Earworms.
I think that's what they call them. Earworms are those snippets of melody that lodge themselves in the tissue of your brain.
At the moment, I have a merry-go-round of cacophony in my head. Part of the noise is a disco record that I can't quite put my finger on. It may be the Jackson 5. There's a bit of Womack and Womack in there too. It then morphs into Sydney Youngblood's If Only I Could. He's a cheery German Texan who raised the ire of dance music rival Soul II Soul back in the late 1980s with his chippy cheerful rip-off soul pop.
But not the chorus of If Only I Could. Oh no. Just the start of the verse and the few bars leading up to that.
Which is my problem with earworms. The sign of a good producer or songwriter is their ability to make even the innocuous bits of the song sound as amazing as the obvious hooky bits. Everyone from Trevor Horn to Timbaland is good at this, and it means that a wriggly little earworm can crawl from anywhere in the deep depths of popular music and surprise you with its catchy little hooky teeth.
What I'm saying is, really, that there's too much melody out there. It would be nice for everyone to have a lovely chorus, something-- y'know-- really smashing, and for the rest of the song to be a tuneless, forgettable dirge. It worked for the likes of Echobelly, Oasis, Aliyah, U2 and pretty much any artist beginning with a vowel.
East 17. Adele. Elbow. Every artist beginning with a vowel. Every single one. It works. Try it.
The only way to rid your mind of an earworm is to scoop your cranium empty with the digger your Uncle Dave nicked from the local university building works last Tuesday. Or have a reputable pop impressario such as Gary Glitter, jonathan King or Michael Jackson's corpse do one of those worm-charming things on your skull and tap your bonce incessantly with a long stick.
I call them earworms. What do you call them? What's in your head right now? Am I just asking this to give the impression of interactivity on this blog? Yes. I'm not interested, so bog off. Unless you want to sing me a song in the comments. A lovely, smashing uncatchy song.
1 comment:
I find what you imply about A1 in your post incredibly offensive.
I hope your legs fall off and then your arms fall off and then your arms go on your legs and become armlegs and they wobble about and you who are just a body with no legs or arms but only independent armlegs get really sad about what you said about A1 even though you didn't say it but only implied it.
Then who will be laughing then? Who? Who? Then?
Post a Comment