Tag: Decades – Extra

The Music of My Life – The 2000’s Part 2

This is sort of a continuation of the Music of My Life feature. It focused on music from 1970-2025. It featured tunes that have special meaning to me, brought back a certain memory or a tune that I just really like. I found that with the first three decades, there were songs that I didn’t feature. So I sat down with my original lists and selected some songs that “bubbled under,” so to speak. Songfacts.com helped me a lot with stories and background info.

I figured a good way to present them was to focus on a decade. 10 years = 1 song per year = 10 songs. Last week we looked at the 2000’s and we’ll so that again this week. You may remember that the more current I got, the less music I connected with. Perhaps there will be enough to look at the 2010’s next week. So, let’s check out a few “Decade Extras.”

2000

I used to love VH1’s Behind the Music and Pop-Up Videos. You could always count on trivia or a great story. That’s the case with Kryptonite from 3 Doors Down. From Songfacts…

Picture this: 3 Doors Down lead singer/songwriter Brad Arnold at 15 years old, sitting in math class bored out of his skull, begins tapping on his desk. The tapping turns into drumming, and pretty soon he’s unknowingly written the first monster hit for his future band.

He laughs at the memory: “Thank God for the little dude that sat in front of me, that dude deserves credit on the album! I was so bad in math. So bad. But my teacher knew I was not good, not paying attention, but he just kind of let me go. I believe I wrote the lyrics to some other songs in that same class. I wrote probably about half of that Better Life album sitting in that math class.”This song is also, according to Arnold, only the 3rd or 4th song he’d ever written, period. “The skippy little drumbeat in the song was just me beating on my desk. It’s almost exactly the beat we played to, just kind of drumming, just skipping along with it.”

Brad says this song is a question. As it turns out, it was a rather prophetic one. “Its question is kind of a strange one. It’s not just asking, ‘If I fall down, will you be there for me?’ Because it’s easy to be there for someone when they’re down. But it’s not always easy to be there for somebody when they’re doing good. And that’s the question it’s asking. It’s like, ‘If I go crazy, will you still call me Superman?’ It’s asking, ‘If I’m down, will you still be there for me?’ But at the same time, ‘If I’m alive and well, will you be there holding my hand?’ That’s kind of asking, ‘If I’m doing good, will you be there for me? Will you not be jealous of me?’ And maybe throughout the years of singing that song, I might have come up with more meanings for it than it actually might have originally had,” he laughs.


The fact that he wrote this song when he was only 15 doesn’t seem remarkable to Brad, because, he says, “every 15-year-old has those questions in their head. They might not know quite how to say it, or they might not feel like it’s acceptable to say something. And the biggest thing that I’ve had as an honor to be able to do is to be able to say something, and after I say it, it’s okay. After an artist says it, if a rock star says it, okay, it’s fine. That really boils down to why rock and roll inspires pop culture so much, or just music in general, not just rock and roll. Because artists push the envelope, and they go out on a limb to say something else. But it also comes with responsibility; you gotta watch what you say, because kids listen. And I try to watch what I say, too.”

Here are the deep thoughts of a 15-year old….

Kryptonite

2001

I remember hearing Turn Off The Light on the radio and kind of liking it. When they said the artist’s name, I actually chuckled. It sounded like something I’d order at a Mexican restaurant. “I’ll have a Furtado with a side of beans and rice….”

The song is part of Furtado’s debut album, Whoa, Nelly! It was released when she was just 21. She wrote the song herself and produced it along with Gerald Eaton and Brian West. People in the business took notice of her right from the get-go.

She was born in British Columbia to Portuguese parents. At 17, she moved to Toronto and started a trip-hop band called Nelstar. Pop music at the time was dominated by Disney-bred singers like Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera. Furtado stood out from this crowd with an underground sensibility and terrific songwriting skills. In “Turn Off The Light” she was able to take a pretty much universal experience – the outgoing public persona that is a lot more insecure in private – and flesh it into a compelling song.

I can’t speak for everyone, but I can tell you that I could relate to the song. I have always felt insecure when I wasn’t out in the public. I was radio guy with big personality out there, and at home I felt like I was never enough or couldn’t do anything right.

Turn off the Light

2002

I really liked a lot of Carlos Santana’s later stuff. I loved that his music was still being played and that he was having hits all these years later. One of the songs I really liked was The Game of Love which featured him and Michelle Branch.

Branch is the lead vocalist on this song. She earned an audition through the song’s writer, Gregg Alexander, who suggested her – members of his band The New Radicals also played in Branch’s touring band. “I didn’t think I got it,” Branch told Songfacts: “I was really nervous. I went on tour and thought that was the end of it, and then I got a call saying they loved my version and they had decided that I was the singer. The next thing you know, I was going to Chicago to film the music video. The first time I met Carlos was on set for ‘The Game Of Love.'”

Branch was still a teenager when she recorded her vocal, but she had the poise and confidence to suggest a change to the lyric. Instead of “a little bit of laughs,” she wanted “a little bit of lust,” and the line “I’m telling you my babe” changed to “I’m turning in my bed.” Her suggestions were politely declined.

In her Songfacts interview, she said: “I was thinking of being lovesick, unable to sleep, turning in the bed. Like lusting after someone. But they wanted it a little more lighthearted. But I love the song and I’m honored that I was chosen to sing it.”

Michelle Branch was an excellent pairing for Santana. She was a TRL favorite with a young, female fanbase, but sounded great to the ears of Santana fans, who were much older. Branch wrote her own songs and was a student of emotions, able to sing convincingly about romantic love before she had experienced it herself. She could also play acoustic guitar, providing a nice symmetry in the video while Carlos Santana played electric.

The Game of Love

2003

When I worked in country radio, it always seemed that there were 5-10 new artists trying to get a spot on the play list. Many of them were just average, but there were some who really “fit” what the station wanted to sound like.

Pat Green was a singer-songwriter who released an album in 2003. The first single was also the title of the album – Wave on Wave. The song was written by Green, David Neuhauser and Justin Pollard. I admit that I didn’t care for the song at first. After a few listens, I began to change my mind. We played it quite a bit. It became his first and, to date, only Top 10 hit. I find that crazy because he has recorded at least 7 or 8 studio albums.

I can’t for the life of me remember one of the follow ups to Wave on Wave, but I can remember that one sounded almost exactly like it – only faster.

Wave on Wave

2004

I’m sure that this next song was one that I heard on Christian radio. The message struck me and reminds me that when all is said and done, All I Need is Him.

Bethany Dillon began singing when she was thirteen years old. Three years later, she released her self-titled 2004 debut album. It was the highest selling female solo debut for that year, and attracted Gospel Music Association nominations for both Female Vocalist and New Artist of the Year. All I Need from that album was released on April 20, 2004.

I try to begin each day thankful to God for another day. Her words would be appropriate for any time of the day.

You are all I need when I’m surrounded
You are all I need if I’m by myself
You fill me when I’m empty
There is nothing else
You’re all I need

All I Need

2005

By 2005, I had met Martina McBride at least once. I have always loved her voice. When I heard she was going to be releasing an album of classic country songs, I was intrigued. I wondered what songs she might cover.

The album was called “Timeless” and it featured Lynn Anderson’s Rose Garden. Anderson almost didn’t sing it, though. Because of lyrics like “I could promise you things like big diamond rings,” Anderson’s producer (and husband) Glenn Sutton considered this a man’s song and tried to dissuade her from covering it. Only when they had some extra studio time left did he consider it for an album cut, but with some changes. They reworked the track with an uptempo arrangement that included a string section and mandolin. When Columbia Records’ exec Clive Davis heard it, he insisted it be released as a single.

Martina’s version landed at #98 on the pop chart and #18 on the country chart.

Rose Garden

2006

I was introduced to Lips of an Angel while working in country radio. It was covered by Jack Ingram. I had no idea that the original was done by Hinder. The song has an interesting backstory. From Songfacts:

Sometimes inspiration for songs comes quickly. Hinder singer Austin Winkler wrote this song in just 20 or 30 minutes with drummer Cody Hanson while the two sat in Hanson’s living room. Winkler came in with the first line – “Honey, why you calling me so late?” – And the rest of the song just flowed out naturally.

The story in the song about having trouble letting go of a former love is real – it’s what Winkler was going through with an ex-girlfriend. He told the story to Hanson, who already had a guitar progression in mind, and the two finished the song very quickly.

“Lips Of An Angel” sold over 3 million ringtones – more than any other rock song. It was popular at a time when everyone was buying up ringtones for their new phones. Man, how much money did I waste to have those 20 second ringtones?!

Lips of an Angel

2007

The next song is from back when Taylor Swift wasn’t “pop-a-fide.” It was also a peak into how she would toss real people into her songs, often to call them out on something. Teardrops on My Guitar really stuck out as a great song and did very well on country radio.

Written by Taylor Swift and Liz Rose, this song of unrequited love is based on a true experience during Taylor’s schooldays when she had a crush on a boy she was friends with. However there was no chance of him reciprocating her feelings as he already had a girlfriend whom he was madly in love with and he used to tell Swift all about her.

In an interview with the HMV magazine, Taylor revealed that this song was written for a boy named Drew, who only ever saw her as a friend, despite Taylor having feelings for him. She went on to explain what happened when he realized the song was about him. Said Taylor:

“About two years after the album came out in the States, he showed up in my driveway. Apparently he and his girlfriend had broken up so that was his first stop when he was back in town. I was like ‘you are so late, y’know. If you’d stopped by right after the album came out then that would be one thing, but…’ I remember reading on his MySpace page one time ‘My name’s Drew and I have a famous song written about me. Email me and I’ll give you details.’ I was like, right, wow, note taken.”

MySpace!! Remember that?! If you’re wondering about Drew, things didn’t go too well for him. In 2015, he and his wife, Joni, were arrested in Hendersonville, Tennessee on charges of child abuse.

Teardrops on My Guitar

2008

I love Mel Torme’. Once I discovered him, I went looking for his albums. He did quite well in the time of the Crooners, but his chart presence faded with the birth of a new type of music. With the advent of rock and roll, the Velvet Fog fell out of favor with the younger crowd and was reluctant to try to fit in. “Rock music is heinous,” he claimed. “I’m not a teenagers’ singer. My steady market is the Young Marrieds.”

Mel was absent from the charts for 10 years. However, there was one song that brought him back to the Top 40 in 1962. That song was one that Torme’ did not really want to record. In the early ’60s he joined Atlantic Records. It was there that producer Nesuhi Ertegun convinced him to record the beat-centric R&B scorcher “Comin’ Home Baby.”

It took a fair bit of arm-twisting to get Tormé to agree. The singer recalled: “It was a minor-key blues tune with trite repetitious lyrics and an ‘answer’ pattern to be sung by the Cookies, a girl trio that had once worked for Ray Charles.” To his surprise, his rendition – arranged by Claus Ogerman – peaked at #36 on the Hot 100 and notched a #13 entry on the UK chart. It proved to be a bittersweet success in the long run, as it marked his final appearance on both charts.

But Keith, we are supposed to be talking about 2008. Yes, that is true. As much as I love the Mel Torme’ version, Michael Bublé recorded a version featuring Boyz II Men for his 2007 album, Call Me Irresponsible. It isn’t as cool as Mel’s, but I love that this great song came back so many years later. Buble’s version was released as a single in Germany, where it peaked at #17.

