My 2000 Corolla is what some may call a relic, considering its lack of CD player, but I consider it a boon because the tape adapter is the easiest way I know to listen to an iPod while driving. Unfortunately, unlike more advanced iPod adapters, the tape adapter does not charge an iPod while it plays.
Monday, my iPod died.
I turned on my car radio, dreading the 14 Britney Spears songs I was sure would be monopolizing Kiss 108’s airwaves. To my surprise, what did I hear but Eiffel 65’s ‘Blue (Da Ba Dee)?’ It brought me back to the ’90s controversy about whether it was ‘Abba dee abba die’ or ‘If I was green, I would die’ before I realized it was not the original track but rather a new hip-hop song using Eiffel 65’s one-hit wonder as a vehicle for popularity.
Some might say Flo Rida doesn’t need to use other songs to help make him reach higher on the Billboard charts, but if that’s the case, why did he mix ‘Blue (Da Ba Dee)’ into his new song ‘Sugar’ featuring Wynter Gordon? The songs have nothing to do with each other:’ ‘Sugar’ compares sweets to sexual acts and ‘I’m Blue’ is about someone who lives in a blue world (I think?). Maybe it is all a big inside joke in the rap and hip-hop community but it is incomprehensible to me. At least ‘Blue (Da Ba Dee)’ was catchy and humorous.
Hip-hop artists and rappers always seem to be laying tracks over tracks over other tracks, but the first time it really caught my attention was in 2004 when Trick Daddy used Ozzy Osbourne’s ‘Crazy Train’ in his song ‘Let’s Go’ featuring Lil Jon and Twista. It worked pretty well in that song, and the only parts of ‘Crazy Train’ I know are the chorus so I could kind of sing along and get into it. This was an acceptable use of mixing old and new.
But nothing was worse than when T.I. and Rihanna brought back O-zone’s ‘Dragostea Din Tei’ in their 2008 hit ‘Live Your Life.’ My high school friends saw something beautiful in the ‘miya-hee, miya-hoo, miya-ho, miya-haha’ gibberish phrases, which led to hours of that song on repeat. I blessed the day 2004 ended and that song finally almost fell off the radar. (The Numa Numa kid periodically does pop back up on YouTube, but he is kind of funny.)
I audibly groaned last year when a similar iPod situation occurred and what did I hear but, four years later, O-zone’s dulcet tones slip back through my car’s speakers? Why, T.I. and Rihanna? Why that song? And why ‘Blue (Da Ba Dee)’? The older song encapsulates so much of the new song’s character that it’s like they are one and the same. Why did T.I. want to be associated with the most annoyingly catchy song of the 2000s?
Once again, maybe it is all some big inside joke that I am missing out on. But the money comes in and the outrageous, unexplainable crosses between ’90s pop and raunchy hip-hop seem to work out for those who create them. Maybe I should go back to just listening to Stars and Incubus on my iPod and forget popular music exists
On writing this column, I remembered my boyfriend bought me a car iPod adapter during the weekend and it was in my glove compartment through this entire catastrophe. FML.’ ‘

‘- Terri Schwartz can be reached at [email protected].