#70: Ain't That A Kick In The Head?

How lucky can one guy be?

I kissed her, and she kissed me.

Like a fella once said:

"Ain't that a kick in the head?"

The room was completely black,

I hugged her, and she hugged back.

Like a sailor said -- quote --

"Ain't that a hole in a boat?"

One of the youngest songs in this Great American Songbook, "Ain't That A Kick In the Head" entered the canon in 1960 when Dean Martin and the rest of Rat Pack starred on the silver screen in the original version of Ocean's Eleven. The writing team that ran with the Rat Pack, Sammy Cahn (lyrics) and Jimmy Van Heusen (music), captured the swingin' spirit with everything from the fun colloquial phrases to a syncopated bridge that builds on its rhymes and leapfrogs up the scale. While this is a Dean Martin trademark number, the Irish band Westlife brought it back in 2005 on their album, "Allow Us to Be Frank." There's a bit of a paradox between the oozing self-confidence of any of these guys and the incredulity expressed in the song, but the snap-your-fingers music and head-cocked-just-so phraseology that makes it work nonetheless.