Gentle Reminder: If You Tell Anyone You Saw Me Listening To The Ska Version Of “Come On Eileen” At 3 AM On My Spotify Friends Feed, I’ll Kill You. 

I was studying in Novack last Sunday and I forgot to put my Spotify on private mode. I was tired. I was sad. Yes, I listened to the ska version of “Come on Eileen” covered by the band Save Ferris because it’s on my “late night study” playlist for when it’s a little dark and a little lonely and I want to pretend my dad’s driving me home from somewhere and I’m in the backseat, watching the moon follow our car from the rear window.

The ska version of “Come on Eileen” is the only version I knew until I was, like, sixteen. I don’t know. My dad listens to ska. I mean, it makes sense, he’s got a single pirate dangly earring in his right ear from when he studied in Germany during the fall of the Berlin Wall. Maybe that explains why I grew up on that version. It doesn’t even matter. It’s just the verson I know. It’s weird. Also, this is a friendly reminder, but if you tell anyone about this without giving me a chance to defend myself, I’ll destroy you and everything you stand for. 

I didn’t even think it was weird. This is the version of “Come on Eileen” I thought everyone was talking about for the past, like, twenty years. Then one time one of my friends was like “play ‘Come On Eileen’” so I added it to the queue and all of a sudden everyone was staring at me like I was the weird one here! Because apparently everyone else is used to a warbly stringed version and, for the record, so am I. And 🙂 if you 🙂 tell anyone 🙂 otherwise 🙂 it’ll be 🙂 the last thing 🙂 you do :)))))

I always thought the song was gay. A girl sings the ska version, and the name is still “Eileen,” and the lyrics “you in that dress/my thoughts I confess/verge on dirty” doesn’t sound like friendship. Why wouldn’t it be gay? What is the song about? What is this song about if it’s not about being gay? Who has “sunken faces” and who are “their fathers” if it’s not about the patriarchy? Why is a man singing?

I know we’re probably on the same page, but just so we’re clear, I never listened to this song. You never saw it and if you tell anyone you ever saw a thing… oh ho ho ho, bitch. You’re dead.

-SL ’22