There are songs that grab you by the collar from the very first note and simply refuse to let go. " The Strawberry Blonde " is one of those songs. It's track four on Lurch - Mike Viola 's 2007 masterpiece, originally released as a limited run of just 1,000 CDs and briefly available as a free download directly from Mike himself (so popular that it crashed his website). If you know, you know. The song clocks in at 2 minutes and 22 seconds . That's it. No padding, no wasted note. Just a perfectly constructed rush of uptempo power pop with layered harmonies that stack up like something Brian Wilson might have dreamed up on a particularly sunny Tuesday. Lyrically, Viola does something brave: he leans completely into simplicity. The narrator falls in love and can barely believe how obvious it all feels - lying in the grass, hand in hand, almost embarrassed by his own happiness. Viola even winks at it himself, calling the whole thing "almost sappy....