Comin’ Home Baby

2009

DJing high school dances was sometimes difficult because of song content. Many of them had references to sexual acts, profanity, violence or drug use. There were a few artists that all the kids seemed to love. The screams from girls when I first played a Justin Bieber song still has my ears ringing. Another artist who always seemed to work was Miley Cyrus.

Party in the USA was scheduled to make its radio debut on August 4, 2009. However, due to an illegal leak of a demo version, it was released early on July 29 for airplay. The song’s producers, Katy Perry and Kelly Clarkson collaborators Dr. Luke and Claude Kelly, broke the news to Miley about the leak. The teenage singer expressed irritation but seemed more concerned about the response of the audience to the earlier than expected release of the song.

Director Chris Applebaum told MTV News that in the song’s music video, Miley wanted to pay tribute to her favorite movie, Grease. He explained: “Miley did have an idea – one of her favorite movies is Grease. Everything kind of sprang forward from that scene in ‘Grease’ where John Travolta is singing… and he gets out of the car and goes to jungle gym and sits in one of the swings and sings the song at night as projections go in the background – she came to me [with that].”

In addition to the Grease tribute, Miley also wanted to pay tribute to her parents’ courting days. He explained: “Interesting enough, Miley’s parents Tish and Billy Ray, when they were first dating they went to a drive-in in Kentucky, I think, called the Corral Drive-In – so we named the drive-in after that as an homage to them. In addition, Miley’s mom Tish used to drive ’79 black Pontiac Trans Am, Smokey and the Bandit style, and obviously that’s the car that Miley arrives in.”

Miley Cyrus began to disassociate herself from the song a few years after recording it. “That’s not where I want to sing, that’s not what I want to sing, and that’s not what I want my voice to sound like,” she told V magazine. I’m not sure, but did any of her other songs do as well as Party in the USA? I don’t know, but why distance yourself from it? To each his own, I suppose.

Party in the USA

That wraps up the 2000’s. As I said earlier, if there are enough songs from the 2010’s worth featuring, the feature will return next week.

Thank you for listening and for reading. I really hope you enjoyed this trek through the decades.

The Music of My Life – Decade Extra – The 2000’s

This is sort of a continuation of the Music of My Life feature. It focused on music from 1970-2025. It featured tunes that have special meaning to me, brought back a certain memory or a tune that I just really like. I found that with the first three decades, there were songs that I didn’t feature. So I sat down with my original lists and selected some songs that “bubbled under,” so to speak.

I figured a good way to present them was to focus on a decade. 10 years = 1 song per year = 10 songs. Two weeks ago we finished looking at the 90’s. This we we’ll move to the 2000’s. So, let’s check out a few “Decade Extras.”

2000

I’m not sure why, but the more I listened to Barenaked Ladies The more I liked their stuff. It always seemed like they were having a good time and always like to have some tongue in cheek kind of lyrics.  Pinch Me is no exception.

According to Songfacts, this song is one of the many that the band often change the lyrics to during live performances for comedic effect. Lyrics that are often changed include “And run through with my gym short on” replaced with “no clothing on,” “And change in to drier clothes” to “changing to my sister’s clothes.” When they were on tour with Alanis Morissette, the line was often changed to “change into Alanis’ clothes.”

In the third verse there is a classic schoolyard joke: “I could hide out under there – I just made you say underwear.” This caused a fan trend of throwing underwear on stage during live performances. When this happens, Robertson changes the line to “I just made you throw underwear.”

Bandmember Ed Robertson came up with the concept for the Philip Harder-directed music video, where he plays a fast food worker who daydreams an exciting life with restaurant patrons dancing all around him. One customer is played by Will & Grace actor Eric McCormack, a friend of the band who did the cameo free of charge. The story hit close to home for Robertson, who really did work at a Wendy’s back in the ’80s.

Pinch Me

2001

I suppose this is another one of those great Friday at 5 songs.  I don’t know that I ever used it as one on my radio show, but it certainly could work.  The song was previously recorded by The Ranch, a short-lived Country trio founded by Keith Urban.  It was the Dixie Chicks, however, who would have a hit with Some Days You Gotta Dance.

Urban played guitar on their rendition, but according to Songfacts he kept the female trio waiting. The Australian country star recalled to Rolling Stone: “I got on a bit of a three-day bender and couldn’t come to the session and had to call them and tell them I’m going to be a bit late. Then I would call them and say I’m going to be a bit later. And then I would call them and be a bit later. And I completely missed the session. I lived like a street away. It was ridiculous. I could have walked there with my guitar in hand and I couldn’t make it. I remember just feeling so ashamed and disgusted at myself. I finally [showed up] the next day.”

“I think they brought in another guitarist that ghosted my playing, so I think there are two players on there,” Urban added. “I’m not sure how much of mine actually ended up on there.”

What amazes me about this song is that it was the eighth and final single from their Fly album! That is truly unheard of. At most, usually there are only four singles released from an album. I don’t deny that the album itself was one of the best released that year, but eight singles?!

The song peaked at #7 on the Country chart and #55 on the Hot 100. Is hard not to want to dance to this one.

Some Days You Gotta Dance

2002

As a radio DJ, you get a lot of requests. A lot of times it’s because someone loves a song, sometimes they want to dedicate a song, and sometimes they want to play it in remembrance of someone. It’s hard to believe today, but at one time the DJ was a friend who made their listener feel good with the songs that they played.

That is kind of the sentiment of Van Morrison in a song that not many people know. ‘Hey, Mr. DJ” is a song written by Van Morrison and recorded on his 2002 album, Down The Road. In the song, he pleads with the DJ to play a song that will “Make everything all right.” It was released as a single in the United Kingdom and charted at number fifty-eight.

The Rolling Stone reviewer, David Fricke said, “‘Hey Mr. DJ’ is a requiem for the one-on-one electricity of pre-Clear Channel radio, swinging with sweet brass and the iconic echo of Sam Cooke’s ‘Havin’ A Party.’

The song was originally recorded in 2000 with Linda Gail Lewis, intended for an album entitled Choppin’ Wood. Before the release of the album, Lewis’ contributions to the song were removed and string and vocal overdubs were added.

Hey Mr. DJ

2003

I remember the first time I played Clocks by Coldplay on the adult contemporary station I worked at. I was really hooked from that opening piano and even long after my shift I can remember that piano playing in my head as sort of an earworm.

According to Songfacts, lead singer Chris Martin wrote the lyrics and the piano riff for “Clocks” in 15 minutes in a studio in Liverpool, shortly before Coldplay released the album. Since they didn’t have much time, they put it aside and planned to work on it for their next album. When the band’s manager, Phil Harvey, heard the demo, he convinced them to do whatever was necessary to record it for A Rush Of Blood To The Head, especially since the song deals with the importance of time. Consequently, Coldplay delayed the release of the album by two months to finish “Clocks.”

The song was a favorite of many other musicians. U2’s Bono included “Clocks” on his “60 Songs That Saved My Life” list, compiled to coincide with him turning 60. “I chose ‘Clocks’ because I can hold onto it tighter than time,” he wrote in a “fan letter” to Coldplay. “‘Clocks’ arrived in the nick of time with its Phillip Glass-type arpeggiation and ecstatic exhortation… I just punched the air in a manly, but not aggressive way. ‘They are not a rock band,’ I thought out loud to myself, ‘there is something much more interesting going on… they’re like The Isley Brothers or something.'”

“Clocks” won the Grammy for 2003 Record Of The Year.

Clocks

2004

One of the hardest things about scheduling music on a country station is creating a balance of up-tempo to mid-tempo songs in comparison with slow ballads. Country music certainly has a lot of ballads and a lot of times those ballads are hits at the same time which makes it very difficult to schedule the music so there’s not too many slow songs in a row. I remember that being the problem when Brad Paisley released Whiskey Lullaby.

The subject matter of the song itself is not very happy. As a matter of fact it is a very sad song about a man who gets his heart broken so bad, he drinks himself to death. His ex blames herself for his death and also starts drinking, eventually killing herself with the whiskey as well.

I still remember the line of the song that made me want to add it to our playlist. Songfacts even mentions it: The key line in the song is “He put that bottle to his head and pulled the trigger,” a striking metaphor for what happens when drinking away one’s sorrows will no longer work, and it becomes a method of suicide.

The song is a duet with Alison Krauss, who sings the second verse in the role of the woman and also plays viola on the track.

Despite earning the 2005 CMA for Song Of The Year and also taking Video Of The Year at both the CMAs and ACMs. It was not a #1 Country hit. The way that a song becomes number one is by the amount of plays it gets on the radio. Because of the songs sad and depressing nature, it just didn’t get played as much. What’s interesting is it was never expected to be a single.

The Dixie Chicks were the first act to put the song on hold, but they didn’t record it. Then Brad Paisley heard the tune and spotted its potential as a duet. Country legend Bill Anderson co-wrote the song and recalled:

“Brad called me one day on the phone, and said, ‘I’ve been listening to this ‘Whiskey Lullaby,’ what would you think if I brought a girl to sing on that second verse?’ And I said, ‘I’ve never thought of that. Who do you have in mind?’ And he said, ‘Well, I think there’s only two people who could do it, and I would like to have one of those: Alison Krauss or Dolly Parton.’ And I told him, ‘Well, you don’t have to ask my permission to do that, because I love them both!’ So next thing I knew, they worked out all the contract stuff with Alison and everything fell into place.”

The song is extremely sad, but hauntingly beautiful at the same time.

Whiskey Lullaby

2005

I suppose I don’t remember too much about this year’s particular season of American Idol. But I must have watched it on and off occasionally because I remember when Katherine McPhee sang it.  I was really impressed with not only her singing but I kind of like the song too.  I’m talking about KT Tunstall’s Black Horse and the Cherry Tree.

From Songfacts:

In The Guardian newspaper of February 24, 2006, Tunstall explained: “One summer, I was traveling in Greece on a little moped and this massive black horse had broken free in an olive grove and was going nuts. It looked apocalyptic: a seed was sown. I wrote the song years later in a tiny studio in Shepherd’s Bush. I was about to tour Scottish coffee shops and was worried about coming across like Phoebe from Friends. At the same time I saw a brilliant guy called Son of Dave who looked like a ginger nylon 1980s’ Elvis: really raw blues with just voice and effects. I got a pedal and one of my techie friends helped me put myself and my guitar through it. It’s probably the most scientific I’ve been, but the song was written in a 10-minute burst. The lyrics where my ‘Heart stops dead’ refer to a heart murmur I had as a baby. I got into this fantasy that my heart felt betrayed and had decided to stop working. The song is about having to dig incredibly deep to find out who you wanna be.”

KT Tunstall says in You magazine November 4, 2007 about granting Katharine McPhee permission to cover her song on American Idol:

“It was a bit of a quandary for me, because I don’t like reality pop shows at all. They’re great TV, but they’re not good for music. When Katharine chose ‘Black Horse,’ she demonstrated a bit of personality in what’s otherwise a puppet show, and that appearance did me a lot of favors.”

Black Horse and The Cherry Tree

2006

I do realize that this is the second song from Brad Paisley on this list. He impressed me from the first time I saw him playing a little local club at a show we hosted.

