shark" Genesis song makes through the corners of my mind. And for some reason, it usually hits me while I'm taking a shower in the morning. Perhaps it has worked its way so deeply into my neural pathways that I will now and forever associate shampooing with the insipid imperatives of Phil Collins's pinnacle-of-the-Cold War anthem.

"This is the world we live in/And these are the hands we're given/Use them and let's start trying/To make it a place worth living in."

Over. And over. And over. Help me Peter Gabriel, you're my only hope.

Year: 1986
Rating (song): Cold
Rating (video): Warm