Earworm
There’s finally a term for the songs that get stuck in your head: Earworm.
Beth and I have had our go-rounds with them and we had already stumbled across one of the suggested methods for getting a song out of your head: make like the Red Hot Chili Peppers and “give it away, give it away, give it away, give it away now!” We sometimes do a sort of tag-team where she’ll give me hers and I’ll give her something different back, and every once in awhile we’ll just give each other one for fun. A perennial “favorite” in our household is Cher’s Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves. (And now one of you has it.) (I took a short break after writing that last sentence there and guess what — I gave it to myself.)
Even Zoe gets them. We went to Second Spin a week or so ago and picked up some CDs, and among my choices were two from the .99 cent rack: Cher’s Greatest Hits (including our two top earworms: Gypsies and Halfbreed), and one I just picked at random, Jimmy Ray. The Cher was, well, Cher, but the Jimmy Ray actually turned out okay. It’s vaguely rockabilly pop and has a few decent songs on it that have gotten stuck in my head — and Zoe’s head too, apparently. Over dinner the other night she put her hands over her ears in frustration and growled, “Da-a-ad!!! I keep hearing that “shake-a shake-a shake-a” song in my brain!” I immediately recognized it as song #2 on the CD, Goin’ To Vegas, because I’ve been infected with that particular earworm too.
So I did the caring, fatherly thing and I helped her — I gave her song #1, Are You Jimmy Ray? instead. “Daa-aa-aad!!!” was the anguished response. She really was mad at me about it (for a kid with my sense of humor, sometimes she has no sense of humor), so I tried to explain to her how everyone gets songs stuck in their head and how the best way to deal with it is give it to someone else, and that led to me telling her about how much Beth hates Gypsies, and that reminded me of the new Cher CD, so I ran to get it and put it on the kitchen CD player — and when I got back Beth was gone. So I enjoyed a little of it myself.
Halfbreed! That’s all I ever heard
Halfbreed! How I came to hate the word.
And then Zoe left the room too.
You know, my mother married a pure Cherokee. My father’s people were ashamed of me.
Good lord, I am sooooo gay.
Then I must be the gayest hetero you know, because I own the album.
Thanks for the Ear Worm link – I pimped it on my LJ yesterday :)
OH MY GOD!! I LOOOOOVED HALF BREED!!! LOVED IT LOVED IT LOOOOOOVVVVEEEEED IT!!
Let me preface this by saying I also loved Andy Gibb and the BeeGees at the time. I loved Andy so much I left his album out within easy reach, until one day I walked into my room and there it was, forlorn and melting on the window ledge, looking like a Salvador Dali wannabe. I was going to marry Andy, actually, until that whore Victoria Principal stole him and made him commit suicide. Bitch. I’ll get her one day.
ANYWAY – I had the Cher album. I had the Cher barbie doll. She was far more statuesque and cool than her Barbie counterparts, and she kicked their asses on a regular basis, usually by whipping her Half-Breed hair in their silly blonde faces and causing them to cower in shame at their white-breadedness.
Sadly, I had not mastered the art of discerning lyrics, so in my mind I always heard “Half-Breedo!!! That’s all I ever hearrrddd….Half-Breedo!!”
To this day, I sing “Half Breedo” if I hear it. Lost my Cher doll, though.
Dammit.