Then there's the songs that I hear once and decide that this would be my new favorite song... only to rarely or never ever hear it again.
Very often in the 80s my taste in music went against the flow of the top 10. I failed to see the appeal of some of the most popular artists of the time. I didn't hate them or encourage my friends to dislike them. It's just that a lot of that music left me... blah.
Yes, I know that all the music made a big impact and were all a part of the big picture yadda... yadda... yadda... I can appreciate that part. I just don't care for the part where I'm expected to listen to or like the most popular ones.
But I really liked many of the lesser popular ones. It could be that I wasn't given the chance to get sick of them, but I think, in general, I really did like the songs.
Take Level 42, named after the famous question in 'The Hitch-Hikers Guide To The Galaxy' by Douglas Adams. They were ok with their hit, "Something About You." Just ok. I didn't hate them... not until about the zillionth time I heard "Something About You." The video was dull and creepy too. It's a strange combination but they somehow managed to pull it off. I think if MTV died, they would play "Something About You" at the funeral until MTV was firmly set and rotting in the ground.
Then MTV aired this little gem:
That was AMAZING! I wanted to hear it to the point of getting sick of it! Too bad I never heard it again until the invention of Youtube.
You might ask why I didn't just get the album. I learned not to get an album just because I like one song. Sometimes a great song is not worth getting a whole album for.
For instance, I loved "The Final Countdown" by Europe, a little-known hair band. I was fascinated with sci-fi stories and this one depicted an intelligent race coming to Earth to take the people away before Armageddon. I thought this was a cool story set to very good music. It got some airplay, but not very much. I went and got the album.
It was cool to hear "The Final Countdown" whenever I wanted, but attached to it were nine more songs that sound almost identical to each other. It was a disappointment to find that the talent extends as far as sounding like one good song.
But, you argue, you could just have just bought the single! Singles to songs that I liked were often just NOT available. I would sift through mountains of disks and find nothing that I couldn't hear several more times on the radio while my little-known wonders would remain elusive to me.
I wasn't completely out of luck, though. I did manage to get some of the singles that I sought. There was a used record store that I frequented and I would thumb through the 45s. With the world turning mainly to CDs, however, it was a lot of hit-and-miss.
When Duran Duran disbanded for a spell and the members took on some different projects, I searched weekly for John Taylor's solo single. The people in the store seemed happy when I found it. Actually, they seemed happier when I bought the record and took my screaming outside.
That's just me, though. Many people liked all the stuff that got repetitive airplay. Many people agreed that there were good reasons why some songs quickly blinked out of sight.
They can be wrong if they want to...
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