What’s a song that changed your life?
By Andrew R. Duckworth
I remember, we were on a yearly trip to Branson, Missouri. Branson is one of those very weird places that has a little of everything. But, when it comes to shopping, it has practically everything. At the time, there were maybe three or four outlet malls. We had gone into one of my Dad’s favorite stores—a big and tall store that always has 80s New Wave playing over the dim speaker system. it was maybe 1995. I remember hearing the words over the speaker system: “How could it be that a love carved out of caring, fashioned by fate, could suffer so hard from the games played once too often.” But back then, the words weren’t important. What was important for me was the sound. It was a sound that only occasionally hit the airwaves, one that I heard every once in a while. It must have been stale for everyone who had grown up through the late 70s and early 80s, but for me, it was a whole new world of sound. It was funky, groovy, techno in all the right spots, such a catchy melody. It was Level 42’s “Something About You.” I wouldn’t know that for some years later, but the sound followed me and stayed playing in my mind for years. And every time it came on the radio, I knew it. I knew what it was, where I was when I first heard it. It was a song I doubt many recall too quickly here in the states. Level 42 was one of those bands that I feel like went under the radar in the States but shouldn’t have. With the British New Wave of artists, music was pouring in from overseas that drowned out a lot of what America produced at the time in the 80s.
The more I listened to Level 42, the more I felt myself drawn to other bands I had missed from the 80s, bands that released iconic songs that I wasn’t there to experience upon first release. I committed Tears for Fears entire song book to my memory. And then Depeche Mode. And then Rick Springfield. This music absolutely made my childhood and young adulthood, music that had somehow gone out of popularity by the time I arrived. I still don’t understand it. The songs are just as fresh now, if not more so, than the date they first hit the airwaves.
