The Brown Eyed curse

Now, this post isn't what some of you may be thinking...(disgusting)

I am of course talking about the ditty 'Brown Eyed Girl' by Van Morrison.

A fairly non-offensive song on the surface but this song is my own personal hell...

I play keyboards in a covers band, a highly successful covers band at that. We try to be a bit different so edge away from traditional cover band fare and instead try new stuff. A bit of Dizzee here, a Prodigy and 90's dance medley there, but obviously we touch on the traditional Beatles/Abba/Jackson 5 tripe.

One such tripe track in our repertoire is 'Brown Eyed Girl'. I have probably played this song 68,156 times (approx) in the past few years. I've got to the stage with it where i've played it so often that I've started to forget the chords, structure, and lyrics. I blag my way through it singing the odd word I remember and mumbling my way through the rest before the (sadly) unforgettable chorus kicks in. It's like my brain has had enough of it and is slowly deleting it bit by bit.

We have started to leave it out of our sets but to no avail.

You can guarantee that at every gig we play, someone will request this dire song. Usually an inebriated female screeching that it's, 'her favourite song because she too has brown eyes' (crazy). When we succumb to the mind bending torture and start playing it, the audience goes nuts. Literally everyone stands up, dances and sings along to the 'la la la la la' bits.

What the hell is it about this track that makes it so popular? Is Van Morrison some kind of musical hypnotist, packing this track with hidden messages in attempt to recruit some kind of hazel eyed female army? Or are people that love this song running on minimal brain cells?

Have a look at this video of Van performing the track and read the second comment down from 83smileyface.

I despair, and rest my case.