…stuck in your head, not because it was catchy, but because it reflected what was going on in your life at the time?
I know this sounds corny, but here goes. The last few weeks I lived with my parents, I had a line from “Father and Son” (Cat Stevens) running through my head constantly: “Now there’s a way, and I know that I have to get away…Oh Lord, I have to go.” Later, when I was in school and overwhelmed with work, I was stuck on the Guess Who: “It’s too late, she’s gone too far, she’s lost the sun: she’s come undone.” On a lighter note, my junior year in high school, when I was kicking ass academically, I was stuck on Timbuk 3: “I’m doin’ all right, gettin’ good grades; the future’s so bright, I gotta wear shades.” Yes, I know that song was a satire, but I was so confident I didn’t care. A friend of mine whose daughter was messed up on drugs as a teenager told me he’d, at the time, had a line from “Tommy” stuck in his head: “What is happening in [her] head? Mmm…I wish I knew, I wish I knew.”
Gee, this really goes back a long, long way but here are the words of a song that I honestly thought were written for me! While the love part never happened(at least on his part), luckily the friendship did flourish.
TWO OUT OF THREE AIN’T BAD
Meat Loaf
Baby we can talk all night
But that ain’t gettin us nowhere
I told you everything I possibly can
There’s nothing left inside of here
And maybe you can cry all night
But that’ll never change the way I feel
The snow is really piling up outside
I wish you wouldn’t make me leave here
I poured it on and I poured it out
I tried to show you just how much I care
I’m tired of words and I’m too hoarse to shout
But you’ve been cold to me so long
I’m crying icicles instead of tears
And all I can do is keep on telling you
I want you, I need you
But-there ain’t no way I’m ever gonna love you
Now don’t be sad
'Cause two out of three ain’t bad
Now don’t be sad
'Cause two out of three ain’t bad
At that point in time, that was exactly what was happening.
This happens to me all the time. Usually its self-fulfilling in that I’ll be thinking about circumstances in my life or feelings I’m having and a song I’ve heard or know well pops in my head that seems so appropriate. At first you smile to yourself (or more accurately I to myself) and think, “cool, someone else has been at this exact place…I’m not alone in the universe.” Then, before I know it, its stuck in there good and proper.
Don’t know if this is exactly what you mean, but I have a student in my class whose name is very similar to Linger. As a result, for the first few weeks of school, I constantly had, “Do you have to let in linger…do you have to…do you have to…do you have to let it liiiinnngggerrrrr…” in my head.
A couple of days ago, I found out that my new neighbors is a friend of a girl I know (who is also about to be one of my neighbors). The first girl is named “Love”, and all day I had the line “Love is here…” by Luscious Jackson in my head.
Also, when I get melancholy and think about my ex-girlfriend, I quite often get Chris Isaak’s “Wicked Game” in my head.
Yeah. For a looooong time this summer, it was a part of “The Apartment Song,” by Tom Petty.
I used to need your love so badly
Then I came to live with it
Lately I get a faraway feeling
And the whole thing starts again
Oh yeah, I’m alright
I just feel a little lonely tonight
I’m OK most of the time
I just feel a little lonely tonight.
Great song, that.
Ooh! Once when I was about 20, I went on a kind of field trip with one of my instructors and another student. (It would take too long to explain, and it’s not germane to the story. Suffice to say there wasn’t anything untoward about what we were doing.) Anyway, once there, we worked with a girl my age named Brandy. This was before the pop singer/actress gained prominence, so it was an unusual name to us. We kept a guard on ourselves the entire weekend, but when we drove away, we said, “Okay…now! The sailors say Brandy, you’re a fine girl; what a good wife you would be…”
