Happy Anniversary To Me🥳🥂
On reaching two years of earworming my way into your hearts
Newsletter years are like dog years.
If 365 days around the sun equals 7 years for most canines, then the same can be said about maintaining a regular Substack. Using this math, we should be celebrating my 14th Earworms and Song Loops birthday, not my 2nd. But I’ll stick with the standard human measurements of time this time.
It’s a huge deal to keep at a creative project for an extended period of time. I give novelists, documentarians, and memoirists major genuflection.
I imagine that staying the course on long-form projects is easy for some folks. Not me. My interests reach far and wide, which lends to me being more of a dabbler, a jack-of-all-trades, rather than the sort of person to become deeply immersed in one thing.
I also can get easily discouraged and regularly bitten by the imposter syndrome insect and the writer’s block bug (often simultaneously). So the fact that I’ve posted at least once every week for 103 of the past 104 weeks — well, I think I deserve a slice of chocolate cake for that.
I had fairly low expectations when I started this thing.
Prior to Substack, I used to share my (mostly music) writing on my blog and on Facebook.
Most of the time, I felt I was posting into the ether, even though, in theory, I had hundreds of “friends.” Thankfully, I can be my own best audience. But running back and forth from the “stage” to the “crowd” gets old after a while, despite the cardio.
I’m a social being, and I thrive in a supportive community. My main goal in joining Substack was to find other writers, artists, and music lovers and participate in inspired conversations on all manner of topics—ostensibly connected to music.
Building a community around Earworms and Song Loops took time. Even though I had the name and concept for the newsletter from the start (“a place where memoir and earworm intersect and conjoin”), it took several months to develop a distinct style and voice. And I continue to learn what works, what doesn’t, and what makes readers come back week after week.
Over the past 100-plus weeks, I’ve expanded the types of posts I write to include:
Tributes to artists who’ve passed
TWEETS (This Week’s Embedded Earworm Tune): which are more music-focused
Themed playlists
Album reviews
and monthly ReCOWmendations, where I share 5 things in the media world that excite me.
As much as I write about myself, I don’t want this newsletter to be all about me.
I’ve also had the privilege of collaborating with several other amazing writers here on Substack. I’ve added a tab at the top of my main archive (earworm.substack.com) called “Collabs” where you can read all my collaborative posts.
On that note—
My door is wide open for more collaborations! You don’t have to be a Substack writer. Let’s do it! Send me an email at earworm@substack.com and we can discuss details.
What will year 3 be like?
You can expect more of the same in year 3. Now that Substack is offering more video integration on its platform, I’d like to add more visual elements to my posts. Maybe one of you has a cool video collaboration project in mind!
I plan to keep the output to one post per week. I’d love to commit to a specific publishing day, but life has a way of knocking me off schedule, so the best I can say is between Monday and Sunday.
I am proud of what I’ve put together here — I’ve got over 150 original essays and posts in the vault now.
What has kept me going, plugging along week after week for the past 104 weeks, is, well, you.
I’m so blessed to be surrounded by an amazingly supportive group of friends, writers, musicians, and artists. The comments section on my posts has been home to some wonderful discussions. I also want to give a huge shoutout to my readers who prefer to take in Earworms and Song Loops from the comfort of their email readers. Many of you have been with me from the very beginning, and I’m so grateful to you for taking time out of your week to read what I write.
My intention for this anniversary post is not to blab nostalgically about the past two years.
Well, at least not my own blabbing. Instead, I thought I’d hand the digital baton over to a few generous readers who’ve offered to provide their thoughts and impressions of the first two (or 14) years of Earworms & Song Loops. I asked each of them to pick a favorite essay from the archive, which you will find links to at the end of each section.
I’m going to start it off with . Jen writes the wonderful newsletter . Great wisdom is found not just in the title, but throughout every essay she writes. Jen covers a lot of topics here, ranging from parenting, balancing work/life/art, marriage, health….all the stuff adults grapple with, told with wisdom, humor and a sense of wonder.
“When I first joined Substack in the Fall of 2022, Steve Goldberg’s Earworms and Song Loops was one of the first newsletters I subscribed to. As a writer, I love the way lyrical stories feed my soul and provide a metaphor through which I can make sense of the world. So when I discovered Steve’s personal essays intertwined with songs that worm their way into his head (sometimes invited, sometimes not), I found his words to be 100% relatable to my own experience.
For example, I also invite music to help me overcome my negative self-talk, boost my energy & confidence, and serve as a soundtrack to a moment or memory. And he doesn’t shy away from talking about tough topics like death or burnout. I love how his essay about Fall-related songs brought back sweet memories of listening to Daniel Lanois’ Falling At Your Feet as I rocked my baby (now 21-year-old!) to sleep.
The original idea behind Earworms and Song Loops was a selfish one. I figured that if all the usual methods of ear-radication (sorry) were unsuccessful, I could always write about them. Perhaps by spreading the earworm far and wide, across many new brains, it reduces its power, diluting its stickiness.
Thanks for sharing your earworms, Steve, and congratulations on two years of writing!”
Next up is the incomparable who writes . Brad was one of the very first writers on Substack to subscribe to EW&SL. Not only has Brad been a vociferous promoter of this newsletter, sharing it on his popular newsletter on many an occasion, but he’s one of the nicest people you’ll ever meet. Not that we’ve met in person (yet), but he hosts a twice-monthly online discussion group for music (and music-adjacent) writers, so it’s the next best thing.
