Songs for Surviving the Pandemic(s), Uptown-Downtown Midsummer Earworm One-Off Edition

 [Other installments are accessible from the bottom of this page.]

All songs mentioned herein are guaranteed to cause earworms (songs that get stuck in your head). And by ‘midsummer’ I mean what normal people think is the middle of summer, without regard to equinoxes, meteorology or astronomy.

A. I was deejaying on college radio and in clubs in Philly, 1979-1981. I loved the reggae song “Uptown Top Ranking,” still do, and was thinking about it yesterday. It is super catchy, makes even a stiff like me want to move to its rhythms, and unique enough to stand out in any reggae set. You could combine it with the neo-ska (2 Tone Records) bands like The Specials, The Selector, Madness and The (English) Beat, or pair it with “My Boy Lollipop.” You could even bump it with songs like “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da” or “D’yer Mak’er” to be unhipply hip. It is namechecked in the Psychedelic Furs' “We Love You.” But it wasn’t until yesterday when I consulted with Barney Google that I learned it was a ginormous hit in Britain, knocking Wings’ “Mull of Kintyre” out of the number one spot. And that it was created by two teenagers as a novelty record and became a sensation only because legendary BBC disc jockey John Peel played it by mistake.

Uptown Top Ranking; Althea & Donna (1978). “Nah pop no style, a (or is it I?) strictly roots.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VE-A5JULvRM.

B. Downtown Top Ranking?

i.  I was also thinking about Downtown; The B-52’s (1979). We heard it at live shows in my youth and we thought it was the perfect example of No-Wave deconstruction of a pop fixture. It still sounds good, but I’m not sure it’s held up as well as I thought it would. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIe_npJI52I&list=RDZIe_npJI52I&start_radio=1.

ii. The original Downtown; Petula Clark (1964) resides in Earworm City. Barney Google tells me the session guitarist on it was Jimmy Page. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTcqTXFfF_8.

C. Talk about indulging an earworm. My father-in-law, who died in 2005, would set his CD-player to repeat and listen to Over And Over; Nana Mouskouri (1969), well, over and over. Beautiful voice, beautiful lyrics:

Over and over I whisper your name,

Over and over I kiss you again.

I see the light of love in your eyes,

Love is forever, no more good-byes.

Until I met my father-in-law I thought Ms. Mouskouri was an obscure pop singer. Turns out she is the number one selling female vocalist in history, selling over 300 million records. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQkcOYPYyiE.

D. Since we are on the subject of kissing songs and earworms, I can’t help myself, sugar pie, honey bunch, so I must include Kiss; Prince And The Revolution (1986). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9tEvfIsDyo.

E. This one may be an earworm, but in light of the pandemic(s), it makes me want to cry when I hear it. I'm talking about the medley of two classics as envisioned in Somewhere Over The Rainbow/What A Wonderful World; Israel Kamakawiwo'ole (Iz) (1993). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z26BvHOD_sg.

F. Bonus Track

The Iz cut brought back a memory. On my last night in Hawaii for the CPCU convention in September 2016, I walked over to a pier at sunset to watch the surfers. Local teens were diving from the pier whenever a wave rolled in to deepen the water, and one of them had a boombox blasting Beach In Hawaii; Ziggy Marley (2006) on repeat. The moment was, of course, perfect. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D--ZSSFMsIg.

G.    What are your favorite earworms?