Today is the day that this year’s edition of the World’s Largest Trivia Contest gets underway, celebrating it’s forty-fifth year. The team I play on, which has achieved its own modest level of notoriety will be enjoying an anniversary of its own, playing for the twenty-fifth time, a two-and-a-half decade span that I have a difficult time wrapping my head around. In that stretch, we’ve built up a lot of team lore, involving paddles and coconut heads and little alien puppets. It’s very possible that my favorite part of our team’s extensive iconography is the song “Come On Eileen,” the 1982 chart-topper from Dexys Midnight Runners that has become our theme song. Among other reasons, it crops up all over the place–on the radio, over the supermarket PA, on a movie soundtrack–and it always feels like it’s being played just for us. Today, it sorta is being played just for us.

At my workplace, I have the pleasure and the privilege of interacting with legions of talented students. Just as I could effuse without end over my cohorts on the Trivia team, so too could I expound on the gifts of Mollie Donihe. She’d probably prefer I not, though, so instead I’ll simply offer that she’s a wonderful musician with a heartbreakingly beautiful voice. And she knows her way around a cover, always valued in my tribe. On the occasion of my squad’s twenty-fifth year, she was kind enough to record a version of “Come On Eileen” for me. It exceeds my expectations, which were actually quite high. So, so, so very young and clever.

Everyone–and I do mean everyone–should buy her new EP. Like her, it’s exceptional.

Thanks, Mollie. And Fire Up, Cakers!

Listen or download –> Mollie Donihe, “Come On Eileen (Cover)”

(Disclaimer: I swear I have permission from the artist this week. However, I suppose Kevin Rowland and the other songwriters could take umbrage with this track being posted without them getting any compensation for their efforts. But come on. It’s an amazing cover by a wonderful singer-songwriter. If they hear it, they should do whatever they can to get her signed to big money recording contract.)