So what drove me to create a site spotlighting songs radio forgot? Well, simply enough, I remember them. Top 40 radio was a constant companion for most of the period from the late 1970s through the 1990s. I remember I was still in pre-school when I would be driven around my hometown while sitting in the back seat of our family’s Ford Granada, and it seemed as if every other song that played on the radio was by the Bee Gees (or perhaps Andy Gibb or Samantha Sang, but I just knew that they all sounded a lot alike). And, to my 4-year-old mind, a lot of those songs were quite good.
Once I got older and started to drive myself (having upgraded, first to a hand-me-down station wagon, then to one of those 1980 GM diesel cars that never caught on), I made lots of weekend trips in which I learned to loathe the by-then common practice of taking about a seven-minute commercial break just before the hour, and I remembered how much better radio seemed in the past (when commercial breaks were commonly no more than 60 seconds). Add to that my burgeoning interest in airchecking, and the eventual addition of late 70s music to what were, back then, called “oldies” stations, and my interest in classic songs and classic radio flourished.
But with the reintroduction of classic hits to radio, I discovered several things. First, I realized that a lot of the songs that I remembered and loved were not getting much, if any, airplay in this new normal. After that, I realized that I didn’t always care to hear the same “classics” over and over. Seriously, how many times can you hear “Come On Eileen” before it starts to grate on you? But listen to Ironhorse’s “Sweet Lui-Louise” (the first forgotten song I ever spotlighted, on another blog long, long ago), and you can appreciate how it fits the sound of its time (specifically, 1979) while calling back to some familiar-sounding vocal stylings by Randy Bachman.
So with that appreciation for those songs that don’t get enough appreciation, I wanted to spotlight as many as I could. Here’s hoping you gain some appreciation for a new (to you) song as we go along.
Enjoy the music.