He is an absolutely amazing guitar player. I was really impressed with the fact that he played every guitar on this particular song. Brad is also one of those tongue-in-cheek kind of artists, and this song is a good example. The World.

It was released on March 13, 2006, as the third single from Paisley’s 2005 album Time Well Wasted. It reached the top of the Billboard Hot Country Singles chart and also peaked at number 45 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100.

The music video was directed by Scott Scovill. It features a little girl whose older sister finds one of her CDs in the former’s room and yells at her for it. The little girl then opens a little chest that reveals a Brad Paisley concert. She magically appears at the concert, and Brad Paisley gives her his hat. Then when the little girl is in her room again, her older sister comes in to apologize for being mean and permit her to listen to her CDs anytime. The little girl then shows her older sister what’s in the magic chest. The concert shows earth balls rolling around on top of the audience, which has been done at some of Brad Paisley’s concerts. The video peaked at #1 on CMT’s Top 20 Countdown in 2006.

The World

2007

Every once in a while, I will come across a song that I like, just because of the sound of it. That’s why James Blunt’s 1973 wasn’t on my original 2007 list, but is here.

I Like Music asked James Blunt what 1973 meant to him personally. He replied:

“Well I was born in 1978. So I wrote it about a girl called Simona in a song about a nostalgic moment – it’s a celebration of something we did last year in Ibiza. And Pacha originally opened in 1973, but 1973 was also a great year for music, so many fantastic albums came out at that time.”

According to Blunt, the girl “Simona” mentioned several times in the lyrics was based on a real woman whom he met at a club.

I’m not sure why, but I like the sound of this one.

1973

2008

The Fray always seemed to have a song that hit me with deep lyrics.  I felt that way with You Found Me.

The starting point for this song was back in 2006 when frontman Isaac Slade found himself pondering why bad things happen to good people after witnessing various crises among people close to the singer. The lyrics for this tune came from these deliberations. Slade said on The Fray’s website that this was a tough song for him to write. He explained:

“Its about the disappointment, the heart ache, the let down that comes with life. Sometimes you’re let down, sometimes you’re the one who lets someone else down. It gets hard to know who you can trust, who you can count on. This song came out of a tough time, and I’m still right in the thick of it. There’s some difficult circumstances my family and friends have been going through over the past year or so and can be overwhelming. It wears on me. It demands so much of my faith to keep believing, keep hoping in the unseen. Sometimes the tunnel has a light at the end, but usually they just look black as night. This song is about that feeling, and the hope that I still have, buried deep in my chest.”

This song was inspired by a dream. Isaac Slade told The Sun February 6, 2009:

“I dreamt I ran into God on a street corner. He looked like Bruce Springsteen and he was smoking a cigarette. I had it out with him and asked ‘Where were you when all this bad stuff was happening to these very undeserving, good people?'” Slade, whose Christian faith is important to him added: “There were tough times. I was questioning my faith, angry at things that had happened in my life and the lives of my friends. A friend had suffered a miscarriage, I had lost my grandfather. I was angry and the song felt angry and hopeless too. I imagined what I’d say to God, in the face of all the crap my friends have gone through in the last couple of years.”

His description reminds me of the country song A Few Questions by Clay Walker. In that song, he questions God about a lot going on the in the world.

You Found Me

2009

I have said in the past that when Lady Antebellum (now Lady A) first came by the studio, I knew they would be a success. They have proved that in many ways. It took them three songs to get their first chart topper and it took them quite a while to get there.

I Run To You was the first #1 on the Hot Country Songs Chart for the group. The track took 26 weeks to climb to the top.

Co-Producer Paul Worley said on the album’s liner notes: “The song is an expression against hate, prejudice, negativity, running the rat race, but ultimately the redemption of love! And it has an irresistible melody and a head-bobbing groove. What could be better?”

While the trio had had two previous hits they really connected with their audience with this song. “Our fans grasped who we were with ‘I Run to You,’ “Hillary Scott told Billboard magazine. “The message and that song is so much about what we’re about. It was like two puzzle pieces fitting together. Now you know us and we know you.”

This won the 2009 CMA Single of the Year Award. Lady Antebellum also snagged the Vocal Group of the Year award at the same ceremony, ending a six-year run by Rascal Flatts in that race.

I Run To You

That wraps up this week. We’ll go one more week in the early 2000’s before moving to the 2010’s and then putting a bow on this feature for good. I hope you enjoyed it.

Thanks for reading and thanks for listening – see you next week.

The Music of My Life – Decade Extras – The 1990’s Part 2

This is sort of a continuation of the Music of My Life feature. It focused on music from 1970-2025. It featured tunes that have special meaning to me, brought back a certain memory or a tune that I just really like. I found that with the first three decades, there were songs that I didn’t feature. So I sat down with my original lists and selected some songs that “bubbled under,” so to speak.

I figured a good way to present them was to focus on a decade. 10 years = 1 song per year = 10 songs. Last week we looked at the 90’s. This week I have 10 more from the 90’s. Next week we’ll move to the 2000’s. So, let’s check out a few “Decade Extras.”

1990

To kick off the decade, I chose a song that is still played today and remains one of the most requested songs at parties and weddings. When Vanilla Ice hit the scene, many people mocked him, but all these years later, his song Ice Ice Baby remains a favorite.

In a 2016 interview, he explained that the song was based on a real life scenario. “The song tells you the story. It’s me, with my top down, in my 5.0 Mustang, cruising down A1A Beachfront Avenue. It’s a weekend experience that turned into an amazing song. It’s timeless. I still love singing it, and it never gets old.”

The song samples “Under Pressure” from Queen and David Bowie. Songfacts.com says: Vanilla Ice never got permission to use it. No lawsuit was filed, but it is likely that Vanilla Ice agreed to pay Queen and Bowie a settlement. According to industry insider Hans Ebert, Brian May of Queen first heard this song in a disco in Germany. He asked the DJ what it was, and learned that it was #1 in the US.

Ice Ice Baby

1991

In 1991, I was working at my first country station. I was familiar with many of the legends that were mixed into the playlist like Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings and Johnny Cash. My dad listened to many of them, so I heard them, too.

The song Get Rhythm was a Johnny Cash song from 1956 as the B-side to I Walk The Line. Johnny’s music has influenced many an up and coming country singer. In 1991, Martin Delray decided to cover the song for his debut album. It had to be a thrill for Delray to have Johnny sing with him on the track AND appear in the music video.

I’ve always loved this song.

Get Rhythm

1992

Annie Lennox is best known for being in the 1980’s group the Eurythmics. It was her extremely successful and inventive duo with Dave Stewart. In early 1990, the group split and Lennox took time off to work on charitable endeavors and focus on her home life. In 1992 she released her first solo album, Diva.

The third single from the album was Walking on Broken Glass. Pop Matters Magazine described the song as a “gloriously weird pop song with one of the oddest intros: prancing strings, strutting keyboards, and the enigmatic line”. It went on to claim that “all of that make the track sound like nothing else on pop radio in 1992.” Honestly, I think that is why I like the song – it stood out.

The video was based on the 1988 movie Dangerous Liaisons, with elaborate costumes inspired by film, which was set in France during the 1700s. Annie Lennox recalled the song’s video in a blog promoting her 2009 greatest hits album:

“This was a wonderful video to create. There were some wonderful people involved – John Malkovich and Hugh Laurie (before he had an American accent)! That was tremendous fun. The idea of it being a period piece, like Les Liaisons Dangereux. The alternative title for ‘Broken Glass’ could easily have been ‘Hell hath no more fury than a woman scorned.’ The video is very wry and tongue-in-cheek. People can take me a little seriously sometimes, but I do actually have a rather radical sense of humor.”

Walking on Broken Glass

1993

Karaoke introduced me to the Gin Blossoms. I was going out the the bars a lot around this time and every once in a while someone would sing one of their songs. When I started driving for EDS and listening to the radio, I heard them much more.

Found Out About You was written by Doug Hopkins for the group’s first album, 1989’s Dusted. The album, however, was on a small label and really didn’t get noticed. When the band signed to A&M, they rerecorded the song for their New Miserable Experience album and it was released as the fourth single.

Singer Robin Wilson says, “The first time we ever demo’d “Found Out About You” we knew it was a hit song. I remember that being a significant event in my mind, when we were in the studio doing that song. I was sitting out on my car and what I imagined to be a hit song was a bunch of kids dancing to it at the Devil House. We were listening to it and Bill [Leen, the bassist] looked over at me and said, “Hey, wow, this song is going to get you a lot of women, isn’t it?” I was just like “Yeah, whatever.”

I was hooked from the opening guitar…

Found Out About You

1994

I heard Round Here by Counting Crows long after it had been released. This was one of the albums that my ex loved to listen to, so I hear it on long drives a lot.

Adam Duritz wrote the song and says it is sort of autobiographical. He wrote the song when he was in college and part of a band called the Himalayans. Members of that group helped with some lyrics and the music. When he formed Counting Crows, he brought the song with him and they reworked it a bit. Wanting to give everyone their due, Adam made sure to credit everyone in both bands with writing the song, so “Round Here” has eight different writers listed on the composer credits.

Songfacts.com says, The theme of childhood promises not panning out is one that shows up a lot in Duritz’ lyrics. In the chorus of this song, he lists some sayings that our parents often say: “Around here we always stand up straight,” “Around here we’re carving out our names.”

Adam says, “You’re told as a kid that if you do these things, it will add up to something: you’ll have a job, you life. And for me, and for the character in the song, they don’t add up to anything, it’s all a bunch of crap. Your life comes to you or doesn’t come to you, but those things didn’t really mean anything. By the end of the song, he’s so dismayed that he’s screaming out that he gets to stay up as late as he wants and nobody makes him wait; the things that are important to a kid – you don’t have to go to bed, you don’t have to do anything. But they’re the sort of things that don’t make any difference at all when you’re an adult. They’re nothing.”

Round Here

1995

When You Say Nothing At All was originally a hit for country singer Keith Whitley in 1988. It was co-written by Paul Overstreet. I had played it when I was at that first country station. I thought it was a great song lyrically, but wasn’t a fan of his voice. He died in 1989 of alcohol poisoning.

When some of Whitley’s friends decided to put together a tribute album to Whitley, they had other singers recording his songs. It was Alison Krauss who chose to cover “When You Say Nothing At All.

When I heard her version of the song, it stopped me in my tracks. Her voice is so beautiful and perfectly fit the song. Her voice took the song to an entirely different level. She knocked it out of the park!

When asked by Songfacts what he thought of the Krauss version, Overstreet said when he first heard it, “All the hair stood up all over my body. I was like, ‘Are you kidding me!?’ She sang it great.”  It still gives me goosebumps!

When You Say Nothing At All

1996

I think whenever guys have a “guy’s night” or gals have a “gal’s night” they begin to talk and tell stories. “My wife/girlfriend does that, too!” or “Why is it that all men keep shirts or socks with holes in them?” You know, that kind of thing.

I have been guilty of asking male friends, “How come they can do that and we can’t?” It all falls into that “Battle of the Sexes” thing. Music has focused on those male/female differences for years, but I hadn’t heard it put the way Mindy McCready did in 1996.

