So, I’m over there in the BBQ Pit reading along in a thread where some kid gets himself banned just now (a link wouldn’t be especially useful to this story, really) and someone bids him farewell by posting “nah nah nah nah! nah nah nah nah! Hey-ey-ey! Go-od by-ye!” As I’m reading it, well, I don’t suppose I need to tell you what song comes on the radio.
Yes, that song.
Share your freaky radio coincidences.
I was listening to one radio statio playing the Shine Down version of Simple Man. When that ende the station went to comercials, and I switched to another station. That station hd just begun to play the original version of the same song.
There was a time where it seemed like everytime I’d hear a product ad on the radio, i’d be within sight of a billboard hawking the very same product! At one point it was happening so often I started to suspect some type of fancy new proximity sensor / targeted ad technology was being tested spooky music.
Back when I was at uni, one of my friends had an enormous collection of MP3s, covering all genres. We were up late one night, doing some tutorial work for the next morning, and Don McLean’s American Pie came on. This guy had 100s of songs in the playlist, which he shuffled several times, and then set to play at random (slight overkill, I know).
American Pie finished, and the next song to play was Weird Al’s The Saga Begins - his Star Wars spoof of American Pie. Spooky.
This was a very long time ago, and I’ve forgotten what song it was now. But I had a song stuck in my head, just playing on endless repeat. I turned on the radio to get rid of that song, and not only was it playing, but it was at the exact same place in the song as it was in my head. That was so freaky, I’ve never forgotten that it happened.
Lady Mung and I saw the best date movie of all time last year: Passion of the Christ.
We, not surprisingly, weren’t talking a whole lot so I turned on the radio. What follows is fucking creepy.
100.3- How Far is Heaven, Los Lonely Boys
94.3 - Say Hello to Heaven, Temple of the Dog
93.7 - Tears in Heaven, Eric Clapton
90.3 - Judith, A Perfect Circle
I refused to turn the radio back on. For like, two days.
It happens often, I may have other examples later when I think of them, but the one that springs immediately to mind was my favourite incident:
A couple years ago, in the winter, I was sitting in the kitchen with my brother, and the radio was on in the background. The power went out. We hunted for candles and got the ice cream out of the freezer (so we could eat it up before it melted - I love power outings!) Anyway, about an hour later, we were discussing our favourite songs. I was teasing him and said I knew what his secret favourite song was. I delivered it like a punchline, a little loud and kind of sang it out: “It’s Raining Men!”
The power suddenly came back on, and the radio, louder than we remembered leaving (from sitting in relative quiet for so long) blared out, with absolute perfect timing, “Hallelujah! It’s raining men! Amen!”
We had a huge laugh over that one.
I was listening to my usual station (103.3 fm, button 3 on the radio) while I was driving one day. A loooong commercial from a local plant nursery came on, so I flicked to 106.3 (button two). Same commercial. Huh, I think, and press button four (104.5). SAME COMMERCIAL! So for the next minute or so, I kept my right hand on the radio and flicked between the three stations until the commercial was gone from all of them.
I think it’s really cool, too, when a sequence of songs comes on the radio that I’ve, erm, lent to myself to put into mixed cds with songs by other artists. I memorize the order of songs on cds (and really irritate people I’m driving with by singing the next song before it starts playing). Every other month or so a radio station will play a two-song sequence that I have on disc. Once (and once only… so far), it was three in a row. 
I was listening to CBC FM one Saturday morning a few years back, and really enjoying my first coffee. It was a light classical program.
The aroma was absolutely heavenly. What was going through my mind was this:
Maybe things just generally smell better in the morning – because all of your senses are “coming back on-line.” I thought about all the times I remembered enjoying lovely, lovely smells in the morning. The smell of breakfast frying. The smell of a woman. The smell of a campfire. All of these impressions have stayed with me, and, as I cupped my coffee and inhaled, I speculated that a large part of it might be subjective. I was reminded of that famous line from Apocalypse Now, and was thinking that there’s nothing objectively pleasant about burning petrochemicals, but such a sentiment could be tied to a sort of physical reaffirmation that you are, indeed, alive. Every morning is like a little birth.
I took a deep, satisfying draught of coffee, and the host of the program did something that very nearly never happens on the CBC: She cut in and spoke over the music. She said: “I love the smell of napalm in the morning.”
I still have no idea why she said that. (She was playing Mozart, not Wagner.)
I did something that I very nearly never do: I spoke to the radio. “Don’t do that to me!”
Two beats, and then she cut in again, with: “Sorry, Larry.”
Easily the most bizarre radio synchronicity I ever had. (That last bit at least is easily explained – the producer of the show was a “Larry So-and-so,” and she was apologizing to him for the very un-CBC-like interruption of music.)
When I say this I don’t mean to demean you or accuse of lying, but:
No freaking way.
On second thought, I guess it’s no weirder than coming out of The Passion and having four consecutive radio stations play songs dealing with dying and going to heaven (or Jesus). In any case, that’s truly bizarre.
Yes, truly bizarre, but I promise you that’s exactly how it went down.
It’s not that amazing, really. With millions of listeners, it’s not that remarkable that one of them happened to be thinking about that exact phrase moments before she said it – and only a little more crazy that I also happened to have the same first name as the producer.
Stuff like this happens pretty frequently. Why, within the last hour, I was flipping through the channels and went first to a Family Guy episode, in time to see Peter say “Doing your… son?” I saw it, so I flipped to another channel and The Simpsons was on, and some guy was telling Homer “You have a son… find something he likes to do.”
Okay, not nearly as remarkable, but it just happened, and in all probability I’ll have forgotten about it altogether before long. The CBC thing I will never forget, though – and I’m grateful that I have my head screwed on pretty tight, or I could easily see that sort of thing leading to a tinfoil-wrapped cranium. 
Yeah, you’re right. There was bound to be someone named Larry out there thinking that exact thing at that exact time. I’m truly not being sarcastic.
It’s freaky in any case.