Right now I’ve got to clean my room. Whenever I do that, I have to have music playing to motivate me. It has to be something upbeat and action-oriented. The Red Hot Chili Peppers are my standby room-cleaning music. Especially their earlier, more punk rock influenced stuff.
Anyone else?
I listen to Rasputina and Splashdown. The band encourages internet bootlegging, and all their music is available on the web site I linked to.
When I was a very young child, I had a Sesame Street album called “Fun With Bert & Ernie”. One of the songs was called “Put It Away”, where Bert & Ernie sing about cleaning up the room since they’re done playing, and urge the listener to do the same. My mom always played that when she figured it was time for me to clean…and it worked.
When I was in high school I cleaned the offices where my mother worked and my two favorite tapes to play while cleaning were Nik Kershaw’s The Riddle and Roger Waters’ The Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking.
The latter still reminds me of mopping for some reason.
If someone invents music that can clean my room I’ll pay top dollar.
“Seasons in the Sun” will clean out a room right quick.
Yeah, but when you do come back in you have to clean up the vomit.
I’m partial to The Clash for my housecleaning projects…
I don’t, but my mother used to break out the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack for her cleaning projects.
I still start looking for ways to bolt and run when I hear the first song off that album!
What is this “room-cleaning” of which you speak? :dubious:
I usually like to listen to the first three Funkadelic albums when I’m cleaning. Sometimes I listen to some metal instead (usually dense and sludgy stuff like Black Sabbath or Crowbar), and occasionally I go with some old glam rock–in fact, I just finished cleaning the bathroom while listening to Mott the Hoople.
When I was in college, I’d play “Radar Love” by Golden Earring at full volume while I cleaned my room. I’d restart the song up to 3 times - after that, I’d quit cleaning and have a beer.
I dunno about cleaning, but the best tune to kick-start doing laundry has to be The Pretenders’ “Watching the Clothes”.
If you like your music lyrics to be on the nose, there’s The Beatles’ “Penny Lane” with its lyric about the fire fighter who “…Likes to keep his engine clean/It’s a clean machine”. Then again, you might want to reserve that for car-washing. Well, that and “Car Wash,” of course.
As for generally upbeat or at least energetic tunes, I like The Specials, early Talking Heads, early Elvis Costello, early XTC (I’m sensing a trend here), Pixies, The B-52’s, Squeeze…
I suggest diet pills and “Yakety Sax”…
Bad Company.
…and no, since you asked, I do not dance around and sing into the vacuum handle.
Reall, I don’t.
Reverend Horton Heat, Rancid, Less Than Jake, the Descendents, Operation Ivy, Goldfinger, Ghoultown. Ska and punk and psychobilly are good cleaning music.
Ever since I was in college, my room-cleaning tunes of choice were none other than The Stooges’ “Funhouse.” Loud, obnoxious, full of unexplained yelps and groans – that’s room-cleaning in a nutshell.
Any fast, hard heavy metal… or some Meatloaf ‘bat out of hell’ soundtrack.
When I’m in one of my rare manic, kick-ass cleaning modes, I’ll dig out my Classical Thunder CD.
I like to put in older merengue or salsa, something with a really uptempo beat. Usually Olga Tañón’s Llévame Contigo or maybe Celia Cruz. Other times, it’ll be something English and upbeat, like older Madonna.
Then other times, it’s energetic J-pop.