It was at my second country station that I heard “Guys Do It All The Time.” It is the ultimate switcheroo song from the woman’s point of view. The song itself does a great job in conveying this, but the video only enhances it with gal’s doing guy things.

I saw Mindy in passing at a Radio Seminar, and she was even more beautiful in person. It was sad to see her life spiral out of control before her passing.

Guys Do It All The Time

1997

Picture it – you are getting ready to go on a trip or maybe you are being shipped off for the military. This is the last night you will be with your special someone for a while. You’d want it to last forever and make it special right? That’s the premise of Save Tonight by Eagle Eye Cherry. He wants to cherish this one last night spent with his love. He explains that you can’t fight changes, all you can do is accept them.

This was the last song Cherry wrote for his debut album and he wanted it to be special, “something that would stand the test of time.” He achieved his goal – two decades later, the song is still in rotation on throwback radio stations and is a fixture on the setlists of countless cover bands.

Songfacts says that the black-and-white music video was filmed in Sweden and follows Cherry in the roles of several different characters whose lives intersect, including an amiable young man, a bespectacled butcher, a robber, a truck driver, a busker, and a homeless man.

Cherry is actually a trained actor, having attended New York City’s School of Performing Arts, with credits that include a bit part on The Cosby Show and a stint as an ex-con on the short-lived TV drama South Beach.

Save Tonight

1998

Another song that really stood out to me on the radio was Iris by the Goo Goo Dolls. That opening guitar always seemed to cut through whatever was going on. It was almost hypnotic.

Songfacts says that lead Goo Johnny Rzeznik wrote this song for the movie City Of Angels, where it is sung from the perspective of Nicolas Cage’s character. In the film, Cage plays an angel sent to help humans make their transition to the afterlife. When he falls in love with a human (played by Meg Ryan), he must choose between love and eternal life.

Johnny explained how the film influenced the song: “I was thinking about the situation of the Nicolas Cage character in the movie,” he said. “This guy is completely willing to give up his own immortality, just to be able to feel something very human. And I think, ‘Wow! What an amazing thing it must be like to love someone so much that you give up everything to be with them.’ That’s a pretty heavy thought.”

Iris was nominated for Grammys in the categories Song of the Year, Record of the Year, and Best Pop Performance By Duo Or Group. It didn’t win any of them.

Iris

1999

It was around 1998-1999 that I took a leap of faith after deciding to give up on radio. I had received a call from a station in the Flint area. They had called the Detroit country station that I had just resigned from asking if they knew anyone who wanted full time work. The boss talked me up and gave them my number. It was from there that I would spend the next 10-12 years working full time in Country radio.

LeAnn Rimes was making quite a name for herself around this time. She had burst on the scene in 1996 with her debut single “Blue.” She was only 13 years old at the time!

In 1999, she recorded an album of country cover songs. It included Patsy Cline’s Crazy and She’s Got You, Hank Williams Your Cheating Heart and Lovesick Blues, and other classics. The album was entitled “LeAnn Rimes” and was her fourth studio album.

If you have ever been in a situation where your lover broke up with you, only to begin dating one of your closest friends, you know how much that hurts. How do you handle that situation? In country radio, you write a hit song about it. That song was only original song on the album – Big Deal.

What I loved about the song is the slow and deliberate opening verse. It almost has a gospel song feel to it. She is lamenting about letting her man get away and eventually winding up with her friend. Then the tempo kicks in and she let’s her rival have it. She’s tired of her bragging …

Big Deal

And that is a wrap on the 1990’s. You may remember that the further along I got in the original series the less songs I was able to come up with. I think I have enough to look at the early 2000’s and officially put this feature to bed. Next week we’ll glace at 2000-2009. I hope you’ll come back then.

Thanks for reading and listening!

The Music of My Life – Decade Extras – The 1990’s

I noticed that I accidentally scheduled this to post at 8pm instead of 8am. Sorry I am late.

This is sort of a continuation of the Music of My Life feature. It focused on music from 1970-2025. It featured tunes that have special meaning to me, brought back a certain memory or a tune that I just really like. I found that with the first three decades, there were songs that I didn’t feature. So I sat down with my original lists and selected some songs that “bubbled under,” so to speak.

I figured a good way to present them was to focus on a decade. 10 years = 1 song per year = 10 songs. Last week I wrapped up the 80’s. This week we move on to the 90’s. So, let’s check out a few “Decade Extras.”

1990

My first song this week is one from a group that has music in their bloodline – Wilson Phillips. Chynna Phillips is the daughter of John Phillips and Michelle Phillips of The Mamas & The Papas, while Carnie Wilson and Wendy Wilson are the daughters of Brian Wilson of The Beach Boys and Marilyn Rovell of The Honeys.

Around this time I was really going through some depression. There were so many things coming at me at home, at work, and life in general. Hold On, cheesy as this may sound, really helped me get through some of those times. The song was the breakout hit for the group, and it was a huge one, peaking at #1 on June 9, 1990.

According to Songfacts.com, Chynna Phillips wrote the lyrics about her drug and alcohol addiction.

Producer Glen Ballard had been working with Wilson Phillips when he handed Chynna a cassette tape with some music that needed words. Phillips took it home to work on the lyrics, but inspiration struck before she even got to the front door.

She wrote about the pain of a lost love and the substance that surrounded it while sitting in her driveway. “I thought to myself, ‘Well, AA tells me, just hold on, just one day at a time. I thought, ‘OK, if I can just hold on for one more day, then I can do this.'”

Hold On

1991

The plea for racial tolerance had been going on long before 1991 (and remains to this day). Michael Jackson offered up his plea in the song Black or White. The song was the fastest-rising single in 22 years (since The Beatles’ “Get Back”), jumping from #35 to #3 in its second week, and landing at #1 in its third week.

The video was originally 11 minutes long, but eventually edited down for airplay on channels like MTV. It featured a morphing technique that was very innovative at the time. We see this kind of thing all the time today, but in 1991, it was one of the coolest things I had ever seen.

The video features Macaulay Culkin and George Wendt (Norm from the sitcom Cheers, who passed away yesterday) appeared in it, as well as Tyra Banks before she gained supermodel status.

Black or White

1992

Tears in Heaven by Eric Clapton is just a beautiful (albeit sad) song. Clapton wrote this about his four-year-old son Conor, who died on March 20, 1991 when he fell out of a 53rd floor window in the apartment where his mother was staying in New York City. He wrote it with Will Jennings. Jennings told Songfacts:

“Eric and I were engaged to write a song for a movie called Rush. We wrote a song called ‘Help Me Up’ for the end of the movie… then Eric saw another place in the movie for a song and he said to me, ‘I want to write a song about my boy.’ Eric had the first verse of the song written, which, to me, is all the song, but he wanted me to write the rest of the verse lines and the release (‘Time can bring you down, time can bend your knees…’), even though I told him that it was so personal he should write everything himself. He told me that he had admired the work I did with Steve Winwood and finally there was nothing else but do to as he requested, despite the sensitivity of the subject. This is a song so personal and so sad that it is unique in my experience of writing songs.”

Clapton wasn’t sure he wanted this song to be released at all, but the director of Rush, Lili Zanuck, convinced him to use it in the film. “Her argument was that it might in some way help somebody, and that got my vote,” Clapton said.

The song was a huge hit. It won Grammys in 1993 for Record of the Year, Song of the Year, and Best Male Pop Vocal. Clapton was nominated for nine Grammys that year and won six.

Tears in Heaven

Clapton played an acoustic version on his 1992 MTV Unplugged special. Personally, I love this version best.

1993

There are some songs that will be forever associated with television or movies. The next song is one of those. If I say “What is Love” by Haddaway, you know what you think of …. SNL.

According to Songfacts, this song gained popularity when it was used in a recurring Saturday Night Live sketch about three guys who go clubbing. They dress alike – in outdated fashion – and torment women at the clubs by forcing their dancing upon them. There is very little dialogue in the sketches, and this song plays throughout, with the three men bobbing their heads in unison. In 1998, the skit was extended to a full-length movie called A Night At The Roxbury.

The two regular performers in the skit (and movie) were SNL cast members Will Ferrell and Chris Kattan. The host of the show would often be their third man in the bits – Jim Carrey and Sylvester Stallone each did a turn as the head-bobbing swingers.

Although the song is an upbeat dance track, the lyrics are rather gut-wrenching, as Haddaway sings about trying to love a girl who won’t love him back.

What is Love

1994

1994 features a cover song. The original was done by Vicki Sue Robinson in 1976, and it was her only hit. That song was Turn the Beat Around.

Gloria Estefan’s nearly identical cover version in 1994 was used in the Sharon Stone movie The Specialist. Her version was a #1 Dance hit and went to #13 on the Hot 100. The song reminds me of many of the dances that I DJ’d over the years where it was a big dance tune.

Turn the Beat Around

1995

The next song was meant to be a tribute to Bob Dylan. Apparently, Dylan felt the “tribute” infringed too closely on original work, and he sued the group who recorded it for unauthorized use of his lyrics. Bob wound up receiving a large, out-of-court settlement in 1995. The song? Only Wanna Be With You. The group? Hootie and the Blowfish.

When singer Darius Rucker recorded a country album, he stopped by our station. It was in the late afternoon and I was the morning guy. I honestly didn’t think his country stuff would go anywhere, so I skipped the visit. For what it is worth, that first country album had some great tunes on it and I regret not stopping in.

I Only Wanna Be With You

1996

One of the biggest slow dance songs of 1996 came from a movie that featured – Cartoon characters! R. Kelly wrote I Believe I Can Fly for Space Jam, a movie starring Michael Jordan and other NBA stars in a world of cartoons (including Bugs Bunny). The song plays in the opening scene where a young Jordan is practicing late at night. When his father comes to bring him inside, they talk about Michael’s aspirations: to play at North Carolina; to play in the NBA; to fly.

The movie was big at the box office, but this song was even bigger, becoming an inspirational anthem often played at weddings and used in video tributes. Kelly got an early copy of the movie to view for inspiration. According to Rolling Stone magazine, Kelly said, “I studied it and I prayed over it because I wanted the best thing to come out of it.”

Fun Fact: Kelly may claim that he believes he can fly in this song, but in reality the R&B superstar has a chronic fear of air travel. Kelly is so scared of planes that he even takes boats when he tours Europe.

I Believe I Can Fly

1997

I was still working at the mailroom at EDS when Tonic released If You Could Only See. It played a lot on Planet 96.3 in Detroit when I was doing deliveries. I had no idea how the song came about, but it is a neat story.

Songfacts says, Tonic frontman Emerson Hart wrote this song after a tense phone call with his mother. Hart was 21 years old and planning to get married – not what his mother had in mind. She tried to talk him out of it, but you can’t argue with love. Emerson told her: “If you could only see the way she loves me, then maybe you would understand,” and then he hung up.

With his fire sparked, Hart started writing the song, and it came very quickly, with him taking aim at his mother’s “manipulations” and “lies” during the strident verses, then slowing it down to present his side of the story in the chorus. The song was very cathartic and helped him work out his feelings, but in the end his mother was right: it didn’t work out with the girl and they never got married.

