Pen-Elayne on the Web

Earworm Mixups

I knew there was a reason I stopped listening to the Alan Parsons Project's "Turn of a Friendly Card," one of my regular-rotation records back in college. It's because I keep inserting lyrics from other songs which scan the same into the verse. Today it was both LedZep ("Stairway to Heaven") and the Beatles ("Rocky Raccoon"), the latter quite unbidden.

I mean, really. Imagine

There's a sign in the desert that lies to the west
Where you can't tell the night from the sunrise

only with "There's a feeling I get when I look to the west and my spirit is crying for leaving" or "And then Rocky came in, he was stinking of gin, and proceeded to lie on the table." Or, worse, both of those lines in the same verse.

Damn this iPod, anyway. I'd just loaded it with "Turn of a Friendly Card" yesterday and of all the gin joints 3871 songs I've got on there, that would come up first (okay, second) thing this morning. I knew there was a reason I stopped listening to music regularly some years ago. Damn misbegotten earworms.

Edited to add the audio via YouTube:



Just so's you know what I'm talking about here.