Wednesday, September 15, 2004
Behind the Music
So I read this thing in the paper today, and admittedly the details were a little sketchy since I was reading it off the back of someone else’s copy from about ten feet away on the train, but the whole point of the article was that they were trying to figure out what this summer’s "summer song" was. And I swear to God I had not heard of any of the songs they were suggesting. I know I don’t have a working radio in my car, but am I that out of touch? Aren’t Sugar Ray and Creed still pumping out the hits? The world as I’ve known it is dead.
Or maybe not, but it did get me thinking about fun songs and the truly weird associations I have with them. For instance, every time I hear Nelly’s classic summer song "Hot in Herrrrrrrrrrre," I tragically flash back to an office bar outing where my friend mistook a supervisor for a waiter and, much worse, proceeded to demonstrate the "running man." The eighties classic "Come On Eileen" will forever bring to mind any number of sorority formals I was dragged to, where phalanxes of girls who had already abandoned their vastly unworkable shoes would invariably squeal and march together Third-Reich-style to its dulcet tones. And early Alanis, frankly any early Alanis, brings back a whole complex of memories from my senior year of high school, from skipping study hall to head to the Burger King to taking a band trip to the Dixie Stampede in Branson, MO, where they reenact the Civil War with the stated possibility that the South will win this time, to winning a really retarded desk lamp in the senior raffle while practically everyone else won cars and major household appliances. For better or for worse, that’s the soundtrack of my life.
But anyway, I’m not at all sure what I would choose as the "summer song" for 2004, although I’m pretty sure it isn’t a legally or morally binding decision regardless. Let’s just throw the damn title to Hilary and Hailie Duff and get the hell on with our lives.
So I read this thing in the paper today, and admittedly the details were a little sketchy since I was reading it off the back of someone else’s copy from about ten feet away on the train, but the whole point of the article was that they were trying to figure out what this summer’s "summer song" was. And I swear to God I had not heard of any of the songs they were suggesting. I know I don’t have a working radio in my car, but am I that out of touch? Aren’t Sugar Ray and Creed still pumping out the hits? The world as I’ve known it is dead.
Or maybe not, but it did get me thinking about fun songs and the truly weird associations I have with them. For instance, every time I hear Nelly’s classic summer song "Hot in Herrrrrrrrrrre," I tragically flash back to an office bar outing where my friend mistook a supervisor for a waiter and, much worse, proceeded to demonstrate the "running man." The eighties classic "Come On Eileen" will forever bring to mind any number of sorority formals I was dragged to, where phalanxes of girls who had already abandoned their vastly unworkable shoes would invariably squeal and march together Third-Reich-style to its dulcet tones. And early Alanis, frankly any early Alanis, brings back a whole complex of memories from my senior year of high school, from skipping study hall to head to the Burger King to taking a band trip to the Dixie Stampede in Branson, MO, where they reenact the Civil War with the stated possibility that the South will win this time, to winning a really retarded desk lamp in the senior raffle while practically everyone else won cars and major household appliances. For better or for worse, that’s the soundtrack of my life.
But anyway, I’m not at all sure what I would choose as the "summer song" for 2004, although I’m pretty sure it isn’t a legally or morally binding decision regardless. Let’s just throw the damn title to Hilary and Hailie Duff and get the hell on with our lives.
