I was once sitting in a bar in Baltimore with my dad when a guy approached the house piano player (yes, house piano player, I don’t know, I spent most of 2011 living in a Billy Joel song) and asked if he’d play Imagine.
The pianist looked up, his face betraying equal parts confusion and despair. The guy dropped a $20 in the tip jar. The pianist smiled and proceeded to play Imagine as best as a bar pianist can at two in the afternoon, probably whilst imagining “all the people” tragically dying in a fire.
I think what I’m getting at here is, musicians and DJs who have to tolerate requests from the public put up with a lot of crap.
Which brings me to Train’s Play That Song, which went double platinum in 2017 and peaked at #41 on the Billboard Hot 100. So, presumably a lot of people have been requesting it at piano bars.
This song is a verbatim transcript of your drunk boomer uncle harassing the DJ at a wedding, but to the tune of that one riff from Heart and Soul.
That’s it. That’s… the whole song.
Somehow, despite this, the song has a strange staying power. You want to turn off the radio, but you just can’t. You have to listen to it the whole way through. The attraction of this song is something no one will ever be able to figure out.
Oh, no, wait, I got it. I just solved the mystery. It’s that the entire song is that one riff from Heart and Soul. Glad I could help.