Oh, My Little Earworm
Do What You Do
Earworms are a funny thing. A random snippet of a song, or piece of music, can get lodged in your brain, like a record stuck on a scratch.
For years, I had a bit of an earworm mash-up going on. The songs? Yellow Bird (originally a Haitian song from the 19th century, but made famous in the 20th century by The Mills Brothers, the Norman Lebuff Choir, amongst others) and the chorus of Don’t Blame It On That Girl by Matt Bianco.
… You can fly away / In the sky away / You’re more lucky than me / Don’t blame it on that girl…
I haven't a clue why those two songs in particular. The former, I may have heard as a kid in primary school, or even nursery. With the latter, I’ve heard of Matt Bianco but couldn’t tell you one of their songs… until I looked up who sang Don’t Blame It On That Girl five minutes before writing this.
I've had the occasional earworm foister itself upon me over the years for varying lengths of time, but the Yellow Bird Blame Girl is one that stayed with me for years.
I was inspired to write this post because, dear reader, that wriggly musical creature has visited me once again. This time with one singular song (it’s the keyboard riff that hooks you!):
I've recently written a post for the Toppermost website where people recommend ten tracks from an artist, and for my third submission to the site, I chose Badly Drawn Boy as I've become acquainted with his work over the past few months, and for the last week or so, Fly On The Wall - taken from his underrated 2020 album, Banana Skin Shoes - has been playing in my head, rent-free.
I’m not really complaining, though. Not yet anyway. Since the song’s fairly new to me, I’m still in the honeymoon period of loving it. I even looked up the chords online earlier today and had a practise on the guitar (it’s G - Bm - A - Bm- A, folks).
What’s YOUR current earworm? I'd love to know what song is currently going round and round in your head, either driving you up the wall and becoming your own theme song of sorts.
I’ll end this post with a relevant song about earworms. This is Do What You Do (Earworm Song) from The Clint Boon Experience, with accompanying vocals from Fran Healy of Travis. I bought the CD back when it was released in 2000, not knowing anything about the artist. I just liked the song. I remember seeing a music video for it back when MTV and VH1 played music videos but a lazy search on YouTube hasn’t been fruitful, so you’ll need to make do with the album cover and audio.
The same Yellow Bird that's over there up high in banana tree?
My earworms are usually connected to music I'm learning to play with the band. Currently it's often Higher Ground by Stevie Wonder - in the very funky key of Eb. There are far worse pieces of music to have pinballing around between your ears.
Badly Drawn Boy isn't bad either.
Great post! My current earworm is the opening bit of Invaders, by Iron Maiden. Can’t say I listen to the boys very often these days, but I find myself finger drumming the opening bit on my desk at work quite often. Funny how little bits of the past make their way out, now and again.