February 5: What's in a Name?

My husband showed me a delightful clip of a Family Guy bit that he said reminded him of me and my Jeo-party. Stewie writes a song called "Suzie" and Brian claims that naming a song after a girl is incredibly unoriginal. Stewie then dares Brian to name 20 songs named after a girl. And he does. Then Stewie asks for 6 more. Brian does. Then 5 more. Brian does. Stewie gives up, slamming his guitar down, and telling Brian to "Go f* yourself". HAHAHAHA.

The category of Jeo-party I created that reminded my husband of this clip was called "Every Tom, Dick, and Harry" and was about songs with a boy's name in the title (like Hey Jude, You Can Call Me Al, and Louie, Louie). A few weeks ago, I also did one with girl's names called "Girl Talk" featuring songs like Sweet Caroline, Billie Jean, and Mustang Sally. 

The list of 31 songs that Brian rattled off (and that some kind soul typed up and added to a comment on the youtube video) were mostly ones I had not thought of; I wasn't even confident I had heard of some of these songs, so my husband and I started playing through the list on spotify. Many of them are very familiar to me; many of which I have heard, but had no idea the name of the song or the artist (very typical of me). Some delightful ones include: “Brandy” - Looking Glass, “Allison” - Elvis Costello, and “Maria” - Blondie. I am fairly confident that I did not know Looking Glass was singing the name Brandy. Always sounded like gibberish to me.  

Inspired by this list, I then played a song for my husband that Brian neglected to list, named "Jamie" by Ray Parker Jr that I have known ever since I was a little kid (I had an old school 45 record with it and Ghostbusters theme, also by Parker). That then somehow morphed into my husband nonchalantly daring me to find songs with the names of our friends in them. And that is how I spent the next few hours, googling and playing songs from a HUGE range of artists featuring the names of many of my friends who play Jeo-Party with us each week. And of course, I turned them into Jeo-Party trivia questions and I ended up with like 3 weeks worth of questions. Score! Some of the songs are super good and incredibly familiar, and some are unexpected, obscure, and rare, the perfect blend for a good Jeo-Party category. I also was reminded of the other songs with my name, like "Jamie's Cryin'" by Van Halen and "Dear Jamie" by Hellogoodbye (not "Janie's Got a Gun" by Aerosmith, even though for years I thought they were singing about Jamie). It amazes me and delights me how much music there is out there in the world. I will never run out of Jeo-Party categories with the sheer amount of music, TV shows, and movies that have been released. 

With delight,

♥Jamie