Belieftown's Greatest Hits

I was just telling some friends that the other night while watching a PBS disco special (that is not a typo, my friends), I found myself singing along to all of the dance hits from the '70s, including the ones that I never even liked to begin with. I chalk it up to loving the familiar.

That's okay if it's just some silly old tunes. It's not quite as much fun when I start singing, once again, my old songs of sorrow and complaint. Sure, there was a time that I loved those old ditties, but today they are taking up too much shelf space.

And yet, don't you find yourself humming those greatest hits to yourself from time to time? Or singing them to others, much to their chagrin?

Who could forget (and who wouldn't want to?) these old-time extravaganzas and their catchy tunes that by now have become annoying earworms...


Blame—the rock opera best remembered for such toe-tapping favorites as "You Don't Know How to Love Me" and, of course, the title track. ("Blame! It's gonna live forever, baby remember your shame.")

Single! The Musical—featuring the chartbusters "If I Were a Size Six" and "Match.com, Match.com."

For opera fans, there's Boris Notgoodenough. Who could forget Pavarotti's rendition of "Messin' Dharma"?


In order to shake an earworm, they say you have to think of something else, but then run the risk of the replacement being an earworm as well. The fact of the matter is, everything repeated over and over becomes annoying.

So my recommendation is to deconstruct the same old songs. "He doesn't love me; is that true?" "If I were a size size I'd be married by now; how do I treat myself when I believe that thought?" "Who would I be without the belief, 'I'm not good enough'?"

Then you'll have more time and energy for going through those dusty old books on the shelf that are so hard to give away (because no one else wants them either) and that you find yourself flipping through again and again, including Gullible's Travels and Me: The Unauthorized Autobiography.



©2009 by Carol L. Skolnick. All rights reserved.