This was Tonic’s first single, but it almost didn’t make the album. The band got a deal with Polydor Records after playing clubs for a few years in the Los Angeles area. When it came time to record their debut album, Emerson Hart wasn’t sure if they should use “If You Could Only See,” since it was a very vulnerable song and he wasn’t sure how it would be received. Polydor, however, loved it and made sure it was the debut single.

If You Could Only See

1998

I’ve said before, Jewel was one of the greatest interviews I ever did. She was such a wonderful and delightful person. The story that proceeds her success is inspiring.

At a February 2008 concert in Las Vegas, Jewel explained that when she was 18, she was living in a van and did some shoplifting. She was going to take a dress when she looked at her hands and realized that she controlled them. Said Jewel, “I realized I was cheating myself. No matter how you work with your hands your own dignity is up to you.”

She played mostly new tracks from her country album when she was with us. I did get her to play Hands for us while we not on the air. She also did a Christmas version on her Christmas album.

Jewel performed this on Late Night with David Letterman a week after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The song was a popular choice on the radio when a DJ remixed the track after the tragedy.

Hands

1999

American Woman by the Guess Who was the song that was number one on the day I was born. It was featured in the first installment of this feature. It’s interesting that it shows up again in 1999, but this time by Lenny Kravitz.

This was used in the movie Austin Powers 2, The Spy Who Shagged Me. The video featured Heather Graham, who was in the movie, as the American Woman. Kravitz told how he came to record the song in an interview:

“I was called by the people making Austin Powers and they simple asked me to cover ‘American Woman,’ which I thought was odd but I accepted thinking it was an interesting challenge and did my best to change it as much as possible while still respecting the original. I was pleased when Burton Cummings called me to tell me how much he loved it.”

Lenny’s version is actually pretty good. I think he did a great job making it his own. People liked it, too, as it won a Grammy in 1999 for Best Male Rock Vocal Performance.

American Woman

There’s Round 1 of the 90’s. We’ll revisit the decade again next week before moving on into the 2000’s and wrapping up the feature.

Thanks for listening and for reading.

The Music of My Life – Decade Extras – The 1980’s Part 2

This is sort of a continuation of the Music of My Life feature. It focused on music from 1970-2025. It featured tunes that have special meaning to me, brought back a certain memory or a tune that I just really like. I found that with the first three decades, there were songs that I didn’t feature. So I sat down with my original lists and selected some songs that “bubbled under,” so to speak.

I figured a good way to present them was to focus on a decade. 10 years = 1 song per year = 10 songs. Last week I featured the 80’s. This week 10 more 80’s tunes before we move on to the 90’s. So, let’s check out a few “Decade Extras.”

1980

While I was never a truck driver, we certainly listened to Eddie Rabbitt’s Drivin’ My Life Away a lot while driving my my folks. I’m sure it was one of the songs my dad had recorded on 8-track to listen to on our drives up north.

This song was the first song that really made Eddie a crossover artist. The song went to number 5 on the Billboard Hot 100 charts. I Love A Rainy Night followed and hit #1 on the Hot 100, Country and Adult Contemporary Charts. Step By Step and You and I followed in 1981 and 1982 as crossover hits.

It is one of many Eddie Rabbitt songs I love.

Driving My Life Away

1981

Originally done by Tommy James and the Shondells, Mony Mony was covered by Billy Idol. Billy first released his version as a single in 1981, his first as a solo artist after leaving the band Generation X. His live version of the song went to #1 in 1987.

It was a big song at weddings and schools dances. However, it quickly made many school’s “Do Not Play” list. Why? It became popular for kids to shout “hey, hey, what, get laid, get f–ked” during the instrumental break in the chorus. I found this out the hard way at a school prom. I had a lot of requests for the song and when I played it the kids went crazy. When they shouted out the vulgar chant, it only took seconds for a teacher to come up and tell me to turn it off. Apparently, the chant is still shouted at Billy’s concerts.

Weird Al Yankovic did a parody of Billy’s version called “Alimony” on his Even Worse album in 1988.

Mony Mony

1982

It took two releases for the next song to get noticed. I can still remember going to the record store and buying Built For Speed by the Stray Cats. Rock This Town was such a cool thing to hear on the radio for me. My dad played a lot of Rockabilly stuff for me growing up, so I had to go get this album.

When Stray Cat Strut was first released in August of 1982, it didn’t even crack the Hot 100. I think it stopped at #109. Then Rock This Town was released and the band got noticed. The record company decided to re-release Stray Cat Strut and this time it debuted at #43 and went all the way to #3.

Michigan Trivia: Detroiters may remember that WRIF’s (101 FM) JJ and the Morning Crew a parody of this called “Fat Cat Strut.”

Stray Cat Strut

1983

The Eurythmics are Annie Lennox and Dave Stewart who actually dated for a while. Lennox said in an interview that they wrote this song after the two had a huge fight. Dave came up with a beat, Annie improvised the synthesizer riff, and suddenly they realized they had a potential hit.

In an interview with songfacts.com, Stewart said “We thought we’d made something really special but we had no idea, really, the impact it would have. Neither did the record label, which didn’t even think it was a single.”

Three other songs from the album were released as singles in the UK before their label, RCA, finally issued “Sweet Dreams.” When they did, it took off, climbing to #2.

 Songfacts says about the video:

The video presented Lennox with close-cropped orange hair and a tailored black suit, making it the first popular video presenting an androgynous female. The cow in the video was Dave Stewart’s idea – he was a big fan of surreal artists Salvador Dali and Luis Bunuel. Said Stewart: “A few people were saying, ‘Dave, why the cow? Annie is so good looking.’ Those people should go buy a copy of Purple Cow by Seth Dogin, about how to make your business remarkable. It was written 20 years after I had the purple cow in our video – which certainly did the trick and made my whole life remarkable.”

The cow, while very eye-catching, posed a logistical problem because most studios can’t accommodate them. Eurythmics found a basement studio in London with an elevator big enough to transport the animal. Lennox recalls the shoot with the bovine walking around as being one of the more surreal experiences of her life.

This song used to drive my former sister-in-law crazy. I’m not sure why, but whenever I DJ’s a family party or an event that she was at, I always played this song.

Sweet Dreams Are Made of This

1984

The next song got it’s title from a 1979 movie. Time After Time is the name of a 1979 science fiction movie starring Malcolm McDowell as H.G. Wells, whose time machine is stolen by Jack The Ripper, who uses it to travel from 1893 to 1979. Wells follows him into the future and goes on a quest to stop him from killing.

Cyndi Lauper wrote the song with Rob Hyman of The Hooters. Hyman told Songfacts: “When she saw Time After Time, something clicked. She said, ‘I think I have a title.'”

Once the title was in place, they set about writing the song. Hyman explained: “I was sitting at the piano and just started banging out what would eventually be the chorus, hook, and the way we sing it. It almost had like a reggae feel, it was a little bouncier and a little more upbeat. We started getting off on that chorus, then the verse melodies started to appear.

It’s a deceptively simple song. The verses are just a little repeating three-note motif – almost like a nursery rhyme, a very simple song. Then we started to realize we were on to something. The mood of the lyrics came from both of us. I think Cyndi came in and really started the lyric flow, then all of the sudden we realized it wasn’t such a bouncy song, but it was a little more bittersweet and a little deeper in its feeling and a little more poignant, so the music started to change. We wrote a little bridge section and I think the last thing we really wrote was the chorus. We had ‘Time After Time,’ we just had to get the words that would surround it.”

This song surprised me. Compared to Girls Just Wanna Have Fun and She Bop, this song was kind of deep. This one and True Colors really made me appreciate her talent.

Time After Time

1985

My Detroit Tigers are doing very well so far this season. I hope they keep it up! From 1985, here is a song that I have written about in the past Centerfield.

Centerfield

1986

My dad always played me classics from Elvis, Roy Orbison, Buddy Holly and Little Richard. I remember my dad coming home and saying, “Keith, you gotta hear this Little Richard song.” It was a song that was featured in the movie Down and Out in Beverly Hills with Richard Dreyfus.

Honestly, it sounded like something he could have done in the 50’s. Great Gosh A’Mighty must have been the cleaned up version for the film, because Little Richard also recorded a Great God Almighty version, too.

The song is always one I play on repeat on the iPod.

Great Gosh A’Mighty

1987

Randy Travis was one of the coolest country stars I’ve had the chance to meet. He was so down to earth and friendly. We talked about music, family and faith. It was like talking to an old friend.

I feel Forever and Ever, Amen is right up in the Top 10 best country songs of all time. It was written by two of the best songwriters in Nashville – Paul Overstreet and Don Schlitz. The two had already wrote Randy’s hit “On the Other Hand,” and I love the story of how this one came to be.

Overstreet told Songfacts:

“I had played about 36 holes of golf that day, and Don says, ‘I’ve got this idea we have to write.’ His new fiancée’s little boy was learning the Lord’s Prayer, and he was going around saying ‘forever and ever amen’ after everything. He would say, ‘Mommy, I love you. Forever and ever, amen.’ So Don said, ‘We’ve got to write this.’ I said, ‘How about tomorrow?’ He says, ‘No, now.'”

They got together on Overstreet’s front porch that night and composed the song by candlelight. Confident it was a hit, they recorded a demo the next day and sent it to Travis, who made it the lead single to his second album, Always & Forever. It was indeed a hit, spending three weeks at the top of the Country chart, longer than any other song in 1987.

Forever and Ever, Amen

1988

Another cover song on the list – this time, a cover of Elvis Presley. I remember hearing Cheap Trick’s version of Don’t Be Cruel and loving it! I remember really digging the spots in the song where that running bass line can be heard. The key change was something that stood out for me.

I hate to diss on the King, but I almost love the Cheap Trick version a bit more. There is so much going on that really takes the song to another level – that drum beat, the fake cold ending, the guitar solo and so much more. I played the heck out of this 45

Don’t Be Cruel

1989

The final pick comes from the movie UHF from Weird Al Yankovic. In a recent Turntable Talk feature, I talked about the David Lee Roth video for Just a Gigolo. At the end of it, I wondered if Dave borrowed from the music video for UHF’s title song.

While the video for the song is hilarious and brilliant, the song itself is one of my favorites from Al. It is not a parody, rather an original. It is a song that sounds like something you would hear on the radio in ’89. It has an alternative rock feel to it.

It’s an underrated and often forgotten Al song

UHF

What a way to wrap up the 80’s! I hope you heard some tunes you liked, too. Next week we’ll move on to the 1990’s and see what songs bubbled under my original list. See you then!

Thanks for listening and for reading.

The Music of My Life – Decade Extras – The 1980’s

This is sort of a continuation of the Music of My Life feature. It focused on music from 1970-2025. It featured tunes that have special meaning to me, brought back a certain memory or a tune that I just really like. I found that with the first three decades, there were songs that I didn’t feature. So I sat down with my original lists and selected some songs that “bubbled under,” so to speak.

I figured a good way to present them was to focus on a decade. 10 years = 1 song per year = 10 songs. Last week finished up the 70’s, and this week we’ll move on to the 80’s. So, let’s check out a few “Decade Extras.”

1980

Let’s kick off the decade with a country/pop crossover. Back when we first got cable TV, the movie channels would run movies a lot. They would schedule it in the morning, afternoon, evening, and overnight kind of rotating them so people had options on what time worked best. I remember 9 to 5 being on all the time. My mom always seemed to be watching it if it was on. I’m pretty sure she had them theme song memorized.

