Has a song ever aggressively reminded you of itself?
Sometimes I’ll be working on something and a melody I’ve not heard in years will suddenly be the only thing I can think of—the only thing I can hum or whistle or outright sing. There’s a term for this: Last Song Syndrome (LSS). I believe LSS is rarely random. There is a pattern.
My mind palace is a rail network, and the stations are all the different things I love. When a stray song happens to occupy space in me, I believe it’s brought there via my oddball and often subconscious trains of thought.
How does that work? Let me take you on a guided tour.
“Sleep Walk” by Santo & Johnny (1959)
The final stop the last time I took a ride was “Sleep Walk” by Santo & Johnny—but where was the first stop? When did my subconscious decide to step into the rail car and just go with it? I need to know how it happened. The song is stuck here now and it isn’t going anywhere until I find out why it straight up just walked back into my life.
Don’t mind me, just here with two and a half minutes of Santo & Johnny on loop while I try to retrace the path of this crazy train I call my brain. Insert This is so sad Alexa play “Sleep Walk” here to appear to understand the Tumblr meme.
Where do we go from the finish line? Simple: We’ll work our way back to the beginning, step by step.
La Bamba (1987)
There’s no way I didn’t remember “Sleep Walk” directly from thinking about the final scene of La Bamba.
This was always destined to be a household classic: One of those movies any family member would leave on if they flipped to HBO or Cinemax and it was playing, even if was over 30 minutes in. As audiovisual consumers we all loved camp and drama, and the historical slant and music only made it better.
You know what made that final scene so memorable? When the mother screams in anguish: “Not my Ritchie! NOT MY RITCHIE, BOB!”
Watching this as a young child was confusing yet comforting. Perhaps it had to do with my brother being named Richie and my dad being named Bob! Here was a mother figure, feeling her feelings to this gorgeous instrumental, calling out to the men in her life using the names of the men in my life.
To this day, the imprint remains. I don’t know how to handle grief and I’m very loud and messy when I cry. And when “Sleep Walk” comes on, I feel my heart ache a familiar ache.
Sleepwalkers (1992)
What is it about “Sleep Walk” that makes it great background music for the way mothers feel about their sons?
Like La Bamba, Sleepwalkers made the song part of its soundtrack. It’s even used in the Sleepwalkers trailer. This movie reminded me of La Bamba—and putting the two films together in one thought birthed the LSS.
The title of this film alone should be enough to make it the penultimate stop of my crazy train leading to “Sleep Walk”, but there’s just too much going on here.
All three main Sleepwalkers characters are played by actors I encountered again in other things I love:
- Brian Krause plays Charles. He’s also Leo in Charmed.
- Mädchen Amick plays Tanya. She’s also Shelly in Twin Peaks.
- Alice Krige plays Mary. She’s also the Borg Queen in Star Trek: First Contact.
Throw in the Stephen King writing credit plus the fact that the same neighborhood set was used for The ‘Burbs (1989) and it’s easy to see how Sleepwalkers became one of my Essentials.
Connections like these are important considerations in the grand design of my mind palace. Watch this film with the knowledge that it is important to me and you will get a better understanding of why I love the things I love.
The best part? This film is so bad it’s good—a.k.a. the perfect kind of bad. I love horror in all its forms, but so bad it’s good is a particular favorite.
Twin Peaks (1990-1991)
This one’s a gimme. I already pointed out the connection: Mädchen Amick.
A little section within a piece about a song I love is definitely not enough space to cover how much Twin Peaks has influenced my creative output—so I’ll focus on Amick instead. She’s the real waypoint here.
Even with a career that’s rarely gone the way my tastes lie, Amick has popped up in media that I love—or try to love—from time to time. Also: She’s gorg. No escaping this simple fact! She was with Sherilyn Fenn and Lara Flynn Boyle in this series and I still couldn’t take my eyes off her.
When people reference the diner waitress as a character archetype, Amick’s Shelly Johnson is what I think of. Move over, Baby Driver.
In addition to being in Sleepwalkers and Twin Peaks, a bit role on Star Trek: the Next Generation was her first TV appearance. She’s also appeared in one episode of White Collar—exactly the kind of trash I love, by the way.
Jughead’s Time Police (July 1990–May 1991)
How did Jughead’s Time Police remind me of Twin Peaks?
It’s a bit of a long walk, but bear with me. This is the first stop, after all. Jughead’s Time Police—or the fictional universe that birthed it—is the how and the why behind my “Sleep Walk”-powered LSS.
The key to this connection is still Mädchen Amick. She plays Alice Cooper in Riverdale, which I tried to love but could not even hate-watch.
The actual trigger that started the crazy train to “Sleep Walk” was actually an article about how Riverdale is ignoring the Chip Zdarsky-set canonical fact that Jughead is asexual. It got reinforced when I logged on to Netflix and saw Riverdale’s title card.
The TV series was a disappointment and definitely not something that fits into All That I Love. That’s why I shared my favorite thing ever to come out of the Archie Comics franchise, instead: Jughead’s Time Police.
Maybe it’s because I read it when I was very young, or maybe I just really like time travel stories that much. Six issues and not terribly original—some Bill & Ted and Somewhere in Time plot device borrowing here and there, and an Arthurian villain added to the mix, too—this alternate universe story is still worthy of being called a cult classic.
The Bottom Line: Why Do I Love “Sleep Walk”?
We went a little off the rails—wink wink, nudge nudge, etc. etc.—towards the end there but hopefully the course taken by my train of thought was helpful or at the very least interesting. This is, of course, not why I love “Sleep Walk”. Retracing the course shows how I love this song, and how much that love spills over onto other cherished works of art.
Why do I love “Sleep Walk”? Growing up, my dad—like most of my family—was in a band with his friends. There was a rehearsal studio right underneath my bedroom. When my dad’s band would use it, they would warm up and/or wind down with instrumentals.
My favorite was “Sleep Walk” because it was familiar to me and my dad knew. He would play it around my bedtime to send me dreaming. When I got older, he’d play it while practicing alone, knowing the song would draw me out of my bedroom. It was his way of calling me to make him a cup of coffee.
Truthfully, I wrote about this song because it reminds me of my dad—and I’m carrying around a lot of dad-related emotional baggage right now that I’m not ready to talk about. There’s the why that we’ve been looking for.
No crazy train needed—just a straight shot from Point A to Point B. “Sleep Walk” really is my LSS right now, though, and typing this all out hasn’t gotten it to budge one bit.
Maybe it will disappear if I hear some good news. Maybe not.