more than I dare to think about.....

Earworms of the Year 2009

“Ohrwurm” - a German word that literally translates into English as “earworm”, and refers to a song or tune that becomes lodged in one’s head.

It's time to start voting for your earworms of the year......Last year saw me picking my way gingerly through something like 460(-ish) different songs by 351(-ish) different artists.... Twelve months seems to be about long enough for me to have forgotten what an appalling, mainly spreadsheet driven task that was, so I'm going to start putting together the list for 2009.

As ever, I need your help!

Here's how it works:

I will exhaustively compile all of the songs that have appeared in the weekly Earworm slot that appears here every Friday -- both the ones that I have done, and the ones that any Guest Editors have done. As I've made loads more choices than anyone else, that will naturally slant things towards what's been going round my head.  That's all well and good, but a bit of diversity is a good thing (and no, I'm not talking about the dance troupe here).  In the interests of opening things up and hopefully making them a tiny bit more interesting for everyone - especially me - I will be delighted to accept votes from anyone who can be bothered to send me an email listing their own choices.  In other words:

I need you to email in your votes for your 5 Earworms of the Year.

Unlike all of the other end-of-year lists, on this one you don't need to feel in the least constrained by a record's year of release.  In fact, you don't even need to be constrained by a record's release full-stop.  This list isn't about anything as mundane as that: we're trying to catch a hold of the sounds that have been floating around our heads over the last twelve months... and there seems to be no internal mechanism that limits this to music created and released in the last year.  If you've had "Hole in My Shoe" by Neil the Hippy in your head for the entirety of the last 365 days, then you should just go with that (and hope that gets rid of it - I've always preferred the b-side, "Hurdy-Gurdy Mushroom Man" myself....)  You don't even have to vote for a proper song... you could go for an advert, a jingle, a nursery rhyme.  It really doesn't matter.  The only qualification is that it has been a tune that has been stuck in your head.  That really is all there is to it. Simple.

So.... send your votes to the email address in my profile.  Five songs, in order.  It would be great if you could also include a few words about each song you choose - I'll try to add a few of them for every song that makes the list.  Feel free to be as rude as you like.... we don't always like the songs that get stuck in our heads, right?

Got it?  Great.

Easy, right?

Need some inspiration?

You can find all of the earworm posts here.
Wikipedia's 2009 in music page.
...and of course, the bestselling album of 2009 is likely to be Susan Boyle.

votes please!  All welcome.

Roll of honour.

2005 Coldplay - "Speed of Sound"

2006 Gnarls Barkley - "Crazy"

2007 Rihanna - "Umbrella"

2008 Elbow - "One Day Like This"