Dolly Parton wrote (and sang) this for the 1980 film of the same name. The film, which was her acting debut, stars Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin, Parton, and Dabney Coleman. It dealt with life in an American office, where the workday was 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. She wrote the song while the movie was filming.

This song won the 1981 Grammys for Best Country Song and Best Country Vocal Performance, Female; it also received a Grammy nomination for Best Album Of Original Score Written For A Motion Picture Or Television Special and received Oscar and Golden Globe nominations. It also won the People’s Choice Award for Favorite Motion Picture Song.

Mojo magazine asked her what lyric she’s most proud of, Dolly Parton said: “One that I remember the very moment I wrote when I was working on ‘9 to 5,’ was ‘Pour myself a cup of ambition.’ I went, ‘Yeah that’s so good.’ That has really followed me oh through the years.”

She wrote the lyric in LA. “I would watch things going on, on the set,” she recalled to Mojo. “At night, I would go back to the hotel Bel-Air. I would get my guitar, and I would start putting pieces together. I would work on songs, clicking my nails on a typewriter.”

“I had just made myself some coffee, because I was going to spend two or three hours working on the song,” Parton continued. “I always drink coffee when I write. And I just remember saying, ‘Tumble out of bed, and stumble to the kitchen.’ What else you doing? I looked at my coffee cup and thought, ‘I pour myself a cup of ambition.'”

“Sometimes when those lines come, you just think, ‘Oh my goodness that is so good. I’m so proud of myself,” she concluded. “And then of course, many things spiritual based, I always look up and say, ‘Hey, thank you, Lord. I like that one.'”

As old as the song is, it still sounds good today.

9 to 5

1981

There are a handful of songs that “define” the 80’s for me. Your handful may or may not be different from mine. One of the greats that always seems to pop up on 80’s collections and as a “favorite” 80’s song was a phone number that everyone knows!

The opening guitar lick grabs your attention and that drum kick into the full band hooks you. This ode to a gal who doesn’t even know the singer soared up the charts to become a Top 5 single.

For years, Tommy Tutone (who isn’t the name of a person, just the name of the group) has used a story that there was a Jenny and she ran a recording studio. They have also said it was inspired by a real girl who band member Tommy Heath met in a nightclub and 867-5309 was the phone number of her parents. None of this is true, but it got them a lot more media attention, since it made a better story.

Alex Call, the songwriter, came up with it while sitting under a plum tree. He told Songfacts the story: “Despite all the mythology to the contrary, I actually just came up with the ‘Jenny,’ and the telephone number and the music and all that just sitting in my backyard. There was no Jenny. I don’t know where the number came from, I was just trying to write a 4-chord rock song and it just kind of came out.

This was back in 1981 when I wrote it, and I had at the time a little squirrel-powered 4-track in this industrial yard in California, and I went up there and made a tape of it. I had the guitar lick, I had the name and number, but I didn’t know what the song was about. This buddy of mine, Jim Keller, who’s the co-writer, was the lead guitar player in Tommy Tutone. He stopped by that afternoon and he said, ‘Al, it’s a girl’s number on a bathroom wall,’ and we had a good laugh. I said, ‘That’s exactly right, that’s exactly what it is.’

The rest is history.

867-5309

1982

I heard Foreigner for the first time while listening to Casey Kasem on American Top 40. I really liked their sound. Lou Gramm’s voice really stood out for me.

Juke Box Hero was a song that was in a good rotation when I was at the classic rock station. It has become a staple on classic rock playlists. The story behind the song is one that I love:

This song was written by Foreigner guitarist Mick Jones and lead singer Lou Gramm. In a Songfacts interview, Jones said: “That stemmed from an experience that we had, I think it was in Cincinnati. We’d gone to the arena for a sound check, and it was pouring down rain, and there were a bunch of fans waiting at the door when we went in. When we came back for the show later on, all that was left was one lonely fan, a young guy waiting out there in the rain, soaked to the skin. I thought, well, he’s waiting like five hours here, maybe we’ll take him in and give him a glimpse of what happens backstage at a show. And this kid was just mesmerized with everything. I saw this look in his eyes, and I thought, he’s seeing this for the first time, he’s having this experience. And I just imagined what was going through his mind. And I’d been toying with this title, ‘Juke Box Hero,’ I thought it was almost a satire on what we did and how it was perceived from an audience level, and public. That’s how it originated.”

How cool was that kid’s experience?! Kudos to the band for making this happen. As a bonus, they got a hit song out of it!

Jukebox Hero

1983

I was late to the Stevie Ray Vaughn party. Very late. I didn’t hear one of his songs until after his death. I had gotten together with a buddy I hadn’t seen in a while. He popped in a cassette of Stevie. I was blown away on so many levels. His voice, his playing … I’d never heard anything like it.

After a 1982 performance, Stevie and the Double Trouble band got the attention of Jackson Brown. He told the guys that they could use his personal studio to record a demo. They did just that over Thanksgiving weekend 1982. That demo was heard by a talent scout, who presented it to Epic Records, who signed Vaughn to a record deal. Epic remixed the demo, which would become his first album, Texas Flood.

While the song received heavy airplay, it didn’t get any love from the charts. The music video, the only one from this album, got heavy rotation on MTV in 1983. What he could have done if he was still around, one can only guess.

Love Struck Baby

1984

Marching band was one of my favorite things about high school. At football games and pep assemblies, we’d often play songs that were familiar to us. We Got The Beat was one they were still playing long after I graduated. Neutron Dance from the Pointer Sisters was one of those “pep songs.”

Allee Willis (who wrote Earth, Wind & Fire’s hits “September” and “Boogie Wonderland,” wrote the lyrics for this song. She sums up the song, saying: “That’s basically: if your life isn’t working, get up off your ass and change it. Because it’s really up to you.”

Fun Fact: This song was released at the high of the Cold War when there was a great deal of tension between the United States and Russia, as both had nuclear missiles aimed at each other. Willis Says: “The Russian government named me as one of the most dangerous people living in the United States, because they mis-translated it as ‘Neutron Bomb.’ The first verse they translated as ‘A powerful nuclear explosion is approaching, it will annihilate everyone; who cares if you have no car, no job, no money, just dance, dance, dance.’ And this was a huge article in Pravda, and I was supposed to be going to Russia with BMI, and I wasn’t let in the country. I mean, it was nuts.”

The song was featured in the film Beverly Hills Cop and the video includes scenes from the movie.

Neutron Dance

1985

Next is a song that I almost always played at weddings. If it wasn’t the bride and groom’s wedding song, it was one of the slow songs that packed the dance floor. The Search is Over by Survivor started as a title that was scribbled in Jim Peterik’s notebook.

He said, “It wasn’t about my life as much as a friend of mine who had a girlfriend – really a play pal throughout their growing up years – and never thought it could be anything more than that. It was looking him straight in the face that this was the girl of his destiny, and he looked everywhere to find that dream girl only to come back to the sandbox. This couple is still married and going strong. It became kind of an allegory to looking for what is obvious; having it in your hand and you being too close to even realize it.”

He told Songfacts, “Mechanically, the whole thing kind of started in my head driving down the street. I turned on my tape recorder and I sang the whole melody top to bottom into my tape recorder. The way it modulated into the chorus was very unique. When I got to the piano a few hours later, I had to find out where it was going and what it was. I brought it to rehearsal, showed it to the guys and worked with Frank (Sullivan) one on one on the song – he loved it. It was called The Search Is Over, but I still didn’t know exactly what the hook of the song was going to be. I thought of this couple, and when we came up with the line, ‘Then I touched your hand, I could hear you whisper, the search is over, love was right before my eyes,’ we looked at each other’s arms and we both had goose bumps. It was the magical turn of that phrase and realizing what this song was about. I think we discovered the song as we were writing it.”

It’s a beautiful song.

The Search Is Over

1986

I had heard Land of Confusion by Genesis on the radio long before I saw the video. It was odd to hear a “political” song from them. When I saw the video, I remember thinking that those puppets were a bit scary, not to mention ugly.

Songfacts says, “The very popular video was made using puppets created by Peter Fluck and Roger Law, who had a British TV series called The Spitting Image. The show would often make fun of Genesis, and by hiring their tormentors, the band proved that they could take a joke.

Genesis puppets had been used on the show before, but they made new ones for the video – not very flattering ones either. It was a way for the band to lighten their image from their days as earnest prog rockers. The video could go in the Cold War cultural time capsule: at the end, the Ronald Reagan puppet accidentally launches a nuclear missile.”

I guess the puppets didn’t freak everyone out, though. The video won the 1987 Grammy for Best Concept Music Video – it was the only Grammy Genesis ever won, and they weren’t even in the clip. At the MTV Video Music Awards, the video was nominated in six categories, but lost them all to Peter Gabriel’s “Sledgehammer.”

Land of Confusion

1987

The song Hot Hot Hot was first released by the group Arrow in 1982. Many cover songs followed, but the most recognizable was done by Buster Poindexter (aka David Johansen). It garnered extensive airplay through radio, MTV, and other television appearances.

For many years, people would request this at weddings and parties so they could do a conga line. It was a pretty popular tune . One venue would bring out their roast beef, which they would light on fire, and wanted us to play the song when they did it.

Over time, I was easily burned out on the song.

Hot Hot Hot

1988

I think every friend of mine had a copy of the Cocktail soundtrack in 1988. The Tom Cruise movie was what all the girls seemed to be talking about. I had been getting requests for Kokomo by the Beach Boys and it was the only place I could find it.

Mike Love of the Beach boys explained to Ssongfacts how it came together: “Terry (Melcher) was in the studio doing a track with a demo, because we were asked to do the song for the soundtrack of the movie Cocktail, featuring Tom Cruise. So we were asked by the director to come up with a song for this part of the movie where Tom Cruise goes from a bartender in New York to Jamaica. So that’s where I came up with the ‘Aruba, Jamaica’ idea, that part.

So Terry was in the studio doing the track and they didn’t have the chorus yet. They just had a certain amount of bars, but there was nothing going on there. I said, ‘Well, here’s what I want to do.’ And I remember I had told them about the part before. But he said, ‘Uh huh. How does it go again?’ So I literally, over the phone – he was in the studio and I was on the phone – sang [deadpan slow recitation]: ‘Aruba, Jamaica, ooo, I want to take you.’ So he’s writing that down, and I’m singing it in the scene, the notes, and the timing of it in tempo to the track.”

Regarding the composition of the song, Mike said: “The verses and the verse lyric was written by John Phillips of the Mamas and the Papas. He wrote ‘Off the Florida keys, there’s a place called Kokomo, that’s where we used to go to get away from it all.’ I said, ‘Hold on. We used to go sounds like an old guy lamenting his misspent youth.’ So I just changed the tense there. ‘That’s where you want to go to get away from it all.’ So that was the verse. And it was very lovely. But it didn’t have such a groove, I didn’t feel.

