I Want To See The Bright Lights Tonight

On Longing, Mental Wandering & Eternal Internal Radios

It seems the titular lyric ‘I want to see the bright lights tonight’ from Richard and Linda Thompson’s song has taken up residence inside my mind and refuses to vacate. It plays on repeat from the moment I wake up to the moment I go to sleep, slowing down as I drift off. I can drown it out with other noise, musical or otherwise, but it sneaks back in whenever the metaphorical room is cleared.

The whole expanse of the song is great; I love it when for the briefest of moments the opening chords resemble The Stooges masterpiece I Wanna Be Your Dog, the mariachi horns in the chorus, the crowd sounds, the perfect mix of aching excitement and pure hope for yet-to-be-had good times. Richard Thompson himself declares ‘there's always hope in the third verse of my songs’. But I’m growing exhausted by its endless, relentless refrain.

There’s always been a radio playing inside my head, but its not often the DJ goes on holiday and leaves just the one tune on endless replay. The last time it happened was with the titular lyric of the Karen Dalton song ‘Are You Leaving For The Country’. There’s a definite theme going on. When I realise this, that haunting lyric slips back in to the background like a loud, drunk backing singer in the dressing room doing her own thing, despite the show thats onstage. It’s a war in there between the bright lights of the city and leaving for the country, a stupid, surreal cacophonous song ‘round’ like small children were punished with having to master with during school assemblies.

Now most people get a song stuck on a loop in their head regularly. These songs are called earworms. Or Involuntary Musical Imagery. Or catchy. The customary characteristics of such plaguing tunes are upbeat tempos, commonplace pitch patterns and melodies and large jumps from one note to another. A song is most likely to become an earworm when it has elements of great familiarity teamed with something new and repetition.

Suggestions for pushing them out include the vigorous chewing of gum, listening to the whole song or thinking about God Save The Queen if you’re British. Queen’s epic Bohemian Rhapsody is one of the worst offenders as is Kylie Minogue’s Can’t Get You Out Of My Head, It’s A Small World, Who Let The Dogs Out and anything by Taylor Swift.

A determined effort to block the offending song out is likely to result in the opposite occurring, in something clinically referred to as ‘ironic process’, as is active resistance. Engaging the brain in puzzles may help. Good luck.

I confer with the all knowing Dr Google and read a medical report about a woman who is so distressed by the music playing constantly in her head (referred to clinically as ‘stuck song syndrome’) that she is highly medicated - which causes intolerable drowsiness and dizziness. The next medication causes headaches. However her Hamilton Anxiety Rating Scale score has been reduced to a mild 16. Ketamine is currently being trialled as a potential treatment for such disorders, given that they are considered to be a rare form of OCD. I also read that persistent earworms, ie those lasting more than 24 hours ( the type I always have) can be caused by various illnesses such as stroke or cancer metasizing in the brain. Always reassuring to have Dr Google on hand. Palinacousis - or auditory hallucinations - where you can still hear a sound long after it has disappeared - is a related but different condition, equally disturbing.

Jean Harris, the Headmistress Murderer, convicted for shooting her ex, the author of The Complete Scarsdale Medical Diet, reported hearing the song ‘Put The Blame on Mame’ (from the Rita Hayworth film Gilda) playing incessantly in her mind, for 33 years. She claimed she could hold a conversation whilst it played. I don’t know if it started before she shot her lover or not, the Internet is a vast ocean of fascinating but useless tidbits of information.

Apparently musicians or melomaniacs (people with an ‘abnormal fondness for music’) - as well as obsessive compulsive people or those open to new experiences - are more likely to suffer from these types of syndromes than other people. Earworms creep in when the mind wanders, and scientific studies have suggested that our minds wander around 40% of the day. Other scientific studies indicate that states of mental wandering contribute to creativity and clear thinking, much in the way dreaming does. There can also a be a creative process taking place where each time the melody repeats it subtly changes.

I know that I hum incessantly when I’m alone - I’ve managed to mostly control it around other people - and I realise it mostly when I’m around my daughter and father, who both also hum or sing along to the song inside their heads when alone. This familial compulsion is brought into stark relief if we travel in cars together, when we all stop/start humming away with our individual party tracks. I recall Warren Ellis had a secret, go-to song for clearing one’s mind of such sticky visitors, a guaranteed palate cleanser. I can’t think what it is but I have a feeling it’s something by ZZ Top . I reach out across the airwaves and he informs me its Karma Chameleon.

I’ve been trying to replace ‘I want to see the bright lights tonight’ with ‘karma, karma, karma, karma, karma chameleon’ for about ten hours now and its like a cat fight in my brain, fur flying, teeth and tails and unintelligible yowls. May the stickiest song win. Occasionally one prevails and rises alone above the din, but as yet it’s an ongoing bloody war between city lights, country dreams and red, gold and green. Bring me the ketamine already. Or maybe the songs I’m hearing are trying to tell me something I think about sometimes, like take me to a field of weeds and wildflowers where I can hear the birds and a breeze and a river gurgling by….

‘I’ve been dreaming bout the country

And laying in a field of weeds

And abandoning the city

To its futility and greed…’

Roman Stockings ©L.Carmen 2007

As a reward for trudging through the weird melodic hellscape of endless musical auto replay with me, here is a really lovely curated soundtrack of songs about cities and the country for you that I’ve been endlessly mentally reworking since I used to make my playlists on a CD to CD burner… who says I’m obsessive compulsive? Anyway enjoy:

Note: I’ve been trying to transfer this to a Youtube playlist with Songshift but not having much luck - I’ll update if I manage it - but there’s city/country songs mentioned above plus tunes from Johnathon Richman, Velvet Underground, Kevin Morby, Bruce Springsteen, Toots & The Maytals, Harry Nilsson, Rickie Lee Jones, me and many more.

Last note: by god I think Karma Chameleon might have won this round…