My 'Favourite' Song

I have over six and a half thousand songs in my iTunes library. But I only have an all consuming obsession with one of them - 'The W.A.N.D.' by The Flaming Lips.

Never mind Flaming Lips I hear, more pursed lips. Lips pursed with indignation. 'It's not even very good!'. Quite right, it isn't, within the grand cannon of wondrous, splendid and thrillingly moving couplets in Wayne Coyne's armoury, no one's reaching for 'you got the power aw yeah, waving that wand in the air' to sum up how they feel about the big questions. No one's life is affirmed by the synth chord progression in a way that it is by, say, the bullish sugar hit of 'Race for the Prize'. It's not my favourite Flaming Lips song. It isn't even in my top ten.

But...

But every time I'm at a want for which of those six and a half thousand to turn to, it's there in my head - 'play The W.A.N.D. again', and fuelled by sheer instinct I've clicked through. And then it finishes. And then I play it again and I think to myself, whilst waving my hands aloft, 'you don't even like this fucking song'. And then I play it again. Normally four or five times before I get bored and that bassline turns up ABSOLUTELY EVERYWHERE. It's in all six and a half thousand songs in my iTunes library.

On occasion as my brain idles (which happens relatively often) it's there too 'dum, dum, duh-duh, der' , raising the same approximate feelings as the embittered realisation that you've just been caught humming 'Go Compare' at the water fountain. On boring phone calls, it's there, 'sorry could you just go over that again. Was inwardly humming the all pervading bassline to The W.A.N.D.' My brain even has a clever little trick it plays - starting me off on the intro to 'Marquee Moon' which it knows I adore and lures me into thinking the unthinkable - 'wow, this isn't the fucking W.A.N.D.' But then, of course, it is The W.A.N.D. again. For at least an hour.

I've tried W.A.N.D. aversion therapy but I get 'W.A.N.D. hallucinations'. Oh, I think, this sounds a bit like 'The W.A.N.D.' (it doesn't, it's the kettle boiling or a dog farting) and then we're off. My brain's back in it's immovable cycle of 'wavin' that waaaaaaaaaaaaaand in the air' for a good 20 minutes and if it isn't on my iPod I start get facial twitches.

The W.A.N.D. is ruining me. I watch 'Strictly Come Dancing' and I chuckle that Paul Daniels should dance to it - I spend 20 minutes scratching my face - I like it, not a lot, not at all in fact. I walk through a hen do riddled Leicester Square and the spawn descended from my native North wave it in motion. At me. They're fairies but in my mind they're witches and they only know one spell and it goes 'dum, dum, fduh-fucking, der'.

Master wandmaker Mr Ollivander told Harry Potter that a wand picks its owner. It appears that this one's either found me or that Wayne Coyne wants rid and is trying to foist it on me by shoving it into my brain through my ear.

If you want me for the next six months I'll be at home listening to the 'We Buy Any Car' jingle on loop. If you see my hand aloft, do us a favour and put me back in prone.