Day 55. A song you’ve listened to so many times that you just can’t listen to it anymore.

“Hey Ya!” – OutKast

I don’t listen to a lot of radio. I haven’t for years. As a result, when a song becomes ubiquitous on the radio and everyone else is getting sick of it, I’m fairly immune.

In 2004, I had just taken a new job. It was a small office and the policy at the time was that individual radios were okay. I didn’t have one, but Julie, the woman in the cubicle across the aisle, did. She listened to “Magic 96.5”, which had a top 40-ish “work-friendly” format.

That translates to having heard a lot of “This Love” by Maroon 5 (who, incidentally, should move like Jagger out in front of a moving freight train); “The Reason” by Hoobastank; “Why Don’t You And I” by Santana & <insert_guest_singer_based_on_your_country_of_origin_here>; and “Hey Ya!” by OutKast. Of the four, “Why Don’t You And I” is the only one I can listen to with regularity and would actually say outright that I like. I think you can guess how I feel about “This Love.” (Yes, I still find it completely barf-inducing.) “The Reason” is meh and “Hey Ya!” is… well, it’s today’s topic.

Now, I was never a huge fan of the song to begin with, so when it became the “played every hour on the hour” song of the month, it grew very tiresome, very quickly.

Thus, “Hey Ya!” is not a song I listened to so much I can’t listen to it any more; it’s a song I heard so much that I can’t listen to it any more. Which is, in fact, worse, because you have no control over the situation. It’s not like I could have walked over and changed Julie’s radio to a different station. (Well, I could have, but trust me, as nice as Julie typically is, the results would not have been pretty.)

10 years later, it’s still not a song I gravitate toward (it’s not even in my iTunes collection), but at least I can stomach it now.

Honestly, it was a YouTube video that got “Hey Ya!” out of the doghouse. Some brilliant soul decide to mix OutKast with the Peanuts Gang and the results were sheer genius. That video is my equivalent of a “happy place.” When the song comes on, I picture the video, and it makes me smile. This is much better than the alternative, which involves weapons and sharp things.

As time went by, due to various changes, radio use was curtailed, and I eventually moved to an office with a real door and everything. So my exposure to the “magic” of Magic 96.5 was short-lived. (Thankfully, or I, too, might have been short-lived. Refer to “weapons and sharp things” above.)

That said, my exposure does result in the occasional Maroon 5-induced nightmare from time to time. But that’s what therapists are for, right?

Charlie Brown and Snoopy 3000…