The end of May seems to be a locus for love ballads and smooth jams. It also, for the years represented here, was a week of transition from school to summer break. Even into 1997, when I had been out of school for a few years, that pattern followed. I spent 18 years (and one semester in Russia in 1994) being educated, and as they were my formative years, there is an emotional resonance with the end of a school year which will likely carry through for the rest of my life. It is not as strong an emotional tie as that which makes itself felt in late August/early September. But even into my fifties I feel a specific nostalgia as Memorial Day approaches.

1977: Barbara Streisand, “My Heart Belongs to Me”

I couldn’t say when I first heard “My Heart Belongs to Me.” I definitely did at some point, if only be the logic that popular music in 1977 was a small pool, particularly in rural Michigan, with parents who weren’t into anything harder than Manhattan Transfer. I’ve never had any particular opinions about Streisand one way or another, so if this song is familiar, it is only through osmosis. Then again, I would have been seven years old, just shy of my eighth birthday and near the end of second grade when this song was released.

1982: Dionne Warwick and Johnny Mathis, “Friends in Love”

I have certainly heard “Friends in Love” at some point in the past. Warwick and Matthis have beautiful voices and they work well together. This week in 1982 I was near the end of seventh grade, probably looking forward to a summer of milking cows and stacking bales, and maybe a quick trip to visit my dad, wherever he was living that summer. I would have been preparing for the Memorial Day Parade when the junior high band was conscripted to play with the high school band at the Springport VFW hall, to the indifference of the adults and the jeers of our classmates. So no particular nostalgia attached to this one, but it is a beautiful song and I appreciate it more now at 52 that I did when I was 12.

1987: Restless Heart, “I’ll Still Be Loving You”

I do vaguely remember “I’ll still be loving you,” and almost certainly heard it when it was on the charts. Restless Heart is a country band and so I likely heard it played on one of the several country stations which were more prevalent in the 1980s in rural Michigan. The MTV/cable era diminished the size of the slice of the pie which country music enjoyed, but it so greatly expanded the size of the pie that that rising tide lifted every music genre, including country, and made the birth of alt-country possible a few years later. Regardless, this is a fine song, though it doesn’t speak to me, one way or another. I would have been prepping for graduation in this week in 1987, so likely wasn’t paying attention to what was on the radio.

1992: Jon Secada, “Just Another Day”

The end of my fifth year of college I was moving out of off-campus housing at GVSU and into my first “adult” apartment in Kentwood with three friends, and just starting my brief career at West Michigan’s favorite Polish-Mexican restaurant, while prepping for my capstone classes. Which is to say, it was an exciting time, and busy, and though I have heard “Just Another Day” I don’t know if I heard it when it charted, or at some point in the future. I like the song, and Secada has a fine voice, though it doesn’t really stand out from the myriad similar songs which were released in the early 1990s.

1997: Heavy D, “Big Daddy”

I remember seeing this video on MTV more than once, though that could have been years after the song was released. I would have been working at the bookstore with nothing of note happening in my life, likely in a groove of working, working out, partying, and listening to folk, folk rock, and Tom Waits. I like this song, though and it looks like everyone in the video is having fun. Heavy D died in 2011 of a pulmonary embolism. He was born two years before me, and I remember hearing of his death and realizing that people who were my age are dying of the kind of things I used to associate with “old people.” And that was over a decade ago. So it goes.

As we move into the middle of May the songs are freighted with the nostalgic sense that, now that the world has awakened, it’s time to get busy. Not that the songs are specifically about that, but these are what the world was listening to, more or less.

This project has prompted me to put together a timeline of where I have lived, gone to school, worked, and the people and events associated with each. Nostalgia mining, as Proust demonstrated, can be a great source of creative inspiration. And also ennui and existential dread.

1977: John Miles, “Slowdown”

This is another of those songs which, even if you have never heard it, you have heard it in some form or another. I can’t say if I heard it when it was first on the radio, but I know I heard it at some point in the years before I graduated from high school. And it kind of slaps.

