Monday, November 29, 2010

can't get you out of my head

I am persistently troubled with things being stuck in my head. But worst, by far, are the songs. In fact, at my first job, a coworker and I had a contest over which of us could get a song stuck in the other's head without actually singing it. And as much as I dominated that game, it got a little close at times.

I heard somewhere that if you have a song stuck in your head, doing a little quick mental math can boot it right out. And that probably works, but I have such little patience for arithmetic that I often give up on it before I get too far. So said annoying song remains intact.

But today I was listening to a radio interview with Amy Sedaris, who is famous for her books, her comedy, her sibling, David and her show with Stephen Colbert--Strangers With Candy. She said that Colbert once told her that the best way to get a song out of your head is to think of that old SpeedStick deodorant brand-recognition jingle-ender, "By Mennen!"

They had so many commercials back in the day:


For the ladies:


And even En Espanol:


It really works!

8 comments:

Syar said...

I actually don't often get songs stuck in my head? It's happening more often of late, because I have had to listen to a bunch of songs on repeat because I got like 500 songs in one go at one point and I felt I had to give each of them due attention to weed out the ones I could delete from my library and the ones I could keep and then what rating they would get AND ANYWAY, I ended up listening to batches of songs repeatedly any time I could, as if to absorb them by osmosis. So when one got stuck it made me feel better about this ad hoc music listening, because it didn't turn out to all be white noise!

I obviously have bigger issues than songs getting stuck in my head, and will need a bigger Speed Stick advert to solve it all.

Madelyn said...

I can't wait to get a song stuck in my head so I can try this, but for now I can't stop saying By Mennen over and over again in my head.

neena maiya (guyana gyal) said...

Mm-mmnh, no way, I ain't looking at those, I don't want speed stick stuck in my head!

cc said...

"What's up Chicago, what's up
What's up Chicago, what's up
Chicago jump on it, jump on it, jump on it

What's up Portland, what's up
What's up Portland, what's up
Portland jump on it, jump on it, jump on it"

I dare you to get this one out of your head.

Anonymous said...

I'm usually not too bad with getting things stuck in my head, but Christmas season is upon us, and those songs are the worst!

Anonymous said...

'By Mennen' is my husband's favorite song!

Jon said...

So yeah, sorry guys, this doesn't work. The song is still stuck in my head. It just ends with, "BY MENnen" now.

Unknown said...

By Mennen? Mennen presents you the Universe? No. It's Buy Mennen. They want you to BUY their product.