Thank you for the music

A few days ago, I came home to find the little apartment I share with Saffy and Amanda positively vibrating. The minute the lift door opened, you could feel the floor shuddering to a muffled beat.

At first, I thought the music was coming from our new neighbours, a pair of doped out advertising executives from Australia who spent all weekend either lying by the pool or standing next to a blazing barbeque.

Amanda thought one of them looked a lot like Hugh Jackman (“Have you seen him in his Speedos? Oh my God. Here, Saffy, give me back my binoculars!”) and decided that all her dating problems had been solved. Imagine her disappointment when after lying in wait all Sunday and then accidentally on purpose bumping into Matthew on his way home from the barbeque, the first thing he said was, “Oh, hi, pleased to meet you, Amanda. This is my boyfriend, Peter!”

“Seriously?” she asked. According to Peter, who turned out to be Barney Chen’s ex, Amanda spun around smartly on her heels and walked back into our apartment, slamming the door shut.

Anyway, the loud music. My first thought was to call the condo’s management office to complain, but then it occurred to me that the noise was actually coming from our flat.

I opened the door and was smacked by a solid wall of sound. The volume on our cheap-assed stereo was turned up so high, the pictures on the walls were literally shaking.

In the middle of lounge room, Saffy was gyrating, her eyes closed and her arms waving in the air, and her screaming somehow managing to rise over the ear-drum busting acoustics.

“Baby, every time I love you, in and out my life, in and out baby! Tell me!” she screeched.

In spite of the fact that I felt as if my heart was being pile driven right into the floor, there was something immediately uplifting about the song, its joyous mood overriding the complete certainty that we were probably breaking some law about public disturbance. There was something so incredibly happy about this song that without my even being aware of it, my toes started tapping and the body began moving. By the time Saffy noticed that there was someone else in the room, I had already joined her in the middle of the room dancing.

We played Michael Jackson’s ‘Love Never Felt So Good’ at least another six times, dancing like there was no tomorrow, before we collapsed in sweaty piles on the sofa.

“Isn’t this just the best song ever?” Saffy sighed, her skin glowing with an unaccustomed flush. “Amazing that he never released it. So much better than some of his later ones about healing the world and saving the children because they are our future and stuff. Those songs were so depressing, lemme tell ya!”

“Nobody writes songs like this anymore,” I said.

“I wonder what else he had hidden away in Wonderland!”

“Neverland,” I said.

“You’re being annoying now,” Saffy said.

Of course, you can imagine what happened when we discovered there was an extended version of the song featuring Justin Timberlake. Saffy ran the music video on our TV, cranked up the volume and we spent the rest of the afternoon trying to recreate the dance moves in our living room.

“My God, that Justin Timberlake can really move!” Saffy reported to Amanda later that night.

Amanda looked doubtful. “Michael Jackson? Really? I just started losing interest in him when he started singing about angels and saving the planet…”

Saffy waved her hand. “This song is from before he went all Greenpeace on us. Here, lemme play it for you!”

Which is how half an hour later, we were still dancing and singing at the top of our voices.

“Oh my God, this song is so fun!” Amanda yelled.

“Gotta fly, gotta sing, can’t believe I can’t take it, cause baby, every time I love you!” Saffy shouted as she stood in front of a fan, the wind whipping her shirt around, while her hair did a remarkable impersonation of Michael Jackson’s.

The next morning, Barney Chen rang to say that Peter had asked him to ask us if we could lower the volume on our music. “He says it’s like living right next to a nightclub!” he growled. “What’s going on over there?”

“It’s Michael Jackson’s ‘Love Never Felt So Good’!”

Barney’s judgmental tone changed immediately. “Oh my God, I love that song! Are you doing one of those looping dance-a-thons? Is that what you guys were doing? I am so coming over tonight!”

Sharyn says single people just have the best fun. For once, no one is contradicting her.