Oh My God! I Totally Love This Song!

I DON’T LIKE MONDAYS BY THE BOOMTOWN RATS

This song in no way reflects my feelings on Mondays, but when I got this record for Christmas in the fifth grade I was a pretty happy kid. The story behind the song made this the most tragic, horrible idea for a song I had ever heard. Recently, I actually looked it up to see if the story was true or just some urban legend passed from kid to kid in 1980.

It turns out Bob Geldof, father of Band Aid, Live Aid and something called Peaches wrote the song after hearing about Brenda Ann Spencer who for all intents and purposes has a perfectly wholesome name. When Brenda was 16 she opened fire on an elementary school in San Diego killing two adults, injuring eight children and one police officer. When asked why she had done something so heinous she said, “I don’t like Mondays. This livens up the day.”

With school shootings being such a common occurrence these days, one wonders how many of these deranged kids who commit these crimes has even heard this song and/or know it’s origin story. One also wonders how the families of the victims must’ve felt hearing this on the radio when it became a hit.

All I know is that ten year old me played it over and over again and imagined the horrible scene. All these years later, I’m not even sure if it’s a good song or a good story or both. It certainly has moments of pure melodramatic cheese. But there you go. Who knew Brenda Ann Spencer was so ahead of her time?

The silicone chip inside her head gets switched to overload:

 

Shoot it all down:

  

And here’s Tori Amos’ cover of the song which adds another layer of creepy as she seemingly embodies a police officer who was on the scene: