I’ve been attempting to pinpoint this song, off and on, for years now. It was used in multiple episodes of This American Life, usually playing out a moment of absurdity or embarrassment. The tune (especially those horns) would get stuck in my head for days on end and identifying it—largely in hopes of expunging it from my brain—became a minor obsession. In the age of Shazam such mysteries are easily solved, but unfortunately for me I could not remember a single specific episode in which it was used.Google was no help. There are endless requests all over the Web to identify TAL music but it almost always turns out to be one of a few usual suspects: DJ Shadow, Penguin Café Orchestra, Calexico, maybe a Donnie Darko track. Strangely, no one else seemed to be obsessing over this campy and slightly annoying orchestral earworm.I tried listening to old episodes—at random, cranked up to 4×-speed—but quickly gave up, convinced I’d never hear it again. Thankfully, my pot-watching-avoidance strategy paid off earlier this month when I finally ran across it again during “Tough Room 2011” (an update of a 2008 episode).Obsession over. In the end, it took SoundHound all of five seconds to identify it: “Afrikaan Beat” by Bert Kaempfert.
