Do you ever like a song and feel like some kind of alien infection got into your brain or you wouldn't? Kind of like falling in love with someone you know is bad for you, or maybe more like eating junk food, I don' t know.
I fell in love with "Sleepwalking" by
Maria Lawson. Big old schmoopy pop song. She's a British singer who won some kind of hideous reality TV competition thing, the type of show I'd rather swallow ground glass than watch.
And then, less distressingly, I stumbled on one called "Love Burns" by California indie band
Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, a not-new-but-new-to-me song, that I can't seem to stop playing.
And I recently got some of my beloved old
Dead Kennedys' songs into digital format and have been blissing out reliving my misspent youth and thinking "
Holiday in Cambodia" probably really was the best punk song ever. Except for "Nazi Punks, Fuck Off," that was the best.
Or "California Uber Alles."
I don't know, some of us never grew up. And yet even that didn't inoculate me against big swoony Britpop.
And after seeing a version of "Because the Night" by Bruce Springsteen and Bono on
YouTube, I had to cleanse my brain by cranking Patti Smith's original version as loud as possible for several hours. I know Bruce Springsteen co-wrote the song with Patti Smith, but her version owns me. Always has, always will.