My Top 1000 Songs #426: Earn Enough For Us

[I've been writing up my Top 1000 songs on a daily basis--you can see them all in descending order by hitting the All My Favorite Songs tag.]

Hey, ever have one of those songs where you're just walking around, minding your own business, and out of nowhere you find yourself humming some catchy little hook but for the life of you you can't place it, and it goes 'round and 'round in your head for days and you know the only way to make it stop is to track down the song and play it loud and move on, but you can't do it because you simply cannot remember the name of the damn song you can't stop singing?

So, yeah, XTC's "Earn Enough For Us." I'll admit that, while I always liked XTC, I didn't always love them, selected singles aside. So I kinda skipped over 1986's Skylarking when it came out, even though I liked the "Dear God" single and the record got some great reviews; plus, around the same time they released an EP and an LP under the side-project Dukes of Stratosphear moniker, and I loved those releases so much that it felt like all the XTC I needed for a bit.

But throughout the mid-80s, I'd periodically find this one ridiculously catchy hook going through my head--just the melody, no words--and it drove me CRAZY not being able to remember where I'd heard it before. At some point, though, I circled back and picked up Skylarking, and there it was: "Earn Enough For Us." Must've heard it one time on the radio and the damn chorus stuck, torturing me for years 'til I belatedly bought the album. I'm fine now, thanks.