So I came up with the chorus part: ‘Aruba, Jamaica, ooo, I want to take you to Bermuda, Bahama, come on, pretty mama. Key Largo, Montego…’ That’s me, the chorus and the words to the chorus was Mike Love. The verse was John Phillips. The bridge, where it goes, ‘Ooo, I want to take you down to Kokomo, we’ll get there fast and we can take it slow. That’s where you want to go, down to Kokomo,’ that’s Terry Melcher. Terry Melcher produced the Byrds and Paul Revere & the Raiders, very successful producer. But he actually produced that song and he wrote that bridge part, which Carl Wilson sang beautifully. And I sang the rest of it. I sang the chorus and the verses on that particular song.

Before “Kokomo,” the last US #1 for The Beach Boys was “Good Vibrations in 1966. At 22 years, it was the longest any act had gone between US #1 hits until Cher topped the charts with “Believe” in 1999. Her previous #1 hit was “Dark Lady” in 1974, setting the new record at 25 years.

Kokomo

1989

When you think about “Super Groups,” a few come to mind: The Traveling Wilburys, Audioslave, Cream, Blind Faith, and Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young for example. In 1989, there was another super group who had a monster hit.

Songfacts explains: Bad English was a supergroup comprised of lead singer John Waite, keyboard player Jonathan Cain, bass player Ricky Phillips, guitarist Neal Schon and drummer Deen Castronovo. Waite, Cain and Phillips had been in a popular British band called the Babys, while Schon, Castronovo and Cain were in Journey (Cain was in both groups). It was quite an assemblage of musical talent, and between them they wrote 11 of the 13 songs on their self-titled debut album. “When I See You Smile” wasn’t one of them.

The song was written by Diane Warren, who had a knack for supplying popular rock musicians with pop hits: she wrote “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now” for Starship, “Who Will You Run To” for Heart, and “I Don’t Want To Miss a Thing” for Aerosmith. She had also written the song “Don’t Lose Any Sleep,” which appeared on Waite’s 1987 solo album Rover’s Return.

The band was signed to Epic Records, whose A&R man Don Grierson implored them to record a hit. They liked him, so when he suggested “When I See You Smile,” the band agreed to record it, since they knew it would supply Grierson with his hit.

This is by far the biggest hit for Bad English, but it’s not their only one. Their first single was “Forget Me Not,” which made #45 in the US. “When I See You Smile” was their next release, and “Price of Love” came next, charting at #5. They released one more album (Backlash, 1991) before terminating the project.

John Waite told Songfacts, “It was fun for a year. And then people reverted to type. I think the Journey guys wanted to be back in Journey and I wanted to be back solo. We had a very valiant attempt at making a (third) record, but we weren’t given enough time to write it. We tried, and we almost made it.”

It was (and still is) a great slow dance song!

When I See You Smile

So there you have it, a peak into some tunes that did not make my original list. If you’re an 80’s fan, we’ll visit the decade one more time next week before moving on to the 1990’s.

Thanks for listening and for reading!

The Music of My Life – Decade Extra – The 1970’s (Part 2)

This is sort of a continuation of the Music of My Life feature. It focused on music from 1970-2025. It featured tunes that have special meaning to me, brought back a certain memory or a tune that I just really like. I found that with the first three decades, there were songs that I didn’t feature. So I sat down with my original lists and selected some songs that “bubbled under,” so to speak.

I figured a good way to present them was to focus on a decade. 10 years = 1 song per year = 10 songs. Last week we looked at the 70’s, and I thought we’d stay there one more week before moving on to the 80’s. So, let’s check out a few “Decade Extras.”

A hat tip to songfacts.com for much of the information.

1970

I suppose it wouldn’t be right to leave out the number one song for the entire year I was born, so we start off with Simon and Garfunkel’s Bridge Over Troubled Water. Paul Simon wrote this about providing comfort to a person in need. It started as a modest gospel hymn but became more dramatic as he put it together.

He wrote the song with just two verses, considering the song “a little hymn.” Art Garfunkel and producer Roy Halee heard it as more epic, and convinced him to write an extra section, which Paul did in the studio (the “Sail on, Silvergirl part”). This was very unusual for Simon, as he usually took a long time writing his lyrics. The song got a grand production, and after hearing it, Paul thought it was too long, too slow and too orchestral to be a hit. It was Clive Davis at Columbia Records who heard the commercial appeal of the song, and insisted they market it like crazy and use it as the album title.

In 1971, this won five Grammy Awards: Song of the Year, Record of the Year, Best Contemporary Song, Best Engineered Record, and Best Arrangement Accompanying Vocalists. The album also won Album of the Year.

My mom loved this song and I remember her singing along with it on car trips.

Bridge Over Troubled Water

1971

Many folks poked fun at Ringo Starr when he began a solo career. Of the four, people thought he was the least likely to have success as a solo artist. He proved them wrong and he still tours to this day. One of the songs that did well for him was It Don’t Come Easy.

Ringo is the only songwriter credited on this one, but he had a lot of help from George Harrison. George was very generous in giving his former band mate full writing credit. The track (less Ringo’s vocal and horn parts) was already completed when Harrison gave it to him, and it included a scratch vocal by George.

Fun Fact: Peter Ham and Tom Evans of Badfinger sang on the intro to this song (“It don’t come easy, ya know it don’t come easy”). Badfinger was signed to The Beatles’ Apple Records, and helped out George Harrison’s first solo album.

It Don’t Come Easy

1972

Growing up there were a lot of Van Morrison songs that I liked, but never knew it was him. It wasn’t until I worked at my first radio station that I discovered he sang Moondance, Domino, and Jackie Wilson Said.

Listening to Jackie Wilson Said, I would have never guessed that the recording was unorganized. However, according to guitarist Doug Messenger the session was chaos! He told “Uncut”:

“Jackie Wilson Said was totally disorganized. He didn’t know where anything went, and no one seemed to know what to do with it. Van went away and the band worked on the basic structure. When he came back we went through it a couple of times and he was real happy because all of a sudden it seemed to be making sense. He said, ‘I think it’s coming together,’ which is what he always said when he felt it was working.”

“I remember he said to the drummer, Ricky Schlosser, ‘When I sing “boom boom boom,” hit the tom and the kick drum at the same time.’ We ran through it once or twice, and the first recorded take is what’s on the album. It was all over the place, but somehow it worked. Even when he ad-libbed at the end -‘One more time’- somehow we all kept it together. At the end, Van was smiling like a Cheshire Cat. ‘I think we got it!’ We tried a second take and – of course – it all fell apart.”

Give it a listen and see if you can hear the “disorganization.”

Jackie Wilson Said

1973

The next song makes me think of my oldest son. His mother would play songs from her iPod around the house and one of those songs was Let Me Be There by Olivia Newton-John. There would be times where he would take her iPod and listen to it in headphones. I still laugh when I think about him singing loudly and off-key “Let me be there in your mornin’, let me be there in your night!” It was really more of a scream than singing.

The was Newton-John’s breakthrough single in the US, where it landed in the Top 10 on the Hot 100, the Country chart, and the Adult Contemporary chart. At the time, she was still living in Britain and didn’t travel across the pond to promote the single or the album. Turns out she didn’t need much promotion at all. When the song hit it big, people had no idea who she was. That actually was a relief to the singer. “The one great thrill I had in America was that my music was accepted before I was ever seen, before I was on television, before I did live appearances,” she told Rolling Stone. “Therefore I had to hope it was my music and not my face.”

Keep in mind that this was five years before she starred in the movie musical Grease. She would win her first Grammy Award for song. This was surprising because she was up against country veterans like Tammy Wynette and Dottie West. She won for Best Female Country Vocal Performance.

Let Me Be There

1974

I was lucky enough to have never walk in on my parents when they were being intimate. My friends who have say it was a truly traumatic experience. On the TV series That 70’s Show, that exact thing happens to Eric, the main character. As he opens the door, Tell Me Something Good by Rufus and Chaka Khan. As a running gag throughout the episode, that song pops up a few times. I think of that episode when I hear this song.

Stevie Wonder wrote the song and recorded it himself on December 13, 1973 – he copyrighted it on January 3, 1974. His version was never released because he gave the song to Rufus, since Stevie was a fan of their lead singer, Chaka Khan. 

Chaka Khan tells the story that Stevie was going to bring them a song in the studio, and when he dropped by and played her one he had written, she stunned her bandmates by telling the mighty Stevie Wonder she didn’t like it! So Wonder asked her astrological sign, and when she told him Aries, he delivered “Tell Me Something Good.” According to Chaka, she loved it and they worked out the song together in the studio, although Stevie is the only credited writer on the song.

Fun Fact: Rufus evolved from a group called The American Breed, who had the hit “Bend Me, Shape Me.” They took their name from a column in Popular Mechanics magazine called “Ask Rufus,” later shortened to Rufus when Chaka Khan joined the band in 1972.

Tell Me Something Good

1975

I remember playing Bad Blood by Neil Sedaka when I worked at the oldies station. I had no idea at the time that he had done anything other than those 60’s songs he was known for.

Sedaka wrote this song with Philip Cody.  Phil said in a Songfacts interview that it’s his least favorite song. “I went to visit my family and I spent some time with my grandmother, who is an old Sicilian lady. She was telling stories about the lady up the street who used to be a witch, a Strega. And the whole idea of people being good or evil because of what goes on in their blood was just part of the superstitious nature of my Sicilian upbringing that I tried to stay as far away from as I could. (laughing) I just thought it would be an interesting way to approach a lyric: rather than from a place of enlightenment the idea is that love makes us stupid. And that’s where I went. It wasn’t (heavy sigh – pause)… I did it, and I didn’t think I did a very good job on it, and before I had a chance to do a re-write Neil was in the studio with Elton doing the song, and that was it. So I guess the best things are left undone.”

This song turned out to be Sedaka’s biggest hit, reaching #1 on the Billboard Top 100, remaining there for three weeks. He was helped by Elton John, who sang back-up for this song which ensured airplay. In an odd coincidence, this song was knocked out of its #1 position by an Elton John song, “Island Girl.”

Bad Blood

1976

More Than a Feeling was Boston’s debut single. It turned out to be a big surprise hit. Songfacts says: The group’s rise was sudden and unexpected; when “More Than a Feeling” was released, their managers spent a lot of time pitching it to radio stations, which is a very tough sell for an unknown band, but the song is so polished and radio-friendly that many stations put it on the air. It took off, and very soon this unknown band with an album recorded mostly in a basement was a major player on the rock scene.

Boston’s Tom Scholz worked at Polaroid, which made him enough money to buy equipment to create a basement studio. He did most of the recording of the first album there. He actually took a leave of absence from his job at Polaroid to complete the album. Once the album was released, he went back to work.

Songfacts says, “disco was big, so he wasn’t sure his rock record would find an audience. He got very excited when co-workers would summon him to let him know ‘More Than A Feeling’ was playing on the radio. After that happened a few times, he was confident enough to quit his day job.

The song is a classic rock standard and appeared on the soundtrack of the film “FM,” which was the subject of this blog on Monday.

More Than a Feeling

1977

Being born and raised in Michigan, Bob Seger’s music was everywhere when I grew up. When my dad played in a wedding band Night Moves and Trying To Live My Life Without You were songs that they played at gigs.

