MOMENTS in MUSIC
A YouTube retrospective
Emily is out with friends and I’ve been spending the evening with Chinese takeout and old music videos on YouTube – I’m amazed by the force with which they conjure my youth. YouTube lies somewhere between regressive therapy and time travel, and what follows are some of the stops I made on my journey back through music history.
1977: Elton John’s “Sorry Seems to be the Hardest Word.” In my case, it’s always been the easiest word. Apology is my poetic mode. Ninety- five percent is pre- emptive, non- situation specific; five percent is a function of being Canadian. Had I words, I’d have apologized while being born.
“I’m sure this is all quite painful,” I’d have said to my mother during delivery. “I can try tucking in my gut if you think it might help.”
1979: Styx’s “Renegade.” I heard it playing over a restaurant’s kitchen radio one night as the Goldsteins and their extended kin attempted to split a potato knish seven ways, while battling the wait staff ’s allegations of sharing and the fees it would incur. Rather than feeling embarrassed, the song made me feel like an outlaw.
1983: Bonnie Tyler’s “Total Eclipse of the Heart.” I was listening to it the first time I got to second base. I remember placing my left hand on Elizabeth R.’s back, and then attempting to snake it back around from behind in order to touch the breast kitty- corner to my hand. The whole operation nearly popped my shoulder out of its socket.
1984: Wham!’s “Careless Whisper.” Like many of the pivotal moments in my life, my first date with Sandra Feldman took place in my parents’ basement. The song was playing on our family’s hi-fi. My friend Evan was over, too, and seeing the way Sandra teased him and touched his hair, I knew I had to kick him out of the house post-haste.
There was a snowstorm raging, and just before shutting the door behind him, I watched as he tiptoed in his dress shoes into a snowdrift. He might have died of hypothermia for all I cared. What mattered was that I had Sandra to myself. We talked all night, falling asleep holding hands. Evan survived, so a successful evening overall.
1987: Rick Astley’s, “Never Gonna Give You Up.” That summer, it was on the radio constantly and, when it wasn’t, it was spinning around and around in my head nonstop.
When Emily returns home, I try to share the song with her, explaining how there was a time when Rick Astley was more than just a vehicle for “rickrolling.”
“He was an artist,” I tell her. “An awful, awful artist.”
Emily doesn’t seem interested. Perhaps one’s past is as personal and uniquely one’s own as one’s dreams. Perhaps the past is a country with a population of one. But when she shrugs and sits down beside me, and I press play, the country suddenly feels twice as large.