Round and Round

Weekend Assignment #94: What's the worst possible song to get stuck in your head? You know: the song that once you hear it you cannot drive from your skull, even with an ice pick and a centrifuge. They have a word for that kind of song: "Earworm." We want to know what you consider to be the most evil earworm possible.

(Don't feel too bad for Joe, incidentally. He suggested the topic.)

Extra Credit: Is there a song you can use to drive the evil earworm out?

John Scalzi went on to select Yummy Yummy Yummy in response to this question, which is one of my unfavorite songs in the history of music, aside from most rap, which I generally don't count as music at all. Scalzi even cited the stupidest, most annoying line in this stupid, annoying song. The same line was a question on the 1960s Chuck Barris-produced game show, The Generation Gap, hosted, if memory serves, by Bob Eubanks. I remember this because it struck me at the time as the worst pop lyric ever. Nothing has come along since to force me to revise this opinion.

So, of course, you can guess what happened when I read Scalzi's entry. Yep, Yummy Yummy Yummy pushed Wild Horses out of my internal soundtrack for a while. Yuck. Thanks, John.



The Rolling Stones version of Wild Horses (there was a cover version on Buffy the Vampire Slayer once) had been playing in my head since about 3:40 this afternoon, when I turned on my iPod to drive out another earworm, Chuck Berry's Too Much Monkey Business. Now, Wild Horses and Too Much Monkey Business are both great songs. I'm especially fond of the Chuck Berry tune, which the Beatles covered on the BBC (and which appears on the CD The Beatles at the Beeb). But I'd been singing, humming, and hearing the Chuck Berry tune for about 24 hours straight. I don't want to have any song going through my head for a full day!

Interestingly, though, Yummy Yummy Yummy did not maintain its hold on me for long this time. Within 20 minutes, I was back to - wait for it - Too Much Monkey Business. That and Wild Horses have been trading off all evening since then.

Neither of those songs is evil, though. They're both on my iPod. But if you click on the screen capture above to view it full size, you'll see that there's a certain pop song that's conspicuously absent from the artists starting with A on my playlist. Yes, if there's one pop song I hate almost as much as Yummy Yummy Yummy, it's Sugar, Sugar by the Archies. Now, that's evil. The lyrics of Sugar, Sugar are almost as stupid as the Ohio Express ones. I won't quote them here, because I don't want to evoke them in your head or mine, thank you very much. On top of that it's by a cartoon band from a particularly lame 1960s tv show. Yeegh.

Extra Credit: Journals Editor Joe suggests playing classical music to get rid of an earworm. This is an interesting idea, and it may even work sometimes. Unfortunately, one of the earworms I've had off and on since Sunday is Bach's Alleluia. How am I supposed to get rid of that one, hmm?

The only thing I've found that helps at all is to pour more music into my head, preferably a variety of music. You'll notice that my iPod has Disney stuff, Aerosmith, Art of Noise, the Beatles, the (English) Beat, The Clash, music from Back to the Future and Buffy and So Weird, and on and on. While the music's playing, no one song gets to stick in my head for long.

And when I turn off the iPod, if I'm lucky, I at least get a different earworm instead of the one that was playing before I turned the iPod on.

I'm changing the subject now. Just so you know.


I took this picture of the moon (the one above) early yesterday evening when I left the office. It wasn't quite sunset, and the moon wasn't quite full. I tried to get a good shot, but this was the best I could do. See, Bea has been writing about the moon, and Carly had an awesome moon shot a month ago, and I wanted to join in. But I'm not really happy with the result.

Tonight was the full moon. I came out of work right after sunset, but the moon was already up in the power lines, too small to be photographed well by my Canon. But I kind of like the shot to the left, with the moon between the lines. Last night I almost took a picture of a dove on a wire above the moon. Should've taken it, but I would have had to stop the car. Oh, well.

Maybe tomorrow night I can leave work at the right moment, and come out to a full moon that's just cleared the horizon. That's when it looks its largest. Oh course, I'll have to find a spot where the church isn't in the way, or another building, or even the Rincon Mountains. Actually, that might be a good shot, if I can manage it: the moon and the mountains. I can dream, can't I?

Karen