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Five ways to drive yourself up the f**king wall looking up a song

GOT a song in your head but can’t remember anything concrete about it? Here’s how to drive yourself insane while trying to find it.

Google its generic lyrics

You can’t recall anything about where or when you heard the song, but you do know that someone repeatedly sang the words ‘yeah’ and rhymed ‘girl’ with ‘world’. Chucking these details into a search bar yields hundreds of thousands of results which only a broken, pathetic loser would be desperate enough to trawl through. You’d better get started.

Try to Shazam it while it’s playing

Holy shit, an advert is playing the exact song you’ve been looking for in the background. Quick, whip out your phone, unlock it, download Shazam, and try to figure out how it works before it’s over. Oh, too late. And in your flustered panic you failed to remember anything about the advert so you can’t look that up on YouTube either. Back to square one.

Describe the melody to your friend

You’ll start by describing the song to them with fancy technical terms like ‘syncopated rhythms’ and ‘discordant harmonies’ in an effort to retain some dignity. But when that inevitably fails you’ll resort to humming and whistling the melody while realising that you might be tone deaf. ‘Nope, don’t recognise it,’ your friend will say, helpfully.

Ask complete strangers on the internet

In the grip of despair you’ll resort to frequenting the comments section underneath YouTube videos and the seedy underbelly of Reddit. Trolls will sense your desperation and point you towards Sandstorm by Darude, even when you’ve politely explained that it isn’t the song you’re looking for. Having had their fun with you, they’ll hack your bank account and doxx you on the Dark Web.

Rummage through your mind palace

Having exhausted all the other options, you’ve no choice but to delve into your memories like Sherlock in that shit BBC adaptation. You won’t find the lyricless clubbing banger you heard in 2008 that you’re after, but you will find repressed thoughts about your secondary school French teacher and recollections of every embarrassing blunder you’ve ever made. So at least you’re not completely empty-handed.

'Your vegetable likeness infringed on my client’s trademarks': The next six legal letters sent by Liz Truss

LIZ Truss has threatened to sue Keir Starmer for saying she crashed the economy. And her legal delusions do not end there:

“We request compensation of £4.2 million to restore my client’s reputation”

Hand-delivered to ‘The Blob, Whitehall’, this letter requests compensation for reputational damage from the civil servants who conspired to bring Britain’s most successful prime minister and Funko Pop down. Remains untouched in a pigeonhole for nine months.

“Your vegetable likeness infringed on my client’s trademarks”

A British legal first as a lettuce is sued for misrepresentation, citing its appearance on newspaper front pages in a wig and googly eyes as ‘confusing to elderly voters’ and ‘a clear attempt to profit from my client’s image’. The lettuce is required to make a full public apology.

“The poor financial underpinnings of the UK economy were fraudulently concealed”

Liz Truss’s plans for the economy were brilliant and could not fail, because they were her plans and she was Liz Truss. But they did, so someone else must be responsible. A legal letter is therefore dispatched to Boris Johnson for deliberately hiding dry rot and subsidence in ten-year gilts. Johnson, in turn, dispatches it directly to the bin.

“You provided economic advice you were in no way qualified to give”

Kwasi Kwarteng, glad just to get post, receives a letter demanding restitution for his unqualified six-week stint as chancellor on the grounds he did not hold an Investment Advice Diploma from the Chartered Institute for Securities and Investment. Returned same day with ‘You knew I was a maverick when you hired me, baby. Kwasi out’ scrawled in red.

“Failing in your duty to furnish my client with solid Conservative fundamentals”

‘Ah, it’s a letter from Liz!’ announces her father, a left-wing mathematics professor in Leeds, before reading the demand that he ‘return full reimbursement for corrupting a child’s mind with socialist views and never once reading Hayek’s Road To Serfdom at bedtime’. She will accept his house and pension.

“The untimely death of your late client was, we assert, deliberately timed to damage her”

Buckingham Palace receives a letter suing the Queen for dying. It claims ‘her decease, which could have taken place at any time, was scheduled to be as disruptive as possible for which my client demands full recourse. Scotland is acceptable compensation.’

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