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Raised on Radio #40: Moving Pictures
Jul. 24th, 2014 05:14 pm"What about me" is a song is I haven't listened to in literally decades, but I used to think it was the best song ever.
It is the overdramatic, hand-wringing kind of song that only makes sense in two situations. 1) It's the 80s and 2) You're 8 years old.
Fortunately, it came out in 1982, which made it the best song of all time in my eyes.
For some reason, it's obscure today. (Except in Australia, Moving Pictures' homeland where it's apparently an evergreen single). Not sure why, it seems like the perfect 80s song, ballad-ly for the soft rock crowds, but with the guitars turned up. It checks a lot of the same boxes a band like Journey does.
Maybe it's the name which sounds so 80s-ish like Missing Persons or The Motels.
It also may do with its weird chart story. it peaked only at #29, but was in the Billboard 100 for an amazing 26 weeks, making it one of the top 100 singles of the year.
in retrospect, maybe this song came too soon. Now, it looks like it would have been a megahit in the later part of the decade when power ballades were all the rage (and I must not be alone in thinking that as it was re-released and re-charted in 1989).
Wikipedia, like in so many of these cases, blames a music company reorganization (Elektra) and so headlining tours and support slots for REO Speedwagon, Hall & Oates, and Tom Petty got nixed.
So, it's just this.
It is the overdramatic, hand-wringing kind of song that only makes sense in two situations. 1) It's the 80s and 2) You're 8 years old.
Fortunately, it came out in 1982, which made it the best song of all time in my eyes.
For some reason, it's obscure today. (Except in Australia, Moving Pictures' homeland where it's apparently an evergreen single). Not sure why, it seems like the perfect 80s song, ballad-ly for the soft rock crowds, but with the guitars turned up. It checks a lot of the same boxes a band like Journey does.
Maybe it's the name which sounds so 80s-ish like Missing Persons or The Motels.
It also may do with its weird chart story. it peaked only at #29, but was in the Billboard 100 for an amazing 26 weeks, making it one of the top 100 singles of the year.
in retrospect, maybe this song came too soon. Now, it looks like it would have been a megahit in the later part of the decade when power ballades were all the rage (and I must not be alone in thinking that as it was re-released and re-charted in 1989).
Wikipedia, like in so many of these cases, blames a music company reorganization (Elektra) and so headlining tours and support slots for REO Speedwagon, Hall & Oates, and Tom Petty got nixed.
So, it's just this.
