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The everyday phrases that pop songs have ruined

The very best songs and lyrics are those that will lodge themselves so permanently in your head that it’s hard to ever forget them. Most come up at the strangest of times, or are triggered by the most unconnected things. Other particularly powerful “earworms” become so part of your every day that the smallest provocation could see you bursting into song.

Below, we’ve listed those phrases that no matter how hard we try (that’s almost one for Linkin Park…) we just can’t stop thinking of the song.

"It wasn't me"

You might not be talking about “making love on the bathroom floor”, but deny anything strongly enough and you’ll immediately be in mind of Shaggy’s perfect stone-faced denial.

“Let it go”

Idina Menzel and Disney have a lot to answer for regarding a phrase that is among the most commonplace and useful. Friend needs to bail on a toxic situation? Let it go, you’d advise them. Don’t go and live on a frost-peaked mountain, you shouldn’t have to add.

“Call me maybe”

Perhaps this has fallen out of favour in modern dating, where texts and WhatsApps have taken over from calls, but Carly Rae Jepsen has made any new couple stop for thought when they stumble on the first line of the chorus of 2012’s “Call Me Maybe”.

“Hello…”

Whether you follow this with “is it me you’re looking for?” or “from the other side”, it’s impossible to not evoke either Lionel Richie’s 1983 hit or the opening lines to Adele’s 2015 comeback song that share a name.

“We’re halfway there”

It could be a boring trip in the car, a boring day at work, or counting down the days until Christmas: chances are that as soon as you hit the half-way point, you’ll be inviting friends to take your hand just as Bon Jovi did in 1986’s ‘Livin’ on a Prayer’.

“It’s Friday”

End of the week. School, college or work is almost over. You can practically taste the freedom. “It’s Friday”, you think to yourself, before being terrorised by Rebecca Black’s infamous 2011 song, recited from beginning to end by your evil brain.