Brad is a walking encyclopedia of music history and trivia, especially artists from the ‘60s and ‘70s. He also posts a weekly “Tune Tag” article where he and a guest writer trade songs back and forth based on each other song choice. I’ve been lucky enough to guest for two Tune Tag posts.
Click here to read (and listen to) my first guest appearance on Tune Tag.
“It took seven of Steve’s posts before I stumbled upon Earworms & Song Loops. I think he might’ve commented on one of my posts. In the days before Notes (Substack’s social media offering), looking into the people who comment on your posts was one of the only ways to discover new writers to enjoy!
The first thing you read on his “About” page is this: “Why subscribe?… Because, like me, you also get songs, jingles, and repeating bits of media stuck in your brain and want to feel less alone. I’ll tell you all about the tunes that loop for me and weave an entertainingly relatable and often humorous personal story around them.”
Right away, we sense Steve’s empathy; I can’t recall another writer who even cared if I felt alone, much less have the ability (and the sincere desire) to effectively make me feel less so….and get a smile out of me, besides. And, all while swimming in the refreshingly familiar musical pool of songs many of us grew up hearing and loving!
Steve has become one of my best friends on Substack, though we’ve never met, short of the magic of the occasional online video chat. We’ve also collaborated on a few articles, which are always a blast for me!
One of my favorites was Steve’s creative co-opting of Front Row & Backstage’s “Inside Tracks” cover-song format to tell us how he lost his infant ear hair, as well as his not-quite-prehensile “tail” in his teens! Another amusing element of Earworms is Steve’s generous inclusion of family photos from back in the day, including some adorable kid pix!”
I don’t write about television very often, but I’m actually pretty obsessive about TV. Not to the extent of music, but more than your average boob-tube watcher. To get my TV-talk fix, I go to my favorite Substack source and collaborator, who writes .
I think I found Beth’s newsletter by searching for “TV” in the Substack directory almost two years ago. And I’ve been a massive fan ever since. Currently, we are both obsessed with Apple TV+’s “Sugar,” which I look forward to gossiping about with her as soon as I finish this post!
“I can't recall how or when Steve and I first connected on Substack, but I know that it's a before-and-after type deal—as in my bleak existence on this platform before I knew him and the colorful, much more interesting life I have led since.
Steve was one of the first friends I made on Substack. I didn't think people wanted to be my friend anymore. I'm hardly cool enough, and my memory recall rivals the lead in "Memento" for worst short-term memory, and yet... Here was Steve, always leaving comments that made me feel seen and appreciated. This is all one can ask for in life, right? Apart from being independently financially wealthy, of course.😁
In all seriousness, I'm an "Earworms and Song Loops" junkie. Not solely based on the tunes Steve writes about that get stuck in my head but also because of how he infuses his writing with personal memoir, allowing us a glimpse of what's going on in his brain and meaningful moments from his past. It's melodic, fun, solemn (when it needs to be) and nostalgic. And this pop culture child of the 80s/90s is here for it.
It's hard to pick a favorite piece, but other than our collaboration to discuss the HBO dramedy Somebody Somewhere, I’d have to go with his Halloween special on spiders.”
Last, but definitely not least, the great who writes the brilliant music newsletter was gracious enough to offer his feelings on EW&SL’s 2-year anniversary.
“Relatability and authenticity are the currency of digital writing.
Being online can be isolating. Being reminded that there are others like you out there is a relief. You have to sift through a lot of formulaic nonsense to find gold, but when you do, it's something you come back to over and over again. It's like that song that gets stuck on a loop in your head—you know, an earworm.
I came to Earworms & Song Loops for the music but stayed for the voice–specifically, Steve's voice. We share a lot of common ground: We're relatively the same age, music omnivores, etc. Those are the easy boxes to check, but the parallels go further.
He and his high-school buddies would get high and go to Jack in the Box. For us, it was McDonald's. He bombed around So Cal in an '82 Toyota. I did the same in suburban Portland in an '81 Honda.
From reading his work, I learned that not only have we seen a lot of the same bands, but we likely saw them a few days apart on the same tours. He goes to more shows than I do these days, but our tastes in newer music overlap just as much as the stuff we grew up with.
Today, he's navigating many of the same challenges as the rest of us: career transitions, elder care, etc. He often incorporates a song or two to explore these issues. Steve reminds us of forgotten gems (and sticky turds, Ed.) from the past and exposes us to potential earworms of the future.”
Kevin chose one of my several stoner youth pieces for his favorite.
Do you have any favorite essays from the past two years? Which ones?
What has kept you coming back for more, week after week?
I’d love to hear your impressions on this newsletter. I’ll be sending out a more detailed questionnaire in the next month, but I’m curious to know which elements of EW&SL you gravitate toward. The longer main pieces? The ReCOWmendations? The TWEETs?
Coming soon: The next installment of the numerical playlist project. To honor EW&SL’s 2-year anniversary, I’m skipping “one” and will be writing about songs with the word “two” in the title.
Happy anniversary & thank you for the kind words! Here's to many, many more.
Hoping Year 3 is the one where we can finally figure out another "collab," or whatever the kids are calling 'em these days.
Happy Anniversary Steve!! That level of commitment is no easy feat! I'm restacking a couple of my favorite Earworms today in your honor.