Is iTunes really psychic?

The song is Cuts You Up. Sung by Peter Murphy, formerly of goth pioneers Bauhaus. I don't know any of this. Or remember, really. All I've got is a snatch of song cycling through my head.

Frustrating.

Damn frustrating.

Just curious at this point -- scratching a mental itch. Driving me crazy not having words to put to the music.

But, since I don't even know the lyrics, I can't Google it. Believe me I tried. But how do you search for a song that could have been sung anywhere from, oh, like '83 to maybe the mid-ninties? Especially when the singer's not on the cover of People every week. Hell, you can't even think of another song to cross-reference.

Oh, and the lyrics I do happen to remember, I don't remember. Turns out I don't remember them correctly, anyway.

So I Google. I Google. I Google. Nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing. Parrot squawking song clattering between my ears.

This itch is becoming an infection.

I ramboogle, typing in overblown strings of search terms that I hope will grab something, anything -- some hint of a whiff of a clue.

Collective Soul. That's what I get. Collective Soul. Collective Soul.

Infection's spreading. Getting more painful. Suddenly it's all I can think of. Need to know. Must know.

I'll never know.

After all, what are the odds of it popping on the radio sometime, oh, in the next ten years? Slim.

I give up. Hate to, but I'll live. I mean, could be worse. You know, it could be an arm I'm looking for, my name, something essential like that. So I can't remember a song. Oh well.

That was three weeks ago. Today I sit down from my computer after lunch. iTunes is up because I was charging my iPod. Just for kicks I decide to check out the store. I never do this. For me, the store is typically serves as a launching pad, a starting point allowing me to dash off on whim song searches.

Today, I just want to look. You know, see what's new. And under all those slick buttons that I typically ignore is a box titled Just for You. I've never scrolled down this far. Two years of iTunes and I've never scrolled this far.

Suggestions aren't bad. Really, kind of spooky how close these programs are to tabulating my eclectic and admittedly esoteric music tastes. Second offering: Cuts You Up, by Peter Murphy.

Wait a second. That looks familiar. Could it be? Surely not...

It is.

I'm getting this computer exorcised. But first I downloaded the song. Don't want to go through that again.