During the summer of 1994, I was driving around the country teaching cheerleading to middle school and high school students. I worked for Elite Cheerleading Organization, based in Pittsburgh. The company sent us out around the country in groups of 2, 3, and sometimes 4.If you were lucky, you had someone in your group who was 21 or over. You got a nice, shiny, reliable rental car.

If you weren’t, you drove one of the “Elite Fleet.” These were crappy old used cars. IWewere warned about making sure the oil was always full, and told horror stories about what would happen if the oil leaked, drained, or burned away to empty.

The rental cars usually had cassette players in them. The Elite Fleet, well, you were lucky if the radio worked.

When the radio did work, we usually listened to the Top 40/pop stations. Because, well, it was the best compromise. And Top 40 stations are repetitive enough under ordinary circumstances, but y’know, we were driving across multiple states. That means switching the Top 40 station to a NEW one every time we lost the signal. And we were trapped. I mean, sure, sometimes we turned the radio off, and sometimes we got lucky…I remember one trip with a girl named Cindy. Our conversation went something like this:

Cindy: So, what do you want to listen to?

Me: Um, I dunno. Whatever.

Cindy (tentatively): Well, I kinda like…um...country.

Me: No way! Me too! Squee!

Not that we didn’t get sick of that eventually, too…but at least it was something different.

As a result, most of the songs that were on the radio that summer make me want to run screaming from the room. I browsed through the weekly charts from that summer to jog my memory. Here’s some of what I’m talking about:

All I Wanna Do (Sheryl Crow)
Fantastic Voyage (Coolio)
Here Comes the Hotstepper (Ini Kamoze)
I Swear (All 4 One)
I’ll Make Love to You (Boyz II Men)
Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm (Crash Test Dummies)
Wild Night (John Mellencamp)
Mr. Jones (Counting Crows)
Regulate (Warren G)
Shine (Collective Soul)
Baby I Love Your Way (Big Mountain)
Don’t Turn Around (Ace of Base)
Crazy (Aerosmith)
Round Here (Counting Crows)
Tootsee Roll (69 Boyz)

Now, whether or not I would have liked these songs under ordinary circumstances is irrelevant. Some songs from that summer didn’t stick with me…I can barely remember them. Others, I don’t mind so much. These, for whatever reason, have been burned into my brain until the end of time. That All 4 One version of I Swear? *shudder* 5 weeks at number one.

So, what songs have you wished would get sucked into a black hole of oblivion, never to be heard from again? 🙂