Author Ed Miller: “Music is the weirdest human thing. A few dozen songs out of the zillions recorded fire off like a massive dopamine flood every time I hear them.
And then like other people don’t even like those songs.”
A friend and long-time loyal blog follower recently sent me a 30-Day Song Challenge meme in the hope that I couldn’t resist taking the challenge and blogging about it. Here’s Day #4 – A Song I Know All the Words To.
Easy.
To be fair, it’s way easier to do lyrics on demand while you’re hearing the song. The words and music of our favorite songs are inextricably linked and songwriters work especially hard for that to be so.
That’s what makes what my manager at Howard Johnson’s[1] and I did back in the day as remarkable then as it would be impossible now. Elton John was practically a religion for he and I. And so with nothing but pride and the bemusement of our co-workers on the line, we had a running contest: at any random moment during the shift, either one of us could cite any Elton John lyric[2] from any song and on the spot the other one had to name the song with bonus points of additional respect if you could say the next line in the song[3].
As I said, that would be impossible now. Too old, too many fragments of thousands of other songs in my unconscious, too far removed from the several-times-a-week-battles, and the religious zeal for Elton has been fickly given over to too many other artists, too many times.
But, boy, was that fun.
P.S. Another Howard Johnson’s story – I once cooked for the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. Their tour bus stopped in late one night after a gig and one of the members of the band asked to see the cook – that would be your current friendly neighborhood Muser – and asked, “You got any good steaks?” That was a great question because our thin flank steaks were way better than the thicker strip steaks that most people ordered. I cooked them up a batch, they thanked me, left the waitress a nice tip, and went on to their next gig.
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[1] Howard Johnson’s is gonna come up big in the Day 18 Challenge.
[2] Technically written by his collaborator Bernie Taupin.
[3] And I do literally mean any song from any album, i.e. not just the radio hits.
Ray's Musings 
Love the song choice and the HJ story! Looking ahead to Day 18 like 👀.
Also somehow my kids had never heard Don’t Stop Believing before and have now declared it one of their favorite songs. 😊 So thank you!
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It’s a classic! It continues to be a major seller. It’s become one of those rare timeless songs that has transcended its era and even the band and your kids are validating that!
I also think I learned from you that “South Detroit” is actually Canada LOL
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