I want to spend a couple posts ruminating about "earworms". You know, those songs that are either so catchy you can't forget them, or so irritating they won't leave your brain no matter how much bleach you use.
WARNING! CLICKING THE LINK BELOW WILL INSERT AN EARWORM THAT MAY REQUIRE MEDICAL ATTENTION!
There are songs I could honestly hear every day and not have a single complaint. "With a Little Help From My Friends", "Surfing With the Alien", or Benny Mardones singing "Into the Night". But for every one of those, there are the "others"--stuff like "You Light Up My Life", "Wind Beneath My Wings", "Afternoon Delight" that are literally fingernails on a chalkboard, musically speaking.
Today's Earworm is a song I detest from a band I love. Back in 1980-81, ELO owned the world. Fresh off their double-disc classic Out of the Blue, and a follow up in Discovery, Jeff Lynne could do no wrong. Well, almost. Somehow he decided that providing songs for a movie starring Olivia Newton-John was a good idea.
Don't get me wrong--the songs he wrote for the movie were fine, except for the title track. Sung by Newton-John, "Xanadu" has been wedged into my cerebral cortex for weeks. I wake up to it, I go to sleep with it, and sometimes it just appears in the middle of something else. Gag.
What's even sorrier is that this was Gene Kelly's last movie. He's at the very beginning of the video, under the "Xanadu" sign. They put him on roller skates. Kelly, he of Singin' in the Rain, and An American in Paris. Xanadu probably hastened his death by years. Ugh...
DON'T SAY YOU WEREN'T WARNED. WATCH AT YOUR OWN RISK.
Sorry--gotta run. Running late for my lobotomy. Can't figure any other way to remove this abomination from my brain...
See you tomorrow (yes, I'm working Labor Day weekend--makes up for the missed time and blog posts)...
Pete
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