Goo Goo Gaa Gaa

I should have known going into it that I'd never make it as a great composer, because I could never compete with the pure talent which is evident in this song: (2.12MB MP3). Whoever wrote this song deserves to be in Chapter One of every History of Western Music book on the face of the planet.

Goo Goo Gaa Gaa is a representative track from an 80s audio cassette called Are We There Yet?: Songs for the Car published by Rand McNally. I no longer have the book full of car games, but I rediscovered the tape just last week and relived the memories of being strapped into hot leather seats in a Chevrolet being driven to just one more battleground every weekend. Here are some other samples from this groundbreaking tape:

• Buckle Up! (711KB MP3) in which the kids tell their parents to use their seat belts, accompanied by an 80s version of the Supremes.


• Speed Bump Blues (348KB MP3) in which the kids tell their parents not to drive fast through parking lots because the kids will get whiplash and the radio will fall out of the dash.


• Car Seat Exercise (430KB MP3) in which the kids outline the ergonomic workout they do when they're stuck in a carseat.


• Little Piggy Song (453KB MP3) in which the little piggies have eerie voices obviously triggered by a methamphetamine-laced opium dream.

I'm not exactly sure why the last song counts as a song for the car, but I imagine they were scraping the bottom of the barrel by that point -- the tape even ends with a lullaby as if to tell listening children to go to sleep and stop bothering the parents. I'm sure the tape couldn't have been that great for trips since it's only twenty-five minutes in its entirety, front and back.