Inside Nokia Music

Brains. They’re great, aren’t they? Heavy little grey globs of consciousness that make us everything we are. Without them, we’d be no better than plants, or bits of string, or Jeremy Kyle. Yep, whichever way you look at it, brains are brilliant.

So why, then, does mine turn on me at every given opportunity? It’s not like I treat it badly. I give it books to read and films to watch and music to listen to, but every so often it’ll cough up the remnant of a long-forgotten memory or make an unbreakable association that will forever ruin something I used to love. This is especially true of music. In the same way that I know I will never be able to fully enjoy vodka again after the night in 1997 when I drank most of a bottle of Smirnoff, then vomited across the entire length of the Clifton suspension bridge from a moving car, I also know that there are some pieces of music that I will never be able fully enjoy again. Although, unlike the vodka incident, I don’t think it’s entirely my fault. And I can’t really blame the musicians either. It’s someone else’s fault entirely.

Here, then, in chronological order, are the top three songs that have been ruined for me by other people.

1) Puff the Magic Dragon – Peter, Paul and Mary

Right. Wipe that ridiculous smirk off your face, right bloody now. This is the first song I can remember being moved by, OK? When I was a toddler my Mum used to put this record on to calm me down. She knew that for the duration of this song I would stop trying to shove sharp things up my nose or attempting to fall over in ingenious, yet potentially deadly ways and stare, transfixed, at the old Marantz speakers that stood in the corner of the family living room. The fact that the song’s frequent minor chord shifts and plaintive vocals made me cry every single time didn’t seem to stop her playing it. Nor, however, did it stop me wanting it to be played. I adored that record, and I’m pretty sure it laid the groundwork for my love of melancholic music that endures to this day. I was still too young back then to fully appreciate the meaning of the lyrics, but I was old enough to understand that they clearly hinted at some grand, beautiful, universal truth. And, hey. . . who doesn’t like grand, beautiful, universal truths?

Well, I’ll tell you who.

Ben Stiller.

Ben Stiller doesn’t like them.

I’d known for years that there was another theory regarding the meaning of Puff the Magic Dragon. I was aware that some people thought the entire song was a thinly-veiled series of drug references, all wrapped up in a twee, seemingly innocent children’s ditty. But then, I also knew that some people thought the moon landings were faked, and yet others thought that Kennedy actually killed himself, using an elaborate system of levers and pulleys. These people were clearly fools. But more importantly, they were also in the minority – as were the patchouli-reeking, pot-smoking hippies determined to take a piece of my childhood and soil it irrevocably with their sordid little musings.

And so it was until the year 2000. The start of the new millennium, far from bringing a Kubrickian leap into mankind’s next evolutionary phase, brought instead the predictable yet apparently crowd-pleasing Ben Stiller comedy, Meet The Parents. And buried within that film, like a single shard of glass in an otherwise pretty average cheesecake, is a scene in which Ben Stiller strips away any last threads of innocence from Puff The Magic Dragon for a baffled and increasingly enraged Robert De Niro. But, hey, you don’t need me to tell you this, do you? You’ve seen the film. Everyone’s seen the film. Hell, you probably chuckled at that bit, didn’t you? Yeah, you did. Funny stuff, right? Funny, funny stuff.

Except it’s not.

Since that film came out, whenever I mention that Puff The Magic Dragon was the first song I ever loved, people look at me in a certain way. Like they’ve got the measure of me immediately. Like I’m some kind of permanently befuddled, red-eyed, beatnik loser. Like the song wasn’t the most beautiful thing my young ears had ever heard. Like it didn’t make me weep. Like it didn’t shape my entire musical life.

So thanks a lot, Ben Stiller.

Thanks for taking my childhood and sacrificing it on the altar of your mediocre, yet highly-grossing film.

Come back Monday for song number 2 and 3…