Before I was really cognizant of R.E.M. (The Band), I remember seeing posters and graffiti promoting their work around Atlanta. The song that broke through my dense skull to get my attention was this:

Stand

Turns out they were a pretty good band.

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Watching UGA baseball's run through the Regionals and Super Regionals on their way to the College World Series for the first time since 2008, I noticed the PA and crowd seemed to really love one particular song. I commented as such to Mom. She said "What song?"

This song, Mom:

The Stroke

Mom listened to it politely for about 20 seconds before declaring it was "awful" and leaving the room. (Mom was never a big fan of 96 Rock. She's more of a Jackson Browne/Carole King kind of girl.)

Technically, this isn't a one-word wonder, as Billy Squier gave his masterpiece a two word title, but I'm just going to do what all good librarians do and ignore the The to stick it in my "one word wonders" keyword. (They're my rules; I get to break them whenever I want!)

Go Dawgs!

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The other day before running errands, I apparently waited a little too long after the garage door opened before putting the car in gear, causing Mom to ask, "What are you thinking?" My honest answer: "I'm trying to remember the full chorus of 'Breakout' by Swing Out Sister." Mom had no follow-up questions.

Breakout

Don't stop to ask. And now you've found a break to make at last. You've got to find a way. Say what you want to say. Breakout.

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Great news! I may have finally killed my "The Way" brain worm (details here) with the following song which I have listened to over and over and over again for the past three days, not because I have to but because I want to. (Is it still a compulsion if you enjoy it?)

Whiskey Peak Saloon featuring Leo P by Sonya Belousova and Giona Ostinelli

Lucky for you, if you don't want to listen on YouTube, Netflix has you covered with links to plenty of other platforms here: netflixmusic.ffm.to/whiskypeaksaloon.

TURN UP YOUR SPEAKERS AND BOOGIE.

(And before you ask, yes, I have watched both seasons of the Netflix live-action One Piece series. I enjoyed them a quite a lot.)

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One week ago today, while stuck in typical Saturday afternoon traffic on the Connector in Atlanta, I listened to the 1998 pop song "The Way" by Fastball. That has proven to be a terrible, terrible mistake. No matter what I've tried, I have not been able to get that song out of my head.

On Sunday, I enjoyed it; it's got a good beat, and you can dance to it. By Monday, it was annoying. Tuesday, I was starting to think I had a real problem. Wednesday, I watched the music video about a half dozen times in a row in an attempt to burn it out, and for the rest of the evening, I thought I had it licked. But the very first thing I did on Thursday as I pulled myself out of bed was start reciting the lyrics again. In the car Friday, every time I let my attention wander, I caught myself humming it.

Is this madness? Could the sequence of notes in the song have triggered something in my brain, like a sonic virus? Can you sing someone into insanity? They say music is like mathematics, right? Do I suddenly have A Beautiful Mind? What kind of doctor do you see for ear worms? Damn you, Fastball!

Because I refuse to suffer alone, I'm embedding it here:

youtu.be/X5jlTlUTWfQ

You will listen. Whether you know it yet or not, there is only The Way.

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Cue: Upbeat pop music.

Waterloo

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Flower

I first heard of Phair in 1993 in the Mazda Miata with Mom during the afternoon rush hour commute between Emory University and Newnan when Phair's debut Exile in Guyville album was reviewed on NPR.

Thanks to the Internet, I can tell you that day must have been Tuesday, July 20,¹ when Ken Tucker reviewed Exile in Guyville, released in June 1993, for Terry Gross's Fresh Air. That was the summer before my freshman year at Emory, so what was I doing in the car? Was I working part-time in the Pediatric Infectious Diseases office with Mom before my work-study position started in August, or was I just killing time driving the convertible around downtown Atlanta while Mom was working? Could have been either.)

The Internet also makes it possible for me to transcribe Tucker's praise for this song in particular:

There's a thin quality to Exile in Guyville. It ends up making you think that Liz Phair is something of a dabbler, that If this rock thing doesn't work out, she'll take up painting or maybe just use her trust fund to live in Paris for a while. But there's a core of about four or five songs here that are really first rate, and one in particular, called "Flower," that I can't play on the radio but which is as fine and bold a song as I've heard about sexual obsession.

Obviously, I had to have any album with that kind of recommendation. I probably bought the cassette at the Tower Records behind Lennox Mall, and I recall playing it quite a bit during the long commutes between Atlanta and Newnan. Listening to Phair always made me feel rebellious and cool, as good rock music should. "I'll take you home and make you like it," indeed.

Thanks, Internet!

¹ The Internet tells me July 20, 1993², was the same day that the press box caught on fire at Atlanta Fulton County Stadium, which 90s Atlanta Braves fans will recall as the day that Fred "Crime Dog" McGriff made his debut for the team, in his third at-bat hitting a home run to drive in Ron Gant to tie the game at 5-5 in the 6th inning. The fire didn't start until 6, so I think we found out about the fire after we got home. The fire delayed the game start until after 9; I might have watched it, but I don't have any memory of that.

² You know what else happened on July 20, 1993? Some guy named Vince Foster committed suicide. And no one ever uttered his name again.

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Since I've already made such a big deal about how "Spider-Man" is one word...

Spiderman

You might notice there's no hyphen in that title. That's how they spelled it when the song was included in the 2005 box set Weird Tales of the Ramones, which for all I know is how it was spelled in 1995 when it was released as an unlisted bonus track on the Ramones final studio album, ¡Adios Amigos! CD, which I bought just for that secret track. A slightly different version of the song, also by the Ramones but spelled with the Marvel Comics approved hyphen, is on Saturday Morning: Cartoons' Greatest Hits, also from 1995, which I have never owned because most of its covers of classic cartoon themes are not improvements over the originals. Not every band can be the Ramones.

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Super Heroes

Sure, technically the song title on the musical and movie soundtrack are two words, but Rocky Horror is British. Here in America, home of Superman and Spider-Man, we spell it as one word (sometimes, at Spider-Man's insistence, with a hyphen). So I'm counting the song as a one-word wonder.

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One

Also: The number of wins the Miami Dolphins have earned in the 2025 season so far.

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