The song might not amount to anything other than pop fluff; it might be forgotten before summer ends, and the Dandy Warhols right along with it. But for a while there, they had most of America singing along with them. If you ask me, that's not only pretty cool, but pretty damned amazing, and almost completely inexplicable. The Warhols themselves probably couldn't tell you where the inspiration came from. Most good songwriters, when asked about the nuts and bolts of how they work the magic, will try for a sentence or two to wax all poetic and philosophical about it and will then end up sputtering something like "it just happens." They're right.

I've written some things that I thought were pretty respectable, that others seem to like a lot, and it's always the case with the best of those that I have no idea where it came from. It just ups and hits you in the face one day almost fully-formed, and you can't get rid of it until you've gotten together with the guys in the band and hashed it all out in rehearsal. Shortly after playing it some, you never want to hear it again. Ironically, that's just the point in the process when everybody wants to hear it again. It doesn't matter in the least. You'll play it, and when you do you'll reach a point in the middle of it where you're happy it's there. You get into it; it sweeps you away to someplace else, and that someplace else is a wonderful place to be. Works like a charm every time, because in reality it is a charm. Nobody really cares where it came from, because the truly compelling thing is where it takes you.

The GM commercial featuring the Warhols' little slice of immortality makes me want to drive around with the windows down and the music blasting — in a GM car. And I'm as hardcore a Ford guy as you'll find; I have shame-and-disgrace problems even riding in GM products, much less driving 'em. The Warhols' ditty makes me want to disregard my own Chevy-hate for a minute and just rock.

If that ain't a miracle, I sure don't know what is.

(Also posted at http://thepainkillers.us)