The earworm that infected the nation

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 03/07/2017 (3351 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Warning to readers: If you do NOT wish to have a stupid song bouncing around in your brain on a continual loop for the rest of your life, we strongly suggest you avoid reading today’s entertaining and educational newspaper column. We are not kidding. Consider yourself warned.

I realize the Canada Day celebrations are over, but I can’t stop thinking about Bobby Gimby.

At the mention of that historic Canadian’s name, I suspect most of you young people out there had the following thought: “Huh?”

Well, shame on you, young people. For the record, Bobby Gimby, who was famously nicknamed “The Pied Piper of Canada,” was a Canadian orchestra leader, trumpeter, jingle writer and singer-songwriter born in the tiny whistle stop town of Cabri, Sask., way back in 1918.

“The train doesn’t actually stop there (in Cabri),” Gimby, who died in 1998 at the age of 79, used to joke. “It just hesitates.”

What you young people really need to know, however, is that Gimby (pronounced “Jim-bee”) was the guy behind one of the great musical crimes of our times, by which I mean that 50 years ago, back in 1967, he wrote the official song for Canada’s centennial.

Most of you Gen Xers and millennials have (bless your relatively unclogged hearts) never heard this song, but right now I can hear countless baby boomers shrieking: “OH DEAR GOD NO PLEASE DO NOT MAKE ME THINK ABOUT THAT SONG! I’VE WORKED SO (BAD WORD) HARD TO FORGET!”

What with all the fuss surrounding Canada’s sesquicentennial (And isn’t that a fun word to say three times really fast?) my aging brain found itself thinking about Bobby Gimby and the song he inflicted on a much younger and more innocent nation in 1967.

It was known as Ca-na-da or The Centennial Song and was commissioned by a special federal government agency, the Centennial Commission. There were two versions, French and English, and it was performed in an unrelentingly cheerful fashion by the Young Canada Singers, two groups of children, with one singing in French and the other in English.

Right now, 50 years after it was written, if you were to randomly barge into a business meeting anywhere in this country and sing the opening refrain, “CAAAA-NAAAA-DAAAAA!” every baby boomer in the room would jerk convulsively and automatically start singing the next line: “One little, two little, three Canadians. We looooove thee!”

The thing is — and I know this for a fact, because I was an impressionable 11-year-old kid back in 1967 — you couldn’t escape this (bad word) song during the year Canada turned 100.

Seriously, no matter where you turned, your ears were assaulted by this song being shrieked by sickeningly sweet schoolchildren, who would lift up their squeaky voices and chirp: “CAAAA-NAAAA-DAAAAA! Four little five little six little provinces/Proud and free … North South East West/There’ll be happy times/Church bells will ring, ring ring/It’s the hundredth anniversary of CONFEDERATION!/Ev’rybody sing together!”

Like an infection, this song was everywhere. No one had smartphones or iPods or portable music players or the Internet. No, we had something like three TV stations (I think two of them were the CBC), and a handful of radio stations, all of which played this song over and over and over.

It was the most successful single in Canada that year, selling something like 270,000 copies, which was a huge number at the time.

It’s not that I’m not patriotic; it’s just that this song is what is known as an “earworm,” a musical parasite that burrows into your brain via the ears and, no matter what you do, you can’t get it out. Earworms play in your brain on a continuous loop until you can override them with the lyrics to an even worse tune, such as the 1976 smash hit Afternoon Delight, wherein the Starland Vocal Band bleats: “Gonna find my baby, gonna hold her tight/Gonna grab some afternoon delight!”

The worse a song is, the deeper it bores into the brain, which is why we do not want airline pilots or surgeons trying to perform their jobs while the song Good Morning Starshine (“Gliddy glup gloopy nibby nabby nooby la la la lo lo/Sabba sibby sabba nooby abba nabba le le lo lo/Tooby ooby walla nooby abba nabba/Early morning singing song.”) is bouncing around their craniums.

The problem is that earworms eat up limited space in the aging brain that would otherwise be devoted to useful information. Which means that I may not be able to remember my computer password, ATM number, my children’s names or where I parked the (very bad word) car, but I can’t forget the theme songs for Gilligan’s Island (“Five passengers set sail that day.”), the Beverly Hillbillies (“Come and listen to my story ’bout a man named Jed.”) or most especially the lyrics to CAAAAA-NAAAA-DAAAAA!

I know I will never be able to forget Bobby Gimby’s immortal centennial song, but it’s not my fault. Apparently a few artists released songs celebrating Canada 150, but I haven’t heard them and I don’t know anyone who has.

And for anyone who happens to be around for Canada’s bicentennial in 2067, that’s probably a good thing.

doug.speirs@freepress.mb.ca