Identifying a song whose lyrics may not be on the internet
September 21, 2024 10:05 PM   Subscribe

I've got a song I can't identify despite knowing a full verse of the lyrics and the chorus. I could sing it to you but I can't google down the performer or find a recording. The singer is a woman playing a ukulele, otherwise unaccompanied. Dates to ~2000, indie vibe. Lyrics inside.

Remembered lyrics are as follows:

You call me on the phone and
You say that you’re alone but
I’ve got plans of my own I
Guess you’ll have to be postponed ‘cause
I’ve got a surer way that
I’m gonna spend my day so
Inside my bed I’ll stay and
I’ll just dream the day away cause I

Can’t get out of bed
Goin’ to sleep instead
Ah-oo
Can’t get out of bed


My memory of the lyrics is quite strong. Searches are turning up nothing, or unrelated songs about not getting out of bed, or noise. chatGPT claims these lyrics are not in its training data. Anyone recognize this? It's a sweet little song.
posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow to Media & Arts (8 answers total) 2 users marked this as a favorite
 
Not a direct match - but Sophie Madeleine wrote a few different songs that fit that vibe and which may have been sufficiently obscure to fit your pattern.
posted by rongorongo at 12:35 AM on September 22


I don't remember this song but here are some 2000s ukulele acts I remember, maybe one of these?
Garfunkel and Oates (Kate Micucci and Riki Lindholme)
Julia Nunes
Kimya Dawson of Moldy Peaches plays guitar not uke, but the song seems like her vibe
Lenka (long shot but she has that vibe too)
Lily Allen (also seems like a song she'd sing, maybe some kind of live performance?)
Regina Spektor?
Amanda Palmer maybe?
Zooey Deschanel?
Other ukulele singers
Another list
posted by nouvelle-personne at 7:52 AM on September 22


Response by poster: I'm appreciating the suggestions, and I think I'm going to be settling into a morning of good new-to-me music, but none of the named singers are the singer of the mystery song (next I need to work through novelle's two lists).

It's strange discovering that something so familiar to me is so extremely obscure, like asking around and finding out that no one's ever heard of Lisa Loeb.
posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 8:55 AM on September 22


Where did you hear the song? On the radio? At a show? On a mixtape?
posted by Jon_Evil at 10:13 AM on September 22 [4 favorites]


Response by poster: MP3, a friend's music collection.
posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 11:06 AM on September 23


MP3, a friend's music collection.
If you could track down the friend they may be able to help? Writing and recording a song with a ukulele is not a high bar to getting music in a playlist- at least to a circle of friends.
posted by rongorongo at 4:13 AM on September 25 [2 favorites]


Another shot in the dark - any way it was Basia Bulat?
posted by taltalim at 8:25 AM on September 29 [1 favorite]


Response by poster: any way it was Basia Bulat?

...quite possibly. My memory of the song sounds like her style. The wild thing is that for the dates to work out I would have needed to have heard the song before her first album was released, which isn't impossible...

So I'm going to go looking for early career Basia Bulat, but it's possible that this is an unreleased, pre-professional track.
posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 4:41 PM on October 15


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