cultshock

This is a thread idea that I stole from the Steve Hoffman forum but I thought it was a really cool discussion. What songs did you hear on the radio or somewhere and liked, but it was years before you found out the song title and artist?

I can think of two:

"Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey" by Paul McCartney

When I was about four years old, I remember driving in the car with my mother and several times I heard this song on the radio and really liked the "Hands across the water" part, and even mentioned it to my mom (probably the first pop song I ever paid attention to). Over the years I mostly forgot about it, once in awhile the line and melody would pop into my head but I didn't think much of it (although I listened to the Beatles sometimes, I'm more of a fan now than I used to be, I had never heard the "Ram" album), until one day around six years ago I was talking to my parents about music and just happened to mention "Hey, remember that song I liked on the car radio when I was a kid with that "hands across the water" line? What song was that?". My mom isn't exactly a music scholar, so her answer was "I think it's a Paul McCartney song". A quick google search and I found my answer. Over forty years later.

"Some Velvet Morning" by Lee Hazlewood and Nancy Sinatra

When I was around 10 years old (around 1977) my dad had a compilation of Lee Hazlewood/Nancy Sinatra songs on an 8-track tape that he would play in the car sometimes (although I never bothered to ask him who the artists were, so didn't know it was them) and this one song really struck me, I always thought it sounded so haunting and cool (I still do!). Over the years I would have it playing in my head sometimes but had no idea what song it was and usually forgot about it before I would have a chance to ask my dad. I finally remembered to ask him what 8-track that was, again around six years ago (now that I think of it, this might have been the same conversation with my parents as above, one question probably led to the other), and he said it was Hazlewood/Sinatra, but didn't know what song I was talking about. It took a few hits on Youtube, but I finally found it! In this case around 35 years later. I still love this song!

The funny thing is that without the internet I might have never figured these out for sure.

Paff

Not quite years, but right now in my town there's an interesting situation: a local radio station was taken off the air in December, and has not returned. Right now, the station (which broadcasts out of Mexico) is just playing someone's random shuffle. No DJs, no commercials, just music. Actually, it's pretty fuckin great. Problem is, they'll often play a great song I don't know, and with no on-air announcements or a website with "last songs played", I'm SOL.

I did type in the lyrics of one great song I heard, and apparently it's something called "Pickles from the Jar" by one Courtney Barnett.

Tom Banjo

Decker

As a kid growing up, I used to hear "Fool in the Rain" on FM radio a lot and liked it as a catchy Latin-tinged pop song, not unlike Paul Simon's stuff. . Was surprised several years later to find that was Led Zeppelin, as it sounded nothing like the heavy metal rock guys who made All of My Love, Rock & Roll or Stairway to Heaven to me at the time.

Mondo Kane

"Feels so good" Chuck Mangione

That was THE radio song of my childhood. But I swear, every time, the DJs would never say what it was called or who it was by. It wasn't until IMDB came along and provided the info in the "Soundtracks" section for Hard To Kill. Thank you, Steven Segal.

Paff

Yeah, but I'm usually driving while listening to the station, and I'm one of about 3 Americans who won't use their phone while driving.

Why So Blu?

Josh-da-man

"Steppin' Out" - Joe Jackson. I had the opening of the song in my head for years, but could never put a title or performer to it.

"Games Without Frontiers" - Peter Gabriel. I only remembered the "She is so pop-ular" chorus, which wasn't what it said at all. Wasn't until I was listening to a Peter Garbriel album that I recognized it.

"Space Oddity" - David Bowie. When I was a kid, a local college radio station played that song all the time, but never said who the artist was or what the title of the song was. I thought it was called "Major Tom." None of my peers knew the song. A few years later someone told me it was David Bowie's "Space Oddity." Kind of embarrassing, but I was like twelve or thirteen and there was no internet to look shit like this up.

Josh-da-man

What's weird is that I while remember the song, it's not something that puzzled me for years, but the melody was stored in my memory, and, before hearing it on "South Park" and "Dr. Strange," I would have sworn it was the theme from some late 70s or early 80s tv show.

morriscroy

Centerfold - j geils band

Head Over Heels - the go-gos

rw2516

"Fire On High" - ELO
Used to hear this all the time on FM in the 70s. The DJ would never say what it was. Can't remember when I finally found out.
"Oh Well"(original studio version) - Fleetwood Mac
Again, FM would play this all the time and never say what it was. Really liked the mellow second part. Then in 1980 the Fleetwood Mac live album was released and found out name of song. Could never find out what album the studio version was on. Could never find it in stores. Maybe it wasn't available in U.S. Not until the internet was I able to track it down.

Mabuse

wishbone

"Isn't It Time" by The Babies, which I posted in an old thread. Before Shazam you'd have to remember some lyrics and hope you could find it online.

Paff

And it happened today. That radio station was playing a song, I'm guessing it's called "Twilight Zone", but Googling that is gonna come up with something else.

Really gotta start pulling over and using Shazam.

ETA: And no, it was not Golden Earring

TheAllPurposeNothing

"Amoreena" by Elton John. Heard it at the beginning of Dog Day Afternoon many times, but never knew what the song was until maybe 10 or so years ago when I started digging into EJ's back catalogue.

Nick Danger

"Golden Brown" by The Stranglers. It took me a couple of years to find out that this mellow song with a harpsichord was by a punk band.

You young people with your Google lyrics search and your Shazam app have it so easy. We had to wait for it to be played on the radio again, and hope the DJ announced the song.

Paff

Right? And if you were into alternative music, you were listening to college stations, which might not ever play the song again. And the hung over/drunk/stoned communications major DJ may or may not ever announce what the hell they played.

The Cow

Not sure if other phones can do it, but if you have an iPhone you can ask Siri "who sings this song?" and then look at the result later when you are able to look at your phone.

gmanca

wishbone

^ That song had an MTV video at the time so that helped. There have been a few alternative songs over the years that I still have not figured out, like this one.

PhantomStranger

This was a bigger problem before the Internet became popular. Nowadays almost every song can be found fairly quickly with a lyrics search on Google or using Shazam. Back in the day most of the songs I wanted identified were heard on television.

Cusm

Early 2000s I heard a song on a Nissan Xterra commercial and spent a solid 2 hours online searching for the few random lyrics I could recall. This was before Shazam and lyrics were not that prevalent online. Finally found it was a new indie-blues band called The Black Keys. There several commercials that would use fairly obscure or new bands and it was always hard to ID before Shazam. There was IIRC a Miller Lite commercial that had an awesome bass line and good atmospheric music, found (maybe here) that it was original for the commercial.

Alan Smithee

How does Shazam work anyways? It hasn't been able to ID everything I've submitted but it's gotten a few obscure ones. It found this, which I'd only known for years as the main music sample from Negativland's "Helter Stupid". It's so cheesy I thought it might've been production library music:


It helped me find where this music came from also:

Full track:



Speaking of production music, a lot of that I've had little hope of ever hearing in its complete form. A funny one was this music which was used as the main menu music on the older Sonny & Cher DVD set, which I'd watched while working at Tower as a customer had returned it saying it froze up while playing. That turned out to be an authoring error at the layer switch. I liked the set enough to buy my own copy but held off til it was fixