As I was walking home today from work, a familiar set of sensations came over me: I listen to music in my head a lot, and my internal jukebox likes to mix up songs without much regard as to how they fit together. Sometimes someone--a coworker, a friend--will say something that sets off a song in my brain (say, for example, someone says, "roped and tied," and I'll have Elton John's "Someone Saved My Life Tonight" in my head for hours), and as my loony head spun, I began to wonder: Is it possible that there are certain irreducible phrases that can conjure up whole pop songs? Could only two words, say, bring up a whole song? And would it be so for other, possibly non-loony people?

So I set about a totally nonscientific, totally bullshit endeavor: I tried to imagine mere two-word phrases or phraselets that could possibly evoke an entire pop song. I of course avoided titles: How hard would it be to figure out something like "California Girls"? I also avoided pop chorus phrases that were terribly obvious or clearly rhymed with the titles, like say "graveyard smash."

So what I tried to do was to think of unique two-word phrases that could only refer to one specific pop song. And then I wondered how people would deal with it, given that I was by definition working out of context (though I altered no grammar, syntax or anything; I also did not obfuscate things, I hope, by ramming together words that didn't belong with one another). I just tried to think of certain two-word phrases (and hopefully without many articles) that seemed to embody, typify, or just clearly identify certain well-known songs.

I've probably fucked it all up, but hey. And if I had any clue how to make radio buttons, or text fields, this would all be cleaner, but I don't, so you're stuck with me: If it moves you to do so, take the quiz, and email me your guesses/comments at Skot(AT)izzlepfaff.com. The winner will receive . . . uh . . . something weird from me! In the (unfortunately very likely) case that there are multiple candidates for my two-word hints, I will award points once I verify the correct lyrics via Google. In any case, these songs were either hits, or have become more or less ubiquitously classic. Wording is important. But sorry, I get to be the final arbiter.

Final pointers: I tried very hard to make these unique, two-word lyrical singularities, but I probably failed. But if you can make the case that there was another popular song that used the EXACT same words, I'll cough up a point (Different cases or alternate plurals or altered wordings aren't going to fly). But just know that, for the most part, these are all pretty commonly known songs from the past 30 years, and except for a couple entries, aren't that sneaky--though I wonder at what I'll be seeing. Bear it in mind that a crabby argument about how Desmond Choad and His Angry Toads once sang similar lyrics to what I list are unlikely to carry much weight.

And finally: This is kind of a "hey, shiny thing!" for me. I don't intend it to be a real biggie. If I fuck it all up, I'm all to blame. I'm just kind of interested in seeing what comes of it. Again, everything from here on out is on me. Here's the list. I'm not worrying about punctuation or capitalization, and since for deviousness' sake, I don't want to clue anyone in as to where in a given lyric's place the snippet came, but do know this: I did not string together any misleading words or fuck with the word order. I may have messed with the timing of the flow, but these words all go together in their songs. And to those of you who might Google your brains out: I can't stop you, but you suck.

Here they are. Like I said, these are two-word phrases from well-recognized pop songs. Show me what you got. Some of these are (I think) easy. Some of them are totally diabolical (or, ah, I'm just a dumbass). At least that's what I say now. I had a good time with this. Let's see what happens. I'm really most excited to see how many people write, "WHAT? Not THAT song! That's from ANOTHER SONG!"

1. choking smokers
2. devil too
3. grey eyes
4. fruit cage
5. supple wrist
6. silver spoon
7. sixty-five degrees
8. watch dynasty
9. needs sweeping
10. halfway there
11. done died
12. god money
13. don't dance
14. face north
15. stand naked
16. baggage carousel
17. city walls
18. slicing up
19. loves horses
20. hickory stump
21. 'til touchdown
22. be double
23. lost myself
24. late September
25. be abused

P.S.--I thought I had caught the typo last night, but apparently it didn't stick. #4 is now corrected. It's one of the easy ones, I think.