Mr. Miles passed away this past December, at the age of 72.

1982: Genesis, “Man on the Corner”

Phil Collins and this era of Genesis were huge in my life back in the 1980s. I first heard of them at about the same time that music videos took over the pop world thanks to the original iteration of MTV. Abacab is an amazing album and “Man on the Corner” is a very specific vibe (in the parlance of our times) for a skinny, mouthy, geeky bookworm recently moved to an isolated farm in a small, insulated and insular farming community. Self-pity is not a great place to wallow, but it can bring its own form of empowerment.

1987: Peter Wolf, “Come as you Are”

I remember listening to this song on the bus into school at the end of my senior year at Springport, but I don’t think I had ever seen the video until now. Peter Wolf, formerly of the J. Geils Band, puts together a fantastic song, and a super-fun video. I imagine he had to sit down for a few days once the video was complete.

1992: Cause & Effect, “You Think You Know Her”

I don’t specifically remember hearing this song before, but it is familiar enough that I must have, though it does have that particular Synthpop sound which can cause some confusion when trying to sort out memories from (o god…) thirty years ago. This week in 1992 I would have been moving from a tiny apartment at Campus West to a HUGE apartment at Ramblewood, anticipating and dreading my last (and sixth) year of university studies, and I think just starting my brief career as a line cook and prep cook at Jose Babushka’s Polish/Mexican restaurant in Kentwood. Such were the early nineties.

1997: Kenny Lattimore, “For You”

This is a repeat from last week. Lattimore has a beautiful voice, and this is a beautiful song.

 

The core sample of stacked years which aligns with the 18th week of top-40 hits brings an interesting mix of hits.

1977: Alan O’Day, “Undercover Angel”

I have heard this song before, many times, though I don’t know if I was aware of it in early May 1977. I would have been seven, living in Jackson, and just finishing up second grade at Parnell Elementary school. Do I remember anything of Parnell Elementary? Faint shadows of learning left from right, and playing on huge piles of snow. King of the hill. The playground equipment of the 70s which would possibly be a violation of the Geneva Convention were it in use today. So though Undercover Angel is one of those songs that everyone of a Certain Age has heard, I couldn’t say that I heard it when it was on the charts.

1982: Genesis, “Man on the Corner”

In 1982 I was just finishing up seventh grade at Springport Junior High and hating every second of it. That doesn’t make 1982 special in any way; I hated all nine years I spent in the Springport school system, and though there were several bright spots, making the best of a bad situation is not at all the same as being in a good situation. So “Man on the Corner” is a good pick for a theme song for my adolescent years.

1987: Smokey Robinson, “Just to See Her”

Ahh, Smokey Robinson. I do remember this song, though I have not heard it in a long, long time. This would have been a month before I graduated from high school, and I was seventeen and carrying at least two torches for unwise and unrequited loves. I spent most of my junior and senior years listening to oldies, which in 1985 – 1987 meant songs from the fifties and sixties. So I may not have heard this song until after I left for college.

1992: Ozzy Ozbourne, “Mamma I’m Coming Home”

Ozzy again, with a repeat from earlier in the year. This is a really good ballad. I would have been listening to it as I drove to work at the terrible moving company where I worked for a few months, or possibly as I was walking the mile from the off-campus apartments to the student cafeteria where I worked a few hours a week for minimum wage and a free meal per shift which, considering minimum wage was around $3.50/hour, was a good deal.

1997: Kenny Lattimore, “For You”

I don’t remember hearing this song before putting this list together, but I have certainly heard of Lattimore in years past. I would have been working at the bookstore, special-ordering books by the truckload to make up for the gaps in the store inventory, and dating co-workers, as one does when working retail. I would have been growing restless with my living situation and looking for a new apartment, I believe. This is a beautiful song, and definitely would not have been my style back in my mid-twenties.