The bright and bold summer perfection of OMC’s “How Bizarre”

I lost all hearing in my left ear and most of my right for an afternoon after a dry ice bomb made from a plastic 7UP bottle exploded in my face in the summer of ’97. An explosion of consequence more than accident, although in truth it was both, that changed the nature of ice cream shipping to our small grocery store in the Yukon forever. 

When a sense goes away, it’s natural to cherish a last sensation before going numb. How beautiful the last taste or smell was and never will be again. The bomb, it must be said, went off inside the grocery store, and the slow and fateful minutes leading up to its explosion were soundtracked by the radio. Songs that none of us would admit to liking, despite knowing all their words and melodies, and so the last thing I heard before my hearing became nothing but static and muted tones was “How Bizarre” by OMC.

 I don’t believe in the idea of a definitive “song of the summer,” as I would rather believe in the simple bliss of personal truths. How can any summer be defined by a single song, as if the lives of many can be told by a singular anthem, their loves and losses threaded into a tender web of shared choruses? The song of the summer is better suited as a nebulous idea, less a hard truth and more an ideology. Summer, after all, is a memory just as it is a present moment, its stories told through faded photographs and half-remembered details of names and places. The song of the summer becomes part of it, that memory, a story of an impossibly hot sun paired with a perfect breeze, that carries with it an infectious melody that will tell whatever stories remain of the days left behind. 

What makes “How Bizarre” a perfect summer song then is its storytelling. Bright and bold details, told with a pop-Tejano style, all boisterous trumpets and mariachi guitar, with Pauly Fuemana at the front of the track, his lackadaisical flow informed by his Māori and Niuean roots. The table is quickly set, brother Pele in the back, sweet Sina in the front, cruising down the freeway in the hot, hot sun. They’re pulled over, and all three react with unique hesitation to a cop who comments on their car and leaves them be. Fuemana, the story’s omniscient narrator, editorializes. How Bizarre. 

We had an abundance of dry ice for dull and utilitarian reasons. It’s a long drive through twisting nowhere roads and endless highways for trucks bringing anything into the Yukon, and so our more precious groceries—perishables and frozen things—were sent packed with dry ice for added protection. When everything was properly unloaded from newly arrived trucks, we were left with mounds of dissipating dry ice, and given strict instructions to dispose of it properly. Our boss, quick to anger with a swift and bitter hand, warned us that fucking around with it would be disastrous. How easily swayed devilish hands working for minimum wage become when disaster is promised. 

The details are fuzzy now on who made the discovery of a small-scale explosive hidden within our packing materials, but someone had, and its easy thrill was a balm on long, dull days. Someone would wear heavy gloves, procure small pieces of the remaining dry ice, and drop it into an empty soda bottle. Whoever was feeling bold that day would fill the bottle with water, quickly put the lid back on while fighting the intense pressure of the dry ice releasing gas, then throw it out the back door. Behind the store was an alley, dividing our property from a Canadian Freightways shipping depot, and the game became how quickly you could get outside and how far you could throw the bottle down the alley before it exploded. Sometimes it would be barely out of your hands before going off, the steel door to the store open only part-way to deaden the explosive results of our idle destruction. Hoping the sounds of the store in motion and the radio were enough to wash it all away.

“How Bizarre” is annoyingly perfect. How expertly crafted a pop song it is, chorus and verse perfectly paired to the other, shifting scenes and propelling the song forward. Each little vignette teasing just the small details while hinting at something more. Each story feels like a lie, and each feels like the gospel truth. They almost get arrested by a cop; they head to a circus that isn’t even there. Fuemana never emoting beyond the barriers of his bemused drawl. The song is simple. The guitar repeats, the beat the same, but it has that perfect hook, and what is a summer song, and what is a memory, if not a barbed thing such as this buried deep into the skin. 

So there came a day when I was the person shakily holding a pop bottle filled with dry ice under a tap in the produce department sink. Water rushed into the bottle, overflowing onto my hand. Voices around me yelled to get the cap on. “Quickly,” they yelled. Do it. I could barely get that cap on; the force of the emerging gas was so strong. I had seen so many other people do it. I had to be part of this; this had to be part of me. I had to belong to a story if I wanted to remember this life, and when I finally screwed that cap on, felt the sun on my face as the door flung open and the bottle escaped my hand, I felt more alive than God. 

There’s comfort in knowing what a song on the radio will be within its opening seconds. How quickly it becomes a part of you. How easily its sharp phrases become your own. The opening mariachi riff of “How Bizarre” is cool and warm, a simple rhythm that repeats and comes back to itself, inviting you in. The hard truth of it all was that most of us who heard it over the radio and shitty speakers didn’t really know the words. We knew its parts, its anthemic highs. We knew the “ooh baby (ooh baby) you’re making me crazy” part in the chorus, and the “every time I look around” bit. We knew to exaggerate our voices when we sang along, down the aisles and hallways, despite the song’s delivery being softer and more subdued. We claimed to hate it at one point, only to sing it to someone with playful affection at another. 

The story moves along its perfect three-part arc. The characters are introduced; they see a poster for a circus; they arrive to find it missing; they leave when the cops arrive again. It’s easy to imagine they are not, in fact, looking for elephants and circuses at all. How bizarre.

The bottle didn’t explode. It flew from my hands, the same as so many others had flown before mine, but when it landed in the weeds and gravel in the alleyway it made no sound. The door was still half-open, and the radio was filtering in over our heads. We waited, and waited longer. Nothing. Cheering onlookers left, disappointed by the lack of a cathartic, harmless explosion. A co-worker who still reeked of the weed he smoked in the ice cream freezer walked out into the alley, picked it up, and brought it back inside. We stared at it, he and I, for seconds that stretched into minutes. He kicked it gently with his shoe, then hit it with a pallet. Nothing. I kicked it a little too. Nothing. We resumed our mindless tasks; he went back to washing produce in the sink, and I bagged brown-spotted bananas for the sale rack. Nothing. I looked at the bottle again, and bent down close to inspect it, to see if I could tell why it hadn’t gone off. I could hear Fuemana singing overhead, “Making moves and starting grooves before they knew we were gone.”

I think the ideal song of the summer recalls the season, as if melody alone is a weight that holds precious things in place. To live long is to be blessed with a collection of aged stories all held together. This summer and her stories will be added to this stack of life, to be recalled by notes and chords the same as any other, and what songs remind me of it aren’t yet mine to know. There is no one song; rather, there are endless songs, and “How Bizarre” fits easily among them. So warm and breezy, a perfect pop melody and infectious rhythm that lives in you forever once you know it. Impossibly strange, but oddly alluring. Beautiful and mysterious, and then at the end, the unresolved tease. Want to know the rest? Hey, buy the rights.

Niko Stratis is a former smoker and an award-losing (and winning) writer. She is the author of the critically-acclaimed book The Dad Rock That Made Me a Woman, and the newsletter Anxiety Shark. She once came 2nd in a Chicken McNugget eating competition, but that was a long time ago. She is a cancer, and she lives in Toronto.

Read more essays from Niko’s Alt-Rock Dept. column here.

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