Embarrassing Workout Songs

A friend recently posted on Facebook, asking her friends to divulge the most embarrassing song on their workout playlists. (Notice, it is now assumed our workout playlists are from streaming services, not rips from actual, physical CDs we purchased, or old Napster downloads, or, taking it all the way back, a Walkman and a good old mixtape). 

Never one to pass up an opportunity to embarrass myself in public, I mentally scrolled through my own running playlists and landed on a few pop gems that some might consider embarrassing (ahem, Ariana Grande, Selena Gomez...), but then I remembered:

Let's be clear. I am not embarrassed by anything I listen to, least of all this wholly dreamy nostalgic pop song. I stand by my decision to put Mazzy Star on a workout mix. It happened during a phase when I was experimenting with running to songs in 3/4 or 6/8 time. Who doesn't like to run to a melancholy waltz? Plus, the BPM matches my cadence so nicely, it's a pleasure to run to.

This opened the floodgates though, and I subsequently remembered that when training for my first 10k, I planted the theme song to the Benny Hill song, aka Yakety Sax, in my training mix, hoping it would deploy when I needed an extra kick to motivate me up that final hill. It worked.

Then, there was that season when Gwen Stefani released "Wind It Up," which sampled "The Lonely Goatherd" from The Sound of Music, and I thought, why not put them both on the running mix? Who doesn't like to exercise to a little Julie Andrews?

So next time you see me running around Berkeley, just know I might be air drumming to Grimes or Sia or Lana Del Rey, or I might be running in 3/4 time with an early 90s indie waltz ballad, or maybe lip synching classic show tunes. Whatever keeps me in motion. And, by the way, I'm always open to suggestions.