some brief notes on the theme song to The NeverEnding Story

I have vague recollections of watching The NeverEnding Story as a child, but they are vague. I was young (nine at the oldest, but probably younger), it was at someone else’s house, and it was only once, so it didn’t leave much of an impression on me. My next substantive encounter with that movie—or, more accurately, its theme song—was the ending gag in this Homestar Runner cartoon, where the title character sings “the never ending sooooodaaaaaa” to the tune of the movie’s theme song.

That’s a great gag, even if you aren’t familiar with the source material it’s riffing on. So, even twenty years after the Homestar Runner gag—and even after watching the NeverEnding Story scene in Stranger Things before losing interest in that show (that’s just commentary, not a causal relationship)—it’s what my mind always goes to when I am reminded of that movie.

Well, it turns out that the theme song to The NeverEnding Story is on regular rotation on DKL Dreyeckland’s “Flashback 80” webradio, and I listen to that station pretty often, so I’ve started hearing that song more and more. The first few times it came up, I switched to another station. Again, the movie had never really made an impression with me, and it’s kind of a weird song, so I couldn’t see any reality in which I would enjoy it.

At some point, though, I got too lazy to change the station and listened to the whole song… and it turns out I kind of liked it! Sometime in the last week, I got excited when it actually came up, and then I started bringing it up on YouTube to deliberately listen to, and I also put on a one-hour loop of it at some point, and now I’ve got a copy in my personal music collection. It’s still kind of a weird song, but so are my favorite Eurovision songs, so why the heck not?

• The NeverEnding Story
• Homestar Runner
• radio
• DKL Dreyeckland
• Stranger Things