I often wake up with odd old songs in my head. Lately they can be so old I don’t even remember the lyrics – just the tune, the tag line, and a vague memory that there were lyrics. In these instances YouTube, being a repository of basically all the old songs, is my friend.
Or maybe not…(Trigger warning: Don’t click this unless your tolerance for oldschool twangy C&W is higher than mine.)
…Yeah – the problem is that my earworms often edit out all the stuff I hated about an old song and looking up the actual song is like reliving a forgotten bad experience.
I grew up with this shit – for a period of time I was sort of trapped with it – and to this day the sound of somebody twanging away on a steel guitar can get my fight or flight going. I really hated this song when I was … however old I was at the time, I’ve edited that out as well…
ETA: Huh – I just looked up the song history and this particular song isn’t quite as old as I thought it was. It would have come at the very end of that particular bad time. I’m surprised I even had such a strong opinion of it. Maybe it’s just a perfect example of that genre and I’ve lumped all the songs in it into one ‘bad apple’ basket, I don’t know. Don’t really care. I’m going to go back to not thinking about it now.
Well.. I’ve gotta say you DID warn me. Yuck
I think maybe Whispering Bill Anderson stuck in your head and perhaps could be the reason you are where you are today. Simple words that cut through city confusion and all. I’m just playing early morning hippie redneck shrink so you can tell me to eff off. Think I’ll go ‘have another hit of fresh air’ now! (Quicksilver Messenger Service is my earworm today) ,,, OK, I know nothing.
I had the following song stuck in my head off and on for forty years, and couldn’t figure out what it was. It was only with the advent of YouTube and a well-filled-out internet that I finally found it again:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0euTSZVkJGQ
Oh, my! I know I’ve heard that song but it couldn’t have been very often because it’s almost completely new to me. Certainly a better earworm than mine.
It’s been a too long time with no peace of mind
I’m ready for the times to get better
I’ve got to tell you I’ve been racking my brain
Hopin’ to find a way out
I’ve had enough of this continual rain
Changes are comin’ no doubt
P’shaw, youngster! Try Tex Ritter’s “Blood on the Saddle”.
Johnny Cash’s “Ring of Fire” is the first song I remember hearing on a record player. My father made a slightly-off-center 45 adapter out of cardboard. I can see it in my mind’s eye clearer than I can see my best friend’s face at the time. Dammit, John, git outta my head now! Sigh. To be young again.
Old-time C&W is a legitimate folk-music genre. However, considering how southerners were/are popularly portrayed as ignorant, stupid, and uncouth, it’s no wonder I later shunned my childhood musical exposure. “Hey Good Lookin'” by Hank Williams is in my ear now; written in 1951. He died the year I was born and I grew up with his work.
Joel: give country a chance. Can’t we all just (sorry, jist) get along?
Oh, there’s lots of country I like a lot. Anything Emmylou Harris. Almost anything Dolly Parton. Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, David Allen Coe, Johnny Cash, Don Williams, John Prine, probably a hundred more. I might enjoy some of the more recent dudebro country if I bothered looking it up. There’s just this one subgenre I used to call “Oh woe is me I’m cheating on my wife and it’s so inconvenient”, heavy on simple minded steel guitar, that’s like fingernails on a blackboard to me. And that’s pretty much what I grew up listening to.
“cheat…inconvenient”. 95% of the genre, unfortunately.
Please, Joel, tequila is so hard to clean off the screen/keyboard. Ha!
Hank Williams- 1949- slightly before I was born- “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry”. Simple and pure and elemental. Probably profitable, too.
Hank Williams almost defined “ole timey country” (separate from fiddle music). Then there was Tennessee Ernie Ford, with a genre all his own. “I oooowe maaaaah soooouuuul, to the company store.” Dee doo dee doo doody wa doo.
Johnny Cash’s version of Hurt is really good.
Somebody had to bring up Johnny Cash.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HyfQVZHmArA
WOW! I’m both impressed and disturbed.
Eyup.
I’ve had an earworm all week. I know that Robbie Robertson passed on, but this was about 4 days prior to that. “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down.”
Dunt, dunt, dunt, ” Virgil Caine is the name”…. and there it goes again.
I once had a co-worker who would aimlessly wander around the shop whistling “Pop goes the Weasel”, just to see how many others got infected. Bugger.