Last Song

My Life

Rats! I’m so bummed that I was taking a nap when Andrew sent out this genius prompt. My answer would have been:

“Before He Cheats,” by Carrie Underwood
We turned on VH1 to supply the proper background noise for the sleeping kiddo, and this video was on. I almost lunged at the TV to change the channel. I had just gotten the damn song out of my head after (I do not exaggerate) a four-day brain rotation. For three nights, I was waking up to go to the bathroom and humming this maddening song. I finally cleansed by singing “I Got Rhythm” over and over because it was the catchiest song I could remember. Now I’m betting on the “I Dream of Jeannie” theme song, but no luck so far.

What’s the last song you heard?

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57 thoughts on “Last Song”

  1. I think it was Smog.

    For future ear-worm reference, I’ve heard that Moondance by Van Morrison is the universal solvent for songs stuck in your head. The theory is that it’s a bit catchy, so your brain moves on from whatever it’s fixated on, but not so catchy that you’ll wake up the next morning still humming it.

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  3. I was flipping through radio stations in the car on the way home tonight and heard that Keith Urban song that has the line “and take your cat and leave my sweater cause we have nothing left to weather.” It’s the only line I remember from the song.

    OK fine, I’ll look it up. “You’ll Think of Me.” Darn right, Keith. Time to go listen to Moondance.

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  4. My 9 year-old played “It’s a Small World After All” on her kazoo on the way home from school. Not even muzak in the grocery store could wipe out that hideous tune.

    I’m thinking of grounding her for so long her spouse and children will one day be responsible for carrying out the punishment.

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  5. “samson” by regina spektor. just because i’m answering work email and listening to iTunes. before that – “inconsolable” by jonatha brooke and “cracked mirror curse” by karl mullen.

    and the song to get the annoying ones out of your head? “Rio” by Duran Duran. But it really only works if you don’t know all the words…

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  7. “Fake Empire” by The National. My brother introduced me to this song the other week, and I forgot about it until today when it came up on random, and it’s so beautiful that I had to listen to it three times on the way home.

    Though now, for some reason, I seem to have the “I Dream of Jeannie” theme song stuck in my head.

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  8. Well, it’s only a semi-related comment. After my daughter was born I found myself singing to her All.The.Time. Only, I didn’t really know any official baby songs. So one morning, and I have no idea where this one came from but I surprisingly know the whole chorus, I found myself singing “Talk Dirty to Me” by Poison. I was rather far into said chorus before it dawned on me how inappropriate and bizarre the entire situation was. I signed up for a class called “Lullabies” for Mommy and baby post-haste. Anyway, if you happen to know any of “Talk Dirty to Me” because you were that kind of girl in the mid 80’s, once it gets in it’s hard to get out!

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  11. For at least a week “Rehab” by Amy Winehouse has been on constant rotation in my brain. I get up to pee in the night and it’s “No, no, no!”, I’m driving to the store and it’s “My daddy think’s I’m fine” (and another no, no, no!)and on it goes. Nothing has embedded itself like this since Ben Fold’s “You To Blame”.

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  13. My husband woke up singing Roger Miller’s King of the Road and now I’ve been singing it all day. Really really annoying.

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  14. Best way to get a song out of your head: The “Ma numma nuh” song from Sesame Street. It works! And then it goes away.

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  16. I have new shoes by Paulo Nutini stuck in my head. “Hey I put some new shoes on and suddenly everything’s right.” OVER AND OVER. I am studying and trying to memorize economics vocab words, but all I can think of is that song. Oh no, now I have “Before he Cheats” stuck again! Just yesterday my cousin and I were singing this song, very loudly, after she broke it off with her bf.

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  17. The last song I heard was “Dontcha'” by the Pussycat Dolls. My mom was singing it while we were hanging drapes, which was hilarious. Dontcha wish your girlfriend was hot like me…

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  18. “Let’s Go to the Mall”- the music video by Robin Sparkles on this week’s episode of How I Met Your Mother. It’s a really embarrassing to suddenly realize you’re singing it out loud because not a lot of people are in on that joke.

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  19. “Millionaire’s Waltz” by Queen. And, embarrassingly, I was plotting out a video for it in my head. A video for a song that is 30 years old, for a band whose lead singer is dead, and a video that would be so fricking lame that even mid-’80s VH1 wouldn’t show it.

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  21. I’ve been waking up to this song in my head for weeks. I turn around in the shower to grab the shampoo and out comes “pretty little souped up 4-wheel drive… carved my name into his leather seaaaaaats…” It is driving me insane!

