Suppose I'm running a backticks or system command through a script that I've run from the command line. Is there anyway for me to stop that command midstream and have the script continue?

The application in question is a very simple MP3 shuffle player. What I want to be able to do is go to the next song while the current one is playing. Read more for the code.

#!/usr/bin/perl
use Data::Dumper;
open(PLAYLIST,"</somedir/myplaylist.lst");

my @songs;
while (<PLAYLIST>) {
   chomp();
   push(@songs,$_);
}

my $count = scalar(@songs);
print "We found $count songs\n";

while (scalar(@songs) > 0) {
   my $song_num = rand(scalar(@songs));
   print "*** Playing $songs[$song_num]\n";
   `mpg321 '$songs[$song_num]'`;
   splice(@songs,$song_num,1);
}

[download]
If it makes any difference, this is Perl 5.8.5 on SuSE Linux 9.2.

UPDATE: After taking my first steps into the larger world of fork/exec, I have something that works to the best that I can see. Read on for the new version. I'll probably eventually update it to not use ^C to get the next song so it's easier to stop the music. Thanks to RazorbladeBidet for gently pushing me to learn fork!
#!/usr/bin/perl

my $song_num;
my @songs;
my $pid;

sub catch_next {
   my $signame = shift;
   print "Going to next song!\n";
   my $count = kill(15,$pid);
}

sub reaper {
   $waitedpid = wait;
   $SIG{CHLD} = \&reaper;
}

open(PLAYLIST,"</somedir/myplaylist.lst");
while (<PLAYLIST>) {
   chomp();
   push(@songs,$_);
}

$SIG{INT} = \&catch_next;
$SIG{CHLD} = \&reaper;

my $count = scalar(@songs);
print "We found $count songs\n";

while (scalar(@songs) > 0) {
   $song_num = rand(scalar(@songs));
   my $song = $songs[$song_num];
   splice(@songs,$song_num,1);
   print "*** Playing $song\n";
   unless ($pid = fork) {
     exec("mpg321", "$song");
   }
   waitpid($pid,0);
}

[download]
UPDATE 2: Thanks to bluto for alerting me that I don't need a seperate SIGCHLD handler. The final code is below: 
#!/usr/bin/perl

my $song_num;
my @songs;
my $pid;

sub catch_next {
   my $signame = shift;
   print "Going to next song!\n";
   my $count = kill(15,$pid);
}

open(PLAYLIST,"</somedir/myplaylist.lst");
while (<PLAYLIST>) {
   chomp();
   push(@songs,$_);
}

$SIG{INT} = \&catch_next;

my $count = scalar(@songs);
print "We found $count songs\n";

while (scalar(@songs) > 0) {
   $song_num = rand(scalar(@songs));
   my $song = $songs[$song_num];
   splice(@songs,$song_num,1);
   print "*** Playing $song\n";
   unless ($pid = fork) {
     exec("mpg321", "$song");
   }
   waitpid($pid,0);
}

[download]

In reply to Can I stop a backtick command but continue the script? by DentArthurDent

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