Moment in Song, Vol 2

MamaSnee complains tonight about two songs that have been getting stuck in her head. Thank you, MamaSnee, for giving me something to talk about when it's getting way too late to have not blogged today:

1. Fly by Sugar Ray. I don't know why this song enters my head, particularly as often as it does. Maybe when I'm thinking about something I do "every morning" and then it goes haywire? I don't know. I hate that I know every word to songs like this just because of the quality of radio programming in West Tennessee in the late 90s.

2. Strangers in the Night (instrumental version). This is the song that my brain turns to when it's in neutral. "Doo-bee doobee dooo...." if you can hear what I'm trying to say. I don't whistle the way some people do. I CAN whistle, I just...don't. Some people whistle when a song is in their head, or when they are zoning out. I sing, to myself, "Doo-bee doobee doo....exchanging glances..."

3. Some other lame late 90s song that turns into Gangsta's Paradise by Coolio when I'm singing it to myself. See, the whole point of this post was that when I get one specific song in my head, another unwelcome one like Sugar Ray (Sublime? Smashmouth? Something like that...) at some point I realize I've stopped singing that song and started singing, "...cause I ain't never crossed a man that didn't deserve it..." I can't tell you why, even when I can remember what the first song is. Damn, this has turned into a terrible story. (**EDITED to add: I remembered! It's What I Got which is indeed by Sublime. Here is what happens: I don't cry when my dog runs away. I don't get angry at the bills I have to pay. I don't get something when my mom smokes pot, skips the bottle and goes right to the rock... (which THEN morphs into "Revival" by Me Phi Me off the Reality Bites soundtrack)... Here me now the waves are splashing, love is laughing... and THEN into Gangsta's Paradise. Seriously.)

I also, sometimes, get bits of my Dad's songs in my head. Songs he hasn't sung for years, like Fool's Gold or Do You Ever Even Miss Me or I've Been Waiting All this Time for You. I only remember bits of most of them. I remember singing some of them for him when I was sooo young, younger than 5, too young to know what the words meant. And sometimes it makes me think about songs like they are people, who go away. I still have a song (Favorite Place) by my high school boyfriend's band (Planet) on one of my earliest mix tapes (Delaney's Faves Volume 1) (which also features Boys II Men and Candlebox) and I think, that was a great song. They weren't a great band, but it was a song that you could sing along to. And for years now, that boyfriend is gone, that band broke up, that song only exists on high school girlfriend mixtapes, a terrible grainy recording made in a garage, and it makes me feel lonely for it. Like the song got banished to outer space with all the garbage and comet shrapnel, and nobody will make it real anymore. It's sort of a velveteen rabbit soft spot for me.