unbelievable
Last Wednesday the boys watched Shreck with Grandpa David (ever their source for all varieties of cinematic experiences). They came home singing "I'm a Believer", and were surprised that I knew it given my firm denial of anything Shreck related. So I told them it was originally by The Monkees, which led us into a discussion of that curious group's origins. We ended up on Youtube to compare the Monkees and Smash Mouth versions of "I'm a Believer", and then went on a tour of late-60s rock and pop taking tunes from The Monkees, The Archies, The Beach Boys, and Little Richard. This was all over a couple days. The point, though, is that we've been thinking about "I'm a Believer" a lot.
At first I didn't mind it. It's a fine song, after all—a good one even. But a couple days ago I started to resent its constant presence in my mind, especially over the sleepless portions of the last couple nights. I don't think I've had a song so stuck in my head since Frozen. Yesterday I put on some other music and told the kids they weren't allowed to sing it any more. Of course that doesn't entirely work—Zion in particular will sing it on purpose when I say things like that—but it helps. So the mania is already fading.
I don't know how much of the problem is due to the song's inherent catchiness—the songwriting chops of Neil Diamond and production expertise of Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart—and how much is just the fact that we focused deliberately and intensively on it for a couple days. Probably a combination of both. But either way I'm not liking it. At least with Frozen there's four or five songs, stylistically pretty different, that took turns in my brain; there's not so much to "I'm a Believer". Oh well, I suppose it could be worse. It could be "Last Train to Clarkesville". Or "Sugar Sugar"...