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Weekend Earworms: Battling Wintertime Woes

An estimated 92% of us experience earworms. Despite the annoying times that we can’t get a chorus or a hook of an overplayed pop song out of our heads, getting a really good earworm stuck can be one of the best things ever.

We here at Nerdist are dead set on bringing you those types of songs, if only for the weekend. We’ll be scouring the internet for the best earworms we can shove into your grey matter!

This week it’s all about feeling good in the wintertime now that a good deal of the holidays are over and the majority of the country hunkers down for some cold and weary months.

If your social feeds are anything like mine, there’s a lot of talk about SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder) being thrown around now that the weather is changing. It is a very real thing that can be a terrible burden for some people, but I find there’s a fair amount of good that can come from a general “fake it till you make it” sort of attitude. Cliche as it may sound, a great deal of us have the ability to make our winters a bit better by just refusing to let them get to us, and part of it comes from putting on a happy face. Smiling really does make people feel better even if it’s faked. There have even been studies about increased depression in people who use botox because they numbed their faces to the point they are no longer able to smile or emote. So if we make ourselves smile, our big dumb bodies and brains don’t know any better and in some cases get a bit happier. I’m no scientist, but listen to this week’s songs with a halfway decent attitude about them and they may help you kick the wintertime blues.

OK GO – “I Won’t Let You Down”

Unless you’re really trying not to feel good, there’s no way that this song — and the spectacular music video for it — didn’t make you smile a bit. OK Go’s videos are routinely awe-inspiring and the band ups the ante nearly every time. Their video for 2014’s “I Won’t Let You Down” is a marvelous slightly sped-up drone-filmed video that is as mind bending as it is up beat. Impeccably timed choreography of a flying camera and literally hundreds of people went into a video for a song that continually tells us that they won’t let us down. And they keep their promise. I dare you to listen to this song again without emulating Damian Kulash’s suave shoulder shrugs.

KC & The Sunshine Band – “Give It Up”

Oh boy. Where to begin. This video is bananas, but we’ll get to that in a minute. 1982’s “Give It Up” has popped up a bit more lately as it was recently featured in the second most badass fight scene in 2015’s Kingsman: The Secret Service. More recently, at a karaoke night I went to last week, a dude cry-sang this as if it was the first step in letting go of a former lover. Best part of the holidays, I tell ya. It’s insanely upbeat and deserves some regular rotation on any ’80s party playlist. The lyrics are vaguely off-putting and it doesn’t help that lead singer Harry Wayne Casey creepily stares into the camera as he seemingly reads the lyrics from cue cards while two women dance with him in a manner that had to have been choreographed by a group of dads who had never heard of music or dancing before. Also, I’m pretty certain this video takes place in the same room where Ryan Reynolds fights Triple H in Blade: Trinity. 

Last, but certainly not least…

Redbone – “Come And Get Your Love”

I’d wager that you know Redbone’s 1974 hit “Come And Get Your Love” from what might be one of the best opening credits scenes in movie history. There’s no debate that all the songs in Guardians of the Galaxy helped define the film, but few were as seminal as Peter “Star-Lord” Quill carelessly dancing to “Come And Get Your Love” on an alien planet. It set the film’s mood perfectly as it contrasted with the mysterious and somber cold open. No amount of dialogue could have said as much as Quill’s dancing along to his walkman. Again, I dare you to try and walk around listening to this without trying to be this cool. Bonus if your city has monster rats to sing into like mutated microphones.

I’m no expert, but for those of you who aren’t going through something too serious and can admit that the winter just gets you down because you’re human, take these out for a spin. I say this only because I usually am one of those people that wants to believe the wintertime blues are beyond my control. I can’t say it always works, but these songs pass my own “walking around a city” test. Crank your headphones, head out into your town, and your footsteps may soon match the tempo and positivity to some degree. If not, at least you’ll find yourself halfway through a decent walk around town.

Images: Disney/OK Go/20th Century Fox

Blake Rodgers is a writer based in Chicago, where he lives happily with his Guinness World Record for High Fives. You can be his pal by following him on Twitter (@TheBlakeRodgers)

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