Mainstreet was a song that was always requested at the station. The actual street Seger sings about in this song is Ann Street, which was off of Main Street in Ann Arbor. Seger told the Chicago Sun-Times: “It was a club. I can’t remember the name of the club, but the band that played there all the time was called Washboard Willie. They were a Delta and Chicago blues band. Girls would dance in the window. They were a black band, and they were very good. That’s where I would go but I was too young to get in. It wasn’t in a great part of town but college students loved to go there.”

This was the second single from the Night Moves album, following the title track. Both songs are very nostalgic and a departure from high-energy rockers his fans were used to hearing. By this time, Seger had been at it in earnest for over a decade and was just starting to break through to a national audience. Live Bullet was his first album to find a broad audience; many who bought it snatched up Night Moves when it came out, and weren’t disappointed. Both albums ended up selling over 5 million copies, making Seger a star.

Mainstreet

1978

Kiss You All Over by Exile was another one of those songs that dominated pop and country radio. It was the perfect crossover song.

In an interview with Billboard, writer Mike Chapman said:

“It’s a very unusual song and is very much about what music in the US is all about in 1978. It’s MOR (Middle Of the Road) soft rock, slightly disco though not pure disco, and has a sensuous lyric line that Americans love. Americans are big lyric listeners and listen to every word.”

It is no surprise that the song has frequently been used as backing music for TV scenes involving various degrees of smooching or similar lip-caressing activities. Songfacts notes that the most creative use of “Kiss You All Over” goes to the Canadian Broadcasting Company’s use of the song in a 2007 montage of hockey players kissing the Stanley Cup. HA!

Kiss You All Over

1979

Many DJ’s will play the song Single Ladies when they do the bouquet toss at weddings. I always love using Ladies Night by Kool and the Gang. It had a funky beat that the ladies would dance to as they waited for the bride to toss her flowers.

Songfacts notes that disco was dying when “Ladies Night” was released at the end of 1979. That didn’t stop Kool & the Gang from using a disco groove on this track and mentioning the “disco lady” and “disco lights” in the lyrics. The song mixed in enough of their funk flourishes to stand out from the pack and bring them into the ’80s – it reached its chart peak of #8 in America the second week of 1980.

Like most Kool & the Gang songs, every member of the group is credited as a writer. “Ladies Night” started with a groove their multi-instrumentalist music director Ronald Bell came up with. His brother, Robert “Kool” Bell (the bass player in the group), gave him two ideas for lyrical themes: “Ladies Night” and “Hangin’ Out.” It was no contest – Ronald knew there were ladies nights everywhere, and loved the idea.

They fleshed out the song with the group, but struggled to find a hook. Ronald Bell remembered a piece of advice from his mother. He recalled to Billboard: “My mother, Aminah, had a hand in that one. Because she would say to me, ‘Always give the people nursery rhymes. Give them something they remember.’ She liked the Dells’ song, ‘Oh What A Night,’ so I put that in. When we were finished, we were all in tune that this was it. We just didn’t know how big!”

Of course, younger folks will always think of Jon Lovitz in the Wedding Singer when they hear this one.

Ladies Night

Yes, there are plenty of great songs I missed from the 1970’s, but next week, we’ll head to the 80’s. I’ll feature ten songs, one from each year of the decade. I hope you will join me next week.

Thanks for listening and thanks for reading.

The Music of My Life – Decade Extra – The 1970’s

Last week I wrapped up my Music of My Life feature. It focused on music from 1970-2025. I admit that it was fun to look back at the tunes that have special meaning to me, bring back a certain memory or a tune that I just really like.

When I got into the 2000’s it became more difficult for me to find songs. With the earlier years, however, I found it difficult to narrow my list down to just ten songs. So I sat down with my original lists and selected some songs that “bubbled under,” so to speak.

I figured a good way to present them was to focus on a decade. 10 years = 1 song per year = 10 songs. Let’s head back to the 70’s and check out a few “Decade Extras.”

1970

I wish I could find the recording of this so I could set it up better. My co-host, Steph, and I were in conversation with our newsman, Hal. Something came up about knocking and Hal says, “Knock three times on the ceiling if you want me.” This led to me asking why we were discussing Tony Orlando on a country station.

Steph walks out of the studio during commercials and I went on the hunt for the song. I found it and cued it up to the chorus. When she comes back to the studio, and she has to read a sponsorship for the weather forecast. I let her begin and out of nowhere I play the chorus of Knock Three Times. She was so thrown by this, she can’t stop laughing. She’s trying to do the sponsorship, but every 6th or 7th word, I’d fire the chorus again. She is down for the count in laughter (which was my intention), so I wound up reading it and apologizing to our listeners.

I think of Steph every time I hear it.

Knock Three Times

1971

I’ve always love the Jonathan Edwards song “Sunshine.” It was always one that I loved singing along with. Had it not been for a mistake, it may never have gotten recorded. According to songfacts.com, he recorded this out of necessity when one of the tracks he put down was accidentally erased. Instead of redoing that song, he did “Sunshine.” Pleased with the results, he and the engineer overdubbed bass and added the drums the next day.

Edwards was signed to Atco Records. They released “Sunshine” as his first single early in 1971, but it flopped. The song got some traction thanks to disc jockeys in New England who started playing it off the album. Six months after the Atco single was released, it was re-issued on the independent Capricorn label with a demo version on the B-side. This time, the song was a hit, shooting to #4 in the US.

He would often end live shows with the song, and Edwards said,  “I often say, and it’s true, that if I had never done another song in my life, I’ll be happy to have come and gone with that.”

Sunshine

1972

For the longest time, I thought that Neil Diamond was singing Nice To Be With You. When I started working at my first radio gig, I found out I was wrong.

The song was actually one that had a local connection. Jim Gold formed the group Gallery in Detroit. They recorded quite a few songs, but none were as big as Nice To Be With You. It was also the title track of their debut album.

Nice to Be With You

1973

There was no shortage of Jim Croce songs in my original feature. My mom and dad listened to his music a lot. He was one of many artists who were a part of my childhood.

I love when songs have some basis or inspiration in real life. Bad, Bad Leroy Brown is one of them.

“Leroy Brown is a guy that he actually met,” said his widow Ingrid. “When he was in the service – The National Guard – this guy had gone AWOL. He was a guy that Jim kind of related to, he liked to sing with him. This guy had gone AWOL but he came back to get his paycheck, and he got caught. Jim just thought he was such a funny guy that he thought he’d include his name in the song, and it just worked. There really was a Leroy Brown, and sometimes having a name helps you to build a song around it.”

It’s one of the few songs I can sing at karaoke.

Bad, Bad Leroy Brown

1974

I was a big Beatles fan growing up. As a kid, I didn’t really understand why Paul McCartney was in another group (Wings) or why John Lennon was doing solo stuff. I do remember hearing Band on the Run, though, and liking it.

McCartney recorded the album in Lagos, Nigeria along with his wife Linda and guitarist Denny Laine. The other Wings decided not to make the trip, which worked out fine in the end: McCartney considers the album his best post-Beatles work. He told Word in 2005:

“I was on drums and guitar a lot, mainly because the drummer decided to leave the group the night before and one of the guitar players decided not to come! So we got that solo element into an otherwise ‘produced’ album.”

Band On the Run

1975

It’s a Long Way to the Top is an autobiographical song for AC/DC. It describes their struggles as they tried to make it big. Right from the start, they delivered a top notch live show night after night. Songfacts says: It was genuine: At the time, they were just getting started and playing some seedy venues with even seedier business associates. The hard work eventually paid off, and several years later the band was selling out arenas.

“It’s A Long Way To The Top” really summed us up as a band,” Angus Young told Rolling Stone. “It was the audience that really allowed us to even get near a studio.”

The song is a bit unusual because instead of a lengthy guitar solo it features Angus Young on lead and Bon Scott on the bagpipes in a Dueling Banjos sort of way. I remember the first time I heard the song. “Are those bagpipes?!” Yes. Yes, they are!

It’s a Long Way to the Top

1976

Turn the Page by Bob Seger is also a song about being out on the road and performing. This one focuses on the effects of touring on a performer. There is a lot of loneliness that they feel.

Bob says, “Our first headline shows ever in a large (twelve thousand seat) hall were the two shows at Detroit’s Cobo Arena, September 4th and 5th, 1975. I remember while I was singing this how nice it was to have such good on-stage monitors. I had never heard my voice so well while performing.” The version on Seger’s greatest hits album was taken from these shows.

The song is a classic rock staple here in Michigan. I got to see Bob perform one of his last shows and it was electrifying. I can’t even begin to explain the feel of the room when he performed this one.

Turn the Page

1977

“What’s Your Name” by Lynyrd Skynyrd is another song that is based on a true story. One night while they were on tour, the band was drinking at their hotel bar when one of the roadies got in a fight. They all got kicked out. So they went to a room, ordered champagne and continued the party.

Songfacts says: The incident in this song did not happen in Boise, Idaho. The first line was originally, “It’s 8 o’clock and boys it’s time to go,” but lead singer Ronnie Van Zant changed it when he found out his brother, Donnie, was opening his first national tour with his band .38 Special in Boise. The first line became “It’s 8 o’clock in Boise, Idaho.”

Three days after the album was released, Ronnie Van Zant, Steve Gaines, and Cassie Gaines died in a plane crash. The cover of the album was redone because the original cover had the band surrounded by flames.

What’s Your Name

1978

Hold the Line by Toto caught my ear the first time I heard it because of the piano open with the guitar riff intermingling with it. It was the debut single for the group who was made up primarily of session musicians.

From songfacts: “Hold the line” is an expression meaning to maintain your existing position, which in this case is the singer telling a girl to be patient and stay with their relationship.

The saying also has a more literal meaning, however, which is how David Paich came up with the title. “Hold the line” is what you tell someone on the phone if you want to put them on hold while you’re taking another call. This is typical in workplaces, but in the days before cell phones, some households (especially ones with teenagers) also had multiple phone lines coming in and could put callers on hold. Paich lived in one such household.

Paich said: “When I was in high school, all of a sudden the phone started ringing off the hook, and I had a situation where I was at the dinner table and I had three girls all call at the same time, so all the lights were flashing. I was kind of juggling girlfriends, and that’s how that came about.”

Toto’s video was a bit ahead of it’s time. MTV hadn’t even gone on the air yet when the song was released.

Hold the Line

1979

Don’t Stop Me Now by Queen is such a fun song to play at weddings and parties, especially after the audience has loosened up. So often I’d come out of a slow song and segue right into the smooth intro of Freddie Mercury. People would raise their hands and sway while singing along. Then, when the tempo changes, the dance floor was insane.

It’s a catchy song that has you singing along, even if you are just hearing it for the first time. In 2011, Queen fans voted the chorus of “Don’t Stop Me Now” as the band’s best ever lyric.

In an Absolute Radio interview, Brian May says, “I thought it was a lot of fun, but I did have an undercurrent feeling of, ‘aren’t we talking about danger here,’ because we were worried about Freddie at this point. That feeling lingers, but it’s become almost the most successful Queen track as regards to what people play in their car or at their weddings. It’s become a massive, massive track and an anthem to people who want to be hedonistic. It was kind of a stroke of genius from Freddie.”

Don’t Stop Me Now

So what do you think? I like this idea. A quick look back at a decade. There are plenty of songs to choose from that did not make the original run of this feature. Join me next week for more!