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  22. OMG. My two roommates are obsessed with “Before He Cheats”. They sing it all the time–and I hated that song the first time they did it, too. It’s a good thing we were already friends.

    Better song, which was the last one I heard and the one I have stuck in my head: “Portland, Oregon” by Loretta Lynn and Jack White.

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  24. We intentionally do this to each other at work. It usually starts with “Her name was LO-LA, she was a SHOW-GIRL, with yellow feathers in her HAIR and a dress gut down to THERE ….” and it often degrades to some Johnny Cash atrocity – I won’t even mention it.

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  25. Corazón, by Jarabe de Palo had just started on my iPod last night when I got back from helping the Scouts at church. So, I paused it and reset it to the beginning and popped the iPod onto my clock radio, so I probably heard about 15 seconds of it this morning as I stumbled out of bed and tried to turn it off before waking my wife (and daughter, who crawled into bed 20 minutes before the alarm was set to go off–not enough time to carry her back to bed calm the heart down and get any restful sleep before the alarm goes off…grr)

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  26. The last song I heard all the way through was something by Josh Turner on the Tuesday night Opry. It was awful. (I blame Randy Travis’s 1980s success for the proliferation of bad baritones in country music.) Universal solvent for me: April in Paris (Cole Porter), particularly the Sinatra version, which actually starts with the bridge before going to the verse.

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  29. For some reason it’s been Christmas songs around here. A few days ago my coworker started and within a few minutes she and I were as close to belting out The Christmas Song as you can be in a college office.

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  30. “Slow dancing in a burning room” by John Mayer. If this song doesn’t make you want to go home and jump your partner, I really don’t know what will!

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  31. Anything by ABBA or Red Hot Chili Peppers seems to get caught in my brain at times.
    Other than that, it’s been: MacArthur Park, Smile, Lost in the SuperMarket, and Rudy Can’t Fail.

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  33. Quiet Riot’s “Cum On Feel The Noize.” I have a three-year-old with strong musical preferences that do not always jibe with mine. Fortunately we can both agree on bad 80’s metal.

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  34. Black Mirror, Arcade Fire. I had just finished listening to one song on my shuffle when the pilot announced we were beginning descent and I had to turn it off.

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  36. For some reason I routinely get “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer” stuck in my head. “…she’d been drinking too much eggnog…”

    One summer, while painting the exterior of a gigantic factory building in scorching heat, I found myself singing “Oh Susannah” with a Russian accent.

    @Kristi: “Greatest Love of All” That’s another one that gets stuck! Arrrgh!

    Last Song: Clash, Guns of Brixton (live)

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  38. “Sweet Escape” by Gwen Stefani. I put it on my Ipod last night and strutted to it on my walk into work today. It is a TOUGH one to get out of your head…so look out. Great song though

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  41. Morning Has Broken by Yusuf Islam/Cat Stevens -I’m so glad he’s back singing again!

    I use Cherish, by Madonna, to get stuck songs out of my head. Works like a charm.

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  42. I don’t know about all those other “cures” but this one works every time for me. The best part is that it clears at the old song but doesn’t stick around to make you hate AND you don’t even need to know all the words. Just sing part of the chorus of “Greatest American Hero.” Cured.

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  43. So Sorry by Feist. She’s on seriously heavy rotation here at the office.

    “Anniversary” by Tony Toni Tone will get ANYTHING out of my head – to include visuals.

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  44. Unfortunately, just as I read this entry, I tuned into the radio in time to hear “we’re gonna party…carramba…fiesta…foreva. All Niiiiiiiiiiiight Long! I’m gonna have to fight this one for a while…

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  45. Woo. “Can’t You See” by the Marshall Tucker Band is on the radio as I type. And this is supposed to be an alternative music station. Someone has a sense of humor there today.

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  46. Most recently… Dodo by Dave Matthews. Yeah, I’m one of those Dave Matthews listening people.

    And to cure the “This song will NOT GET OUT of my head”? You can sing the song that never ends.

    “This is the song that never ends.
    It just goes on and on my friend.
    Someone started singing it not knowing what it was.
    And they’ll keep on singing it forever just because…
    This is the song that never ends!
    It just goes on and on my friend…”

    Repeat ad nauseum.

    Or 99 bottles of beer on the wall?

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  47. “Will you still love me tomorrow” by The Shirelles. I’m watching Dirty Dancing on cable. It’s fortunate that I wasn’t reading your post whilst “She’s Like the Wind” was poking at my ears.

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  50. Candyman by Christina Aguilera…catchy, in a sort of, I’m-gonna-corrupt-your-brain sort of way.

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