The Fear

This is the sound of someone losing the plot/
making out that they're okay when they're not.

I had a particularly disturbing dream last night: I was dying, and tortured by the realization that my consciousness would not cease upon death. I would be damned for eternity with my own burdened thoughts.

There couldn't be a more apt song in my head upon waking.

Artist: Pulp
Year: 1998
Rating: Hot!

You Never Can Tell

Woke up with this tune in my head after a late night out at a club, surrounded by twenty-somethings dancing to trap and bass music. It was a friend's bachelor party. I stood there in the club, sipping my Dickel rye, oldly.

It was a teenage wedding/and the old folks wished them well...
"C'est la vie", say the old folks/it goes to show you never can tell

The unconscious brain is really amazing. This is one of those songs that I didn't even realize I had stored in there. It's not like, say, Carry On Wayward Son, a song I am all too palpably aware of knowing. But somehow, my background neurons were connecting weddings, youngsters, and my growing sense of feeling over the hill.

Artist: Chuck Berry
Year: 1964
Rating: Warm

Fall On Me

Ask the sky, and ask the sky...

Artist: REM
Year: 1986
Rating: Hot!

I Sing The Body Electric

I sing the body electric/I celebrate the me yet to come
I toast to my own reunion/When I become one with the sun

Indelibly in my head since I was about 14. An exultant anthem of youth, and yet another song reminiscent of my time in the Jewish teen scene, when everything was Dramatic and Intense And Amazing.

Artist: Michael Gore (writer); Performed in the movie Fame by Laura Dean, Irene Cara, Paul McCrane, Traci Parnell, and Eric Brockington
Year: 1980
Rating: Luke Hot

Splish Splash

How was I to know there was a party goin' on?

Artist: Bobby Darin
Year: 1958
Rating: Warm

I Can't Help Myself (Sugar Pie Honey Bunch)

I love you and nobody else.

Since I'm not currently in a relationship, nor would I likely profess love to a One-and-Only, since I don't buy into that sort of thing, I have to assume that my unconscious is crooning for the love of coffee.

In and out my life/You come and you go
Leaving just your picture behind/And I've kissed it a thousand times

Oh, coffee.

Artist: The Four Tops
Year: 1965
Rating: Luke Hot

Sister Christian

What's your price for flight?

Artist: Night Ranger
Year: 1984
Rating: Luke Hot

Disco 2000

Your name is Deborah.
It never suited ya.

Artist: Pulp
Year: 1995
Rating: Hot!

Black Water

Been remiss at updating lately. Life is just too dense with the obligatory right now, including my ever-elusive battle to get to work on time every day. The other thing is that most of the songs I've been waking up with lately have been strictly due to recent exposure (hearing it on a playlist or at the grocery store, etc.) and I've, by and large, refrained from blogging about those particular songs, because, while recent exposure is clearly my number one source for earworms, that phenomenon is just less interesting to me than when a song seems spontaneously to generate from some unconscious depth or memory trigger or other more poetic means. Anyhow, the Doobs entered the neural paths a couple days ago, and I have a moment to share 'em now. These guys just hold so much nostalgic warmth for me. I love 'em. And they happen to be from my home town.

And I ain't got no worries
'Cause I ain't in no hurry at all

I'll throw a question out to you, the reader: where do your earworms come from?

Artist: The Doobie Brothers
Year: 1974
Rating: Hot!

Crazy Love, Vol. II

I don't want no part of this crazy love,
I don't want no part of your love.

Artist: Paul Simon
Year: 1986
Rating: Hot!

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!

Rock and Roll, Hoochie Koo

When one writes a blog such as this, one wonders when a song such as this will pop up. In this case, I'm flouting my usual rule of no blogging a song if it's in my head due to recent exposure; I heard a snippet of it last week at my pub trivia night, in the music round. (I nailed it.) But the song begs to be mentioned as one of those insane earworms we all carry around with us.

Lordy mama, light my fuse!

Artist: Rick Derringer
Year: 1970/73
Rating: Lukewarm

Note: Yes, there is a comma in the title of this song.

Love the One You're With

There's a girl right next to you
And she's just waiting for something to do...

Artist: Stephen Stills
Year: 1970
Rating: Luke Hot

White Christmas

The first holiday tune to enter my brain this season. Even being Jewish, I couldn't avoid Christmas music growing up, and I don't think anyone in the U.S. could avoid hearing this particular song, given it's the best selling single of all time. I don't much care for the usual onslaught of holiday music on the radio and piped into every last hardware store and corner market, but I will admit that I'm fond of this song. In particular, the rising notes in the line "May your days be merry and bright" and the complementary descent of notes in "And may all your Christ--mases be white" is one of the most sublime melodies in pop music, delivered perfectly in that Bing baritone.

Artist: Bing Crosby and Martha Mears, written by Irving Berlin
Year: 1942
Rating: Warm as hot cocoa sprinkled with nutmeg

Within You Without You

And to see you're really only very small and
Life flows on within you and without you.

Artist: The Beatles
Year: 1967
Rating: Warm

Wild Sage

And when somebody asks if I'm okay
I don't know what to say
And along the highway
From cast-off innumerable seeds
Wild sage growing in the weeds.

One of my very favorite songs. Makes me cry almost every time I hear it. It names a lifelong conundrum of mine: am I okay, or am I not okay? Usually, the answer is both, simultaneously, just like wild sage growing in the weeds. But how should I answer the question today?

Artist: The Mountain Goats
Year: 2006
Rating: Hot!

Sympathy for the Devil

What an eery, contageous, epic song, though I don't have a good reason for it to be in my head today. This being the eighth Stones song I've blogged about (in addition to mentions in other entries), they are a well-represented band in my head. It's probably the fact of their ubiquity alone that brought the song to mind. Or maybe it's all the political turmoil of late? (Just as every cop is a criminal, and all the sinners saints)...but that would probably be a touch of revisionist history.

Artist: The Rolling Stones
Year: 1968
Rating: Luke Hot

Note: Anytime this song is played, it should be announced by a proper Englishman wearing a tie.

Give Me The Night

This song must've been conjured by pure wish-fulfillment fantasy.

Cause there's music in the air
And lots of lovin' everywhere...

Artist: George Benson
Year: 1980
Rating: Warm

Fly By Night

My ship isn't coming, and I just can't pretend.

Unlike my last entry about a Rush song, this one has emerged spontaneously from my unconscious. ("Limelight" back in 2010 was a carbon copy mental image generated from listening to classic rock radio.) So, there Rush is, a bona fide presence in my neural pathways, one might say "crackling with life" in the "invisible airways" of my brain. Ahh, sweet prog geekery.

Artist: Rush
Year: 1975
Rating: Warm

Josie

She's the raw flame, the live wire
She prays like a Roman with her eyes on fire

No band today could manage those lyrics in such a goddamned artful way.

Artist: Steely Dan
Year: 1977
Rating: Luke Hot

Note: I'm still not recovered from the fact that my good friends Marck and Emily did not name one of their twin girls Aja.