A Belated Tag Response

It's been a hectic couple of weeks, and I haven't been able to get to Danielle's excellent tag until today-- it required some research and some thinking!

The tag was:

1. Go to www.popculturemadness.com
2. Pick the year you turned 18
3. Get yourself nostalgic over the song’s of the year
4. Write something about how the song affected you
5. Pass it on to 5 more friends

I modified the tag just a little-- I looked at some other lists of hits to find songs I loved from that year-- the hit lists of the time were heavy with disco, which I hated.

1. Message In a Bottle- The Police
This is one of the first Police songs I remember ever hearing (I think the very first was "Walking On the Moon"). I dug them, but I think I (and everybody else) was sick of them by 1984 or so. They still sounded fresh in 1979, and I loved this song.

It's funny to think now of poor Sting, all alone and lonely.

2.Let's Go- The Cars
This song will forever be embedded in my head as the song of the summer I graduated high school. You didn't even have to have a radio to hear this song-- it was playing out of car radios, out of windows, in stores. I never managed to get tired of it-- I still love hearing it. And the Vargas album cover didn't hurt either...

3. I Need A Lover (Who Won't Drive Me Crazy)- Johnny Cougar
This was The Artist Currently Known As John Mellencamp's first hit. He was, inexplicably, first promoted as a "glam" artist. This song put the lie to that silliness. He's a midwestern boy, with midwestern values-- our midwestern boy.

And I think we've all felt the sentiment behind this song at some point in our lives.

4. Take the Long Way Home - Supertramp
I liked Supertramp up through the Breakfast In America album. I hated the fatous Logical Song to begin with and hated it even more when it got overplayed. I did like Take the Long Way Home, with it's images of Frost's "road less travelled," and the line:

When you look through the years and see what you could
have been oh, what might have been,
if you'd had more time.

I've always taken the line as an admonition to take the time and do the things you want to do-- not wait until your old and play the "coulda/shoulda/woulda" game. I've tried to live by that code.

5. Promises- Eric Clapton
This sad, pretty, soft little song passed under my radar in 1979, but a few years later I discovered it. It's about a love affair or marriage unraveling. It's got one of my favorite-ever lines, lines that I find so poignant:

I got a problem. Can you relate?
I got a woman calling love hate.
We made a vow wed always be friends.
How could we know that promises end?

There's nothing sadder in the world than two people who once loved one another now hating each other.

Thanks for the tag, Danielle! I'm tagging: Bubs, Barbara, Skyler's Dad, Kristi and Samurai Frog. Feel free to use the modification I used.

And Samurai-- I haven't forgotten your tag! I'm still working on it!