Recently I watched the movie Baby Driver with Gal Smiley, and we both found it delightful. It’s very music-centric – the lead character is listening to music all the time and several segments of the movie kind of feel like music videos.

When he meets The Girl – there’s always a girl, right? – she complains that her name is Deborah, and there aren’t any songs about Deborahs. Her sister’s name is Mary, and she gets all the good ones.

Baby Driver, of course, knows an awesome Deborah song, by the band T-Rex. That’s how you win a woman’s heart.

I don’t know any songs about girls named Lynn. I decided to hit Google and Spotify. I found at least 10 songs or so with Lynn in the title or lyrics, but I’d never heard of any of them.

So I put them all in a Spotify playlist and checked them out. Turns out that songs about Lynns are all:

• instrumentals, often from movies, or
• really terrible country songs, or
• songs that Gal Smiley describes as “the kind of creepy lullaby they play in horror movies when an animated doll is about to kill you.”

That is NOT the way to win a woman’s heart, unfortunately. I deleted the playlist. Note to songwriters: the position of “great love song for the Lynns of the world” is still open.

Speaking of songs, Sir Monkeypants was watching an interesting YouTube video the other day about the song Mr. Brightside by The Killers.

(You probably all know it. But here is its video, just in case.)

The YouTube video was asking why Mr. Brightside continues to pop on to the British top 100 hit list from time to time, a full fifteen years after it was released. It is still one of the most-played songs in the UK and USA, even after all this time.

I don’t think the video had any answers, but it did refer to Mr. Brightside as “the song of a generation,” and as perhaps (he suggested) Don’t Stop Believin’ by Journey was the song of a previous generation.

I don’t think either of those are songs of MY generation, though. But maybe I just listened to weird stuff.

I would say here are some songs of generations past: Rock Around the Clock by Bill Haily and the Comets; Love Me Tender by Elvis; Yesterday by The Beatles; Hotel California by The Eagles. I’d give the 90s Smells Like Teen Spirit by Nirvana.

What is the 80s defining song though? Maybe Thriller by Michael Jackson? Like a Virgin by Madonna? U Can’t Touch This by MC Hammer?

Maybe it’s too hard to pick a song of your own generation, because those are the songs you know best. It’s too hard to pick a favourite child.

But I can tell you this: if one of them were about a cute, smart girl named Lynn, THAT WOULD BE THE ONE.

It’s not too late, songwriters of the world. GET ON IT.