Chuck Lorre’s “Top of Your Head,” performed by Joan Jett, is a cheeky hard rock song built around a very specific bedroom joke. Jett gives a rock delivery that suits its blunt sense of humor, while Lorre gets to indulge a comic idea that leaves little room for subtlety. The song takes its double meaning and runs with it, repeating the central gag until it becomes an unabashed singalong.
The language of romantic affection sets up familiar expressions of desire before revealing what the narrator actually has in mind. The joke depends on that gap between the sweet declarations and the increasingly absurd fixation. Even the spoken interruption about recording the moment for posterity pushes the humor further, giving the song the feel of a private joke that has escaped into the studio.
“Top of Your Head” comes from Songs That Kept Me Out of the Big Time, a collection of songs Lorre wrote and recorded while building his career in television. His musical ambitions never disappeared, even as his sitcoms reached millions of viewers. Having Joan Jett bring this particular track to life gives one of those long-shelved compositions a fittingly mischievous voice.
