Repetune - The Songs of our Heads

Seals & Crofts - Summer Breeze

Writing by Segal on Tuesday, 16 of October , 2007 at 10:10 pm

    (This is the third installment of Repetune’s first ever theme week - 70’s AM Classics)

Seals & Crofts are to the toy piano what the Beatles are to bowed strings - both bands were the first to use their respective instruments in popular song and make it mode. Whereas rock has pretty much been littered with unnecessary cellos and violins, the toy piano has never quite caught on in mainstream music. Sure, Tori Amos, Radiohead, and Evanescence dabble, but really. Rarely is the toy piano used for dramatic effect in song. In general, the more tinkling the sound of an instrument, the less likely is it featured in a composition. This is why there are only three great mandolin excursions in the history of rock, and Losing My Religion has two of them. In case you had developed a fever and the only prescription was more toy piano, well, here’s your remedy.

Oh, don’t mistake me. I don’t slight tiny pianos that barely hold an octave and a half. After all, it’s only a legitimate musical tool that can make the sound of a dropped roll of quarters AND make Pooh and Tigger wave to the user. Thanks to this song, the sound I used to make as a kid by patting an empty pie tin with a spatula is displayed in full force, wrapped in an ambiguous, meandering melody that, inexplicably, bored its way in the base of my skull sometime in the early 80’s and has preyed there on grey matter since. 

And hey, what’s up with this song using the word ‘jasmine’ so often? I’d understand if another word was more plentiful, like ‘the’, or ‘love’, you know, useful utterances. Yesterday, I didn’t think there was a lazier lyric than the one from that song by America. Well, folks, I’m here inside your computer tonight to let you know that yes, America has abdicated the throne to two soft rock stoners from Frisco, Texas. Thanks to them, I don’t even want to rent Aladdin just so I can stay away from that word.

Just about the only good thing I can say at all about the song, other than it’s an amazing repetune, is that both Seals and Crofts are of the Baha’i Faith. I don’t know why this memorable. Maybe it’s because now, the number of Baha’i celebrities in my world has increased twofold. Where once there were only Khalil Greene and Rainn Wilson, there is now a quadrumvirate. A quadrumvirate of wispy haired guys, but a quadrumvirate nonetheless.

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Category: Seals & Croft

What is a repetune?

It has happened to us all. For any reason, and sometimes for no reason at all, some obscure song we have heard but try to avoid manages to sneak itself into our head. It does nothing but repeat in our head over and over until one day, we realize it is gone. Then it only comes back again. These are those songs. These are repetunes.