#40 - Internal Soundtracks

Internal Soundtracks

8/25/04 (#40)

Sitting in the near-silence of morning workspace cubicles, each errant noise dampened by the cloth walls of our personal playpens, I stared into the glareless warmth of the monitor and, much to my surprise, found myself humming an Avril Lavigne song.

I have no idea how that thing got in here. I have a personal audio firewall that has effectively kept me from knowing the difference between 'N Sync and The Backstreet Boys, has maintained an inventory of only one Christina Aguilera song title in my head (though "Genie in a Bottle" would be a great song for a rock band to cover), and allows me to completely fall out of the conversation when the name Jessica Simpson is brought to the fore. I'm sure Avril Lavigne and her marketing team would abhor being grouped with such premeditated music, but anyone who subjects their songs to The Matrix' ultra-gloss production value is chasing a decidedly non-artistic muse. (Of course, excepting you, Ms. Phair.)

I am a sucker for a catchy hook. For that, I'll give the Avril Lavigne project props---I can't even recall the last time I had any conscious exposure to that song: If it were on the car radio I would have changed it (it's catchy, but not good), I go to work before NBC's Today show (though I did catch the rather bland Norah Jones there one day), so it must have been incidental contact (the overhead music at a coffee shop, the noise emanating from the home electronics department at Target, or noise pollution pouring forth from the open windows of a sixteen-year old's Honda Civic during our simultaneous session at the stoplight.) What amazes me is that the song clung inside my psyche like a burdock on wool pants, completely hidden until it fell into the quiet of the cube farm this morning and blossomed into a most annoying mental weed.

I should point out that I am exaggerating when I say that the song got stuck in my head. What actually got stuck on the turntable of my brain was a 6-note section of the chorus, one which immediately restarted the moment I reached the end. This is the audible version of the infamous water torture, where a drop of water is repeatedly dripped onto your forehead in regular short increments. One would not think that a drop of water would be harmful, but after the 2,000th droplet, and knowing what it's like to hum a 5-second snippet of an Avril Lavigne song 2000 times, I can understand how effective the torture would be. I was so run-down by the sugary mantra that I was praying for salvation to arrive in the form of a Cher chorus.

Now I'm not an old man yet, but this much I have learned in my years: the removal of the 6-note audio virus is no task for delicate instruments. It cannot be coaxed out gently with distractions, and its entrenched position in your psyche makes it resistant to junior varsity efforts to supplant it with less potent melodies. Bruce Springsteen is a fabulous artist who I admire and respect, but his is a blue-collar vision, a story more than a comic strip, an anecdote more than a one-two set-up/punch line. Thus, he is not a good ally against the hyper-slick sales pitch that is an Avril Lavigne chorus. Ditto on The Tragically Hip, an egregiously overlooked Canadian band that I adore: Their subtle, powerful songs get stuck in my head regularly, but they are songs designed for blank aural canvases, not for covering over the garish residue of a musical finger-painting party.

For jobs like this, I rely on Robert Pollard. Guided By Voices (GBV) are Drano for the pop-ditty clogs in your brain. Any album in GBV history contains at least a handful of Abba-strength choruses that flush away even the most stubborn of vacuous pop melodies, Nissan commercials and game show theme songs. (It's a long day when you spend most of your hours alternately humming and struggling not to hum the 30 second Final Jeopardy melody.) With classic rock simplicity, quasi-punk-rock energy and indie-pop irresistibility, GBV forge albums that intersperse arena-worthy anthems with delicate acoustic nuggets, a multi-level massage on your short-term audio memory. I recall no jingle or sing-along refrain that has remained memorable after a serving of GBV's confectionary intricacy.

Problem is, it's been three days---how am I going to get this GBV song out of my head?

©2004 wpreagan