Have you ever been listening to the radio when a certain song comes, bringing back random memories from your past? One minute you're in traffic on your way home from work, and the next you're reliving your senior prom, all because of a simple song change. I don't know if I just had a really odd childhood or what, but when it come to songs triggering memories, I sure come up with some weird combinations. Check out my list and see what you think:
5. Lean on Me by Bill Withers = Church Camp
This one is probably not a far stretch. The song is about being there for your friends, and was the theme song to a junior/senior high church camp one year. It was sentiment was cheesy, but as high schoolers so were we, so it worked. When I put together the photo montage of our experience we played it to this song. Now every time I hear it I think of kids covered in mud jumping in the lake.
4. Walk Like an Egyptian by The Bangles = Trigonometry
In high school, I took a lot of advanced math classes (I know, what was I thinking?). I was smart enough to take Algebra in 8th grade so by time I got to high school I was a year ahead of the majority of my classmates. I even took AP Calculus - clearly my school did not offer enough art classes to keep me entertained. Anyway, I had a certain teacher who tried to make math more fun - looking back she most have done a pretty good job, as don't even like math and took all of her classes - but was painfully behind on the times. Case in point: to help us memorize trig formulas, we played a tortuous version of musical chairs while she played a tape of The Bangles, which she called Walk Like a Radian - you walked around a circle on the floor marked with radians, and whatever one you stopped at you had to recite the formula. I don't remember any of the formulas but now the Bangles remind of pi.
3. Fly by Sugar Ray = Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing
What in the world does Judy Blume have to do with Sugar Ray? Short answer: 1997. That was the year my class went on a field trip to see the play based on Blume's book at the local theater. As with most field trips, we took a school bus, and piled in 80 or so kids plus teachers. Of course we begged the driver to turn the radio on, and this was one of the chart-toppers of the time. Somehow every single kid knew the words to this song and most of them sang along loudly, probably to the chagrin of all the adults within a mile radius. The lyric "all around the world statues crumble for me" will forever bring back memories of kids singing happily and a story about a little brother called Fudge.
2. I Saw the Sign by Ace of Base = Annie Get Your Gun
My high school, like most in the midwest, puts on a spring musical every year. They've put on all sorts of productions, from Footloose to Oklahoma!, and my senior year the play of choice was Annie Get Your Gun. I had a lot of study halls that year - I'd taken everything possible, went to a local college for post-secondary work, and still had at about two hours of it a day - so when asked if I wanted to get out of it to paint sets, I jumped at the chance. The teacher only excused seniors and then left us unattended in the auditorium (probably not the best idea), so we blared music and wasted the afternoon painting. Somehow I ended up being the only girl with a group of guys I otherwise never would have hung out with (if it had been The Breakfast Club, I was Allison and they were Bender). And for reasons I still don't understand they were obsessed with Ace of Base, which we listened to on repeat until someone got sick of it and put in Metallica instead. Since then the 90s girl band and the old west have always been connected in my mind.
1. Centerfold by J Geils Band = Saturday Mornings
This sounds like a really creepy memory, but it's not, honest. When I was a kid my Dad and I would get up about the same time on Saturday mornings, and whenever it was on we would watch Pop-Up Videos on VH1. The music videos were usually a combination of current 90s stuff and classic 80s pop. I learned all sorts of random trivia about Paula Abdul's Opposites Attract, Michael Jackson's Billie Jean, Nirvana's Smells Like Teen Spirit, Men Without Hat's Safety Dance, and of course, J Geils Band's Centerfold. Obviously I didn't know what most of the songs were about, being about 10, but it was fun hanging out with Dad listening to music he liked. The only downside is that weird songs like Come On, Eileen remind me of my father.
