Sometimes my kids need extra bedtime songs. Sometimes, when they need these songs, I’m really tired or a little bit drunk. When that happens, I sing “default songs”, stuff I can’t forget the lyrics for even when I try. Sadly, none of these songs are properly goth. *sigh* I don’t even know. It is what it is, and what it is isn’t very goth. They’re not my favorite songs, just the ones deepest in my brain. Here are the three songs I can’t forget the lyrics for even if I try. Plus a bonus song for Mr. Robot. Happy anniversary to my robot companion:

Runaround–Blues Traveler:

Birdhouse in your Soul–They Might Be Giants–somehow, everyone in my family knows this song without consciously trying to know it. Seriously, this is the only song we can all sing together for no reason I can see. Seriously, we’re not even close in age and have pretty different tastes but we can all bust out these lyrics. I guess it’s a nerd thing*:

Code Monkey–Jonathan Coulton. This one I get, at least, because it reminds me of Mr. Robot, who started out as a code monkey and is very simple in some ways. Mostly, anyway. We celebrated 12 years together last weekend, so goth or not this one is now my go-to song:

I found Jonathan Coulton by accident and later found out he was Mr. Robot’s favorite artist. My actual favorite Coulton song is Re: Your Brains, which is a pretty great corpgoth anthem. This is my favorite video version. It’s pretty much not goth at all, but it is about zombies, and it represents the weird common ground between myself and Mr. Robot:

*Also, this song is way less weird than the video. I was a solidly “Mtv generation” girl and I don’t remember this video at all. Because it’s weird and dumb. Whatevs.