Pepper
Song on my mind... "Pepper" by Butthole Surfers
I don't mind the sun sometimes
The images it shows
I can taste you on my lips and
Smell you in my clothes
Cinnamon and sugary
Like softly spoken lies
You never know just how you look
Through other people's eyes
The song has been on my mind since the beginning of November. Where did it come from? I don't know. Not from a CD. I don't own anything by Butthole Surfers. Not from the radio. I was hearing it in my head two weeks before I came across it on the dial. Maybe from the shower. That's where I first found myself humming it. Wherever it came from, I wish it would go back. I need to find a way to get rid of it.
I wonder if it's a mental itch. In this case, an itch caused by a song from the mid-90s about various people dying. I did a quick search for "why songs get stuck in our heads" and found a relevant article about it. The research identifies three "characteristics of music that make them memorable"...- repetition
- musical simplicity
- incongruity
From that short list, I would say the chorus of "Pepper" is memorable because of its incongruity. The melody uses only a few notes, but the timing of the notes is irregular, which is probably why it tickles my brain.
While that's all fine and interesting, the song is still on my mind and I'm not sure how to free myself of its melody. The article says "the only way to 'scratch' a cognitive itch is to rehearse the responsible tune mentally". That doesn't sound fun at all. Instead, I'm going to try a different two-pronged approach:- counter it with another memorable song (like "Jingle Bells")
- write about it and hope the itch scratches itself away
They were all in love with dyin'
They were drinking from a fountain
That was pouring like an avalanche
coming down the mountain
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