There must have been some kind of a trigger. I must have heard a phrase that linked to a song that sits deep in my rememberer.
I have no idea what that might have been.
But whatever the reason, Barry Manilow songs have been in my head all weekend.
I Made It Through the Rain
Looks Like We Made It
Mandy
Can’t Smile Without You
I Write the Songs
Ships that Pass in the Night
Why do I know these titles? Better question: Why do I know all the lyrics???
When I was in college, I had three amazing roommates one year. We worked well together, partly because we were Very Different and handled things from Very Different angles. It was a lovely experiment in perspective. And on the days we spent hours cleaning our apartment, we’d race to be the one to choose the music. This was many years ago, but not long enough ago to justify my choice for playing Barry Manilow’s Greatest Hits on a cassette tape I honestly have NO IDEA why I owned. If the music was too good, the cleaning would morph into some kind of college apartment dance party. That never happened when Barry was the soundtrack. My roommates hated this. They cleaned so fast we rarely made it to the B side of the cassette. Cleaning was a super-speed romp.
I did reuse this tactic on my own kids once or twice, but they had no visceral disinclination to clean to the soft sounds of Barry’s rich ballads and emotive vocals. They just cleaned faster. No real complaints. No carrying the memory along into the future with them. I guess the humor / disgust / deep connection to the Barry music is one of those generational things.
Her name was Lola. She was a showgirl. Yellow feathers in her hair and a dress cut down to there…
I mean really. What’s not to love?