Welcome to Learned, a short, weekly look at language, education, and everything else under the sun. I’m Joel, amateur linguist and professional slacker. And this week...we're making a mix tape.
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I'm old enough that I spent a whole lot of my middle-childhood, what would be called the tween years these days, making mix-tapes from my parents and my aunt's collection of LPs, 45 RPM singles, and songs I recorded off the radio. And this week, as I've been moving stuff off a failing hard drive and onto a shiny new one, I've found a bunch of my old mixes.
Can you be nostalgic for something that has been replaced by faster, easier technology? Yes, yes you can. Photo by Namroud Gorguis on Unsplash
It's funny how the songs I love were the same ones that embarrassed me just a few years later but that have gone on to become permanently lodged in my brain while all the cooler replacements have faded away over the years...so, for this week, here's a seven song playlist:
1. Tonight Is What It Means to Be Young
So, Streets of Fire. Look, this is not a great movie, but the soundtrack has two songs written by Jim Steinman that showed up on a lot of my mixes circa 1986 (when I was 11). I hadn't yet heard, or grown to know and love Meatloaf's Bat Out of Hell (for which Steinman was the lyricist), but a friend put this song on a mix-tape he gave to me and, well, that was that. Something about the very musical-theater nature of the lyrics and the driving piano hooked me and kept me hooked enough that finding the re-mastered versions of the movie clip slash video for this song was enough to keep me smiling all day.
2. Laura
Billy Joel has his detractors. I'm not one of them. Billy's Greatest Hits 1 and 2 were just about ubiquitous when I was growing up and figuring out which tracks went on which album and then discovering the whole other world that was B-sides...Laura was my first deep cut. It's still a great song.
I've since disavowed the phrase "guilty pleasure" because who's got the energy to waste feeling guilty over things you love, but, as a young teen who was more susceptible to peer pressure, pop music was my guilty pleasure. Whenever I was with friends or at school, I was all about metal and punk and rock. But, when I got home, late-80s radio-friendly pop was my jam. Funnily enough, I learned this album by heart well before I ever knew the Safety Dance.
I'm pretty sure this was the first song where I got embarrassed when I figured out the lyrics - and, embarrassed in this case means, wouldn't play it when my Mom was in the room. I loved the mellow vibe and the latter verse...but there was that verse in the middle: "...sex kills, so come inside and die." I mean, clever? Sure. But to listen to with your mom? Eww. (It would be a few more years before I'd reach the "gleefully making my parents listened to things outside all our comfort zones" stage of rebellious teenagerdom.)
New Edition's eponymous 1984 record was the first cassette I ever bought with my own money. (I would later claim it was KISS' Smashes, Thrashes, and Hits - legitimately the second record I ever bought.) I had heard the song Mr. Telephone Man and just really liked it. I think it made it through about ten play throughs before I realized I just liked the one song, a pattern that was the bane of the music buying public for decades.
Long before Christian Bale made Huey Lewis a punch-line in American Psycho (and Huey's eventual triumphant return to the spotlight), I had every Huey Lewis and the News record. I can still sing the lyrics to most of the songs..and, truthfully, this one wasn't embarrassing until years later when a high school girlfriend found it on a mix-tape in my car and started teasing me about it. Such is life in high school.
Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem are the muppets that turn Fozzie and Kermit's yellow taxi into a psychedelic road warrior in the Muppet Movie. I had the soundtrack on vinyl and, like with everything else on this list, I can still sing every word. I tried to be cool in college and dissect the clever lyricism and musical skill that went into the record, but I got a C on the assignment and the cool kids just shook their heads at my hubris. Man, high school really did suck.
You can change the form, but the song remains the same. Photo by Jace & Afsoon on Unsplash
And that's all I've got this week. I hope you found something to listen to or at least found the inspiration to revisit your old favorites and strike the appellation "guilty" from the record.
New Glossary out this Friday.
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Until then, stay safe, stay as sane as you can, learn something.
Joel
silent night lyrics https://www.lyricsofnewsongs.com/silent-night-lyrics/