The Bagel Bites Jingle Was a Lie

It was much easier to zone out when we had offices and bars and in-person meetings. You could just kind of dissociate/lose focus mid-conversation and let everyone’s facial cues and intonations to carry you through your interactions.

During social distance times, however, you can’t do that. If you’re not smizing in Zooms, you’re all alone, flitting from tab to tab and screen to screen; it all requires more effort (for me at least). That’s how I found out that the Bagel Bites jingle was a lie.

It’s not that you can’t have pizza/pizza bagels whenever you want—they’re obviously great for breakfast—but this jingle that (no doubt) millions of us have been carrying around with us in our pockets for 25 years isn’t the sliver of marketing genius I had made it out to be. This is important, so please don’t zone out on me.

Over the summer, Tim and Fred, two twin “vloggers,” went “viral” after posting a video of themselves listening to the Phil Collins song “In the Air Tonight” for the very first time. Maybe you caught it, maybe you were moved. I certainly was. I immediately dropped an hour of time digging through their (extremely earnest) videos.

(Quick side note: So vast did the twins’ fame grow that, in November, Tim and Fred were “surprised” by President Obama after listening to Dylan’s “The Times They Are A-Changin” for the first time, which was featured on the official playlist of his presidential memoir.)

Anyway, last week, I decided to see what Tim and Fred had been up to. I watched their video of Dolly Parton’s “Jolene,” which led me to their video on Johnny Cash’s cover of Nine Inch Nails’ “Hurt.” This, of course, led me down a Johnny Cash rabbit hole, including a compilation of his old recordings from Sun Records, which I had never listened to. And that was when I heard the song “Sugartime” for the very first time.

If you know this song—the McGuire Sisters’ version was one of the most popular songs in America in 1958—good for you.

If don’t know it, well, start filming yourself before you listen so you can become rich and famous. I certainly wish I had.