Slagging Off Everyone’s Mum

After I’ve finished typing this, I’m going to listen to Human, by The Killers, all the way through for the first time, and I’m going to enjoy it even if the process actually does kill me.

Do you remember enjoying I Kissed a Girl by Kate Perry? The simple hook? The catchy refrain? The naive and quaint whisper of girl-on-girl action? Then everyone and his mum set it as their ringtone, and the bajillionth repetition of Kate’s bi-curious experimentation leads you to wonder if maybe she should have drawn her conclusions by now, and perhaps had them published in a respected lesbonic academic journal.

Or how about Bring Me To Life by Evanescence? I genuinely really liked this song when it first came out. Amy Lee is a stunningly talented vocalist, and if you haven’t rummaged around the grimy floor of the internet for any of their accoustic offerings yet, I strongly recommend you do. I found a lot of their first album to be a bit samey, but they were ultimately redeemed by this one awesome song. Then everyone and his mum played, sang, hummed and whistled it, for about two continuous months, whenever the slightest opportunity presented itself.

This song was literally too good for its own good. Eventually everyone (and his mum) got sick of it. Now people seem to be afraid to express any liking for it outside of an ironic context. It’s been sentenced to serve the same punishment as Barbie Girl and Ebeneezer Goode, both of which have their own merit, but neither of which you’d want as a cellmate.

Now I’ve come across this most recent Killers offering, which actually came out three months ago, but which has only filtered into my hermetically sealed music bubble over the past week, with everyone and his erstwhile mum (and more pertinently my girlfriend, who I may as well share a skull with) singing as much of the chorus as they remember.

This tends to be “are we human, or are we dancers”, repeated ad nauseum, which I’ve now learned isn’t even the actual lyric. I wasn’t aware the two were mutually exclusive, but I’m not one to let a bit of stray set theory ruin my enjoyment of a song. I quite like The Killers. I quite like sausages as well, but if I was forcefed Asda own-brand chipolatas for a week, they’d probably lose their appeal by Tuesday afternoon.

Unlike the other two examples, I haven’t had a chance to just enjoy this one. It’s already winding me up and I haven’t even listened to it. By rights, I should really like this song, and I’ll be mildly gutted if I can objectively assess it as being quite good, but also have an irrational dislike of it caused by half-arsed mass-exposure.

I’m not sure who to blame more: everyone, or his mum.

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