A Music Post. From Me. Weird, I Know.

It seems like every morning around the time I’m dropping Q off at the baby sitter’s, one of the local radio stations is playing “Escape.” What’s “Escape?” You probably know it as “The Pina Colada Song.” It sounds like this:

When I was a teenager, I thought this song was, like, soooooo romantic. Oh, a couple rediscovering the romance in their relationship through a case of mistaken identity.

This morning, as I was listening to the lyrics, I was horrified.

“I didn’t think about my lady, I know that sounds kinda mean.”

YOU THINK? Your wife is SLEEPING IN BED NEXT TO YOU, and you’re planning your tryst with some stranger who’s out trolling for tail in the personal ads?

But the wife doesn’t get off scot-free, either. After all, she’s the one who PLACED the ad. Lady, how do you sleep at night, in bed next to your husband, knowing that you wrote and placed a personal ad for another man?

“It was my own lovely lady, and she said ‘Oh, it’s you.'”

Does she sound excited here, or disappointed? Sorry, Mr. Narrator, but I think she might be bummed to find out that her “exciting new lover” is actually you. Though if I were her, I’d be like “Oh, S***, he found my personal ad.” I wouldn’t think he’d ANSWERED it.

So the lesson we’re supposed to take from all of this is that if they both are sneaking around, then they belong together? Hmph.

And all set to a boppy summer beat. I switched stations and found Cee-lo’s “F*** You,” in its radio-friendly “Forget You” iteration. And then Katy Perry’s “Fireworks” which is my favorite of the current crop of gay anthem pop songs.

Y’all, I’m kind of into Katy Perry. I feel like Katy Perry is doing what Lady Gaga keeps shoving down our throats that she’s doing, i.e., fun pop music as a backdrop to a weird pop art experiment. I mean, bizarre costumes? Check. Awesome music videos? Check (If you follow my Twitter feed, you know that I asked my publisher if my next cover could look like a Katy Perry video). Gay anthems? Checkity check. And, on the whole, I like her music better.

Of course, this is all based on radio play. I hear that Gaga is an incredible live performer and does amazing acoustic renditions of her songs, but they don’t play those on the radio, and I haven’t been to a live show of any variety since the last time Phish broke up.

Q, we’ve learned, is a big fan of pop music. She loves Madonna, Beyonce, and Kanye. She also likes They Might Be Giants, but I think every baby of geek parents must. Her favorite piece of classical music is The William Tell Overture, but only if she’s on our knees or her rocking horse. She also likes all songs that have her name in them, and so we’ve retrofitted quite a few so that they do.

Rio’s favorite band is Duran Duran, natch.

I didn’t have a playlist for For Darkness Shows the Stars, like I did for Rampant. But there are a lot of songs that make me think of the book, most recently Adele’s “Rolling in the Deep”, and, last year, Kelly Clarkson’s “Already Gone.”

How weird is it that my contemporary novels have playlists of obscure recordings of visionary music written by medieval nuns, andmy post-apocalyptic book has a playlist of radio-ready pop songs?