We Listened To The Same Song On Repeat For Five Hours

Two brave people listened to the song "Breakfast at Tiffany's" on a loop for five hours and lived to tell about it. Sort of.

Hi. We're Chelsea and Joanna. This is us right before doing something terrible.

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We wanted know: Can a person go five hours listening to the same song on repeat? Would we be OK afterward? Would we get sick? Start crying?

We chose the classic 1995 hit "Breakfast at Tiffany's" by Deep Blue Something to play on a loop for five hours.

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See the video here. We were trying to pick a song that no one would want to listen to for five straight hours. It was between this and "Cotton Eyed Joe."

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We sat in this room for five hours as the song played.

Joanna Borns / BuzzFeed

If we left the room, we brought the song with us on headphones, even to the bathroom.

Chelsea Marshall

Tiffany's, the actual diamond store, seemed to be on board with this plan for some reason.

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Our Thoughts Going In

Joanna: I feel like this can't be THAT hard.

Chelsea: I'm worried about getting nauseous or possibly having an anxiety attack. Or both.

Joanna: Oh no. I immediately regret this. As soon as the song started playing I felt an incredible sense of dread.

Chelsea: I just remembered why this was a horrible idea.

Joanna: I've just been letting the song wash over me like a gentle wave. I learned to savor those few sweet, beautiful seconds of silence when the song ends, before it starts playing again. Chelsea made a sort of weird screaming sound after 30 minutes.

We've also become preoccupied with the concept of actually eating Breakfast AT Tiffany's. Audrey Hepburn just ate a croissant outside the store. But how far could you get if you just walked right in with a plate of bacon and eggs? Would security stop you and say, "No breakfast at Tiffany's?" Now I'm dying to know.

Overall, I can't concentrate on anything , but I feel surprisingly OK.

Chelsea: I feel like the song is starting to seep in. I'm not always aware of the song at this point but when I remember that it's still there, lingering, taunting me to notice, I yelp. Overall, I feel energized but frightened about the impending anxiety.

Joanna Borns / BuzzFeed

Joanna: I'm starting to feel deeply sad. And isolated. The lyrics of the song are starting to really affect me. The song is about a breakup. The narrator refers to his girlfriend as "the only one who knew me." The ONLY one? He only had ONE person in the world who knew him and now she's leaving him. And what kind of desperate place do you have to be in to use a MOVIE as the ONE reason to stay together???? I mean, I guess that's the whole point, isn't it? Sadness. Desperation.

Chelsea: I know Joanna started feeling bad for the narrator of the song but honestly, it sounds like he doesn't even know the girl that well and has made a lot of assumptions about her. I yell, “I’m starting to think he’s a whiny little bitch!” and realize I am angry. Angry at the song, angry at life, but mostly angry at myself.

Joanna Borns / BuzzFeed

Chelsea: Do I want this to be over? Yes. Am I doing okay? Also yes. That is, until I got a delivery for ICE CREAM and found out our new office may not have a freezer. I had to deal with a melting ice cream crisis with "Breakfast at Tiffany's" playing in my headphones the whole time. I felt super flustered and apologized to my coworkers about being a crazy person. They all assured me that I seemed to be acting totally normal and I realized: The crazy is coming from inside the house. So far it's contained but it is there, calling me over and over. Ringing like a telephone inside my head. WHEN WILL I BE FORCED TO PICK UP??

Joanna: I just feel exhausted. It's impossible to really form thoughts outside of, What ABOUT Breakfast at Tiffany's??? So we started googling Todd Pipes, the singer of the song, to discover he was on the 1996 cover of Playgirl.

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And then Todd Pipes, the vocalist from Deep Blue Something, told us to stop listening to his song or face the consequences.

Twitter: @ToddPipes

Or at least, we're pretty sure it's him.

Joanna: I'm starting to feel a little confused. Is my name Tiffany? I've started calling other people Tiffany. Everyone is Tiffany. We are all Tiffany.

Chelsea: Who am I? Joanna keeps calling me "Tiffany." Is this over? I feel wonky. I thought I'd know the lyrics by now but I realized my brain just shuts off when Mr. Pipe starts serenading. If I needed to tell someone the lyrics, I could but I can't sing them in the moment. My brain is clearly trying to save me from myself.

I asked, but haven't heard back from Tiffany's if they'll let me eat breakfast in their diamond store. I bet they get that request a lot.

Taylor Miller / BuzzFeed

Joanna: I can't read words anymore. Chelsea STILL doesn't know the lyrics even though we listened to them for five hours. But she started making some weird groaning sounds.

The last 30 minutes of listening were the most intense. We had a meeting get rescheduled last minute and had to take our headphones. Listening to "Breakfast at Tiffany's" around other people in a professional setting is not ideal. Chelsea ended up having a breakdown in the middle of the meeting, mid-sentence.

Chelsea: The last 30 minutes were okay. I felt a little dizzy but the song had kind of become part of me and I stopped noticing it. As Joanna said, we had to go to a meeting. Initially, I was surprised by how well I could concentrate on what everyone was saying. It was as if I had defeated the song. I felt strong, strong enough to speak up. But it was hubris and "Breakfast at Tiffany's" came in full force to hurl me back to earth. As soon as I tried to open my mouth, I heard Todd Pipes belt out "What about breakfast at Tiffany's?" and I completely lost my train of thought. I couldn't speak. I felt my face turn red as I tried to explain what was happening. I thought I conquered the song but I was wrong. The song had lulled me into a false sense of security to stab me right in the heart and make a fool out of me. You win this round, Todd Pipes. I hope you're happy.

Chelsea as she has a mid-meeting meltdown in the last hour of the song loop.

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Conclusions

Joanna: After it was all over I actually did feel a little nauseous. And then I just felt angry. And then I would randomly blurt out the lyrics without realizing it. And I realized that the song was in my head—maybe forever. My DNA was altered and "Breakfast at Tiffany's" will always be somewhere inside my body, from now until my death. And I actually feel like maybe I could've listened to it for longer? But maybe that's the Stockholm syndrome talking.

Chelsea: At the end, I felt like I had been playing some weird post-apocalyptic video game for 8 hours, still unclear what I put myself through and why. I was dizzy and wondered if today was just a weird day. Then I realized: no, it was weird because you made it weird, Chelsea.

One thing that surprised me was that I didn't have the song stuck in my head after we finished the five hours. But that's the thing about this song: just when you're feeling confident, it will come in and destroy you at the worst possible moment. And it did. As I was falling asleep, the song crept into my head. It crept right in there like a Rat King making a nest in the subway. And he stayed until I wept myself into a dream about eating breakfast...at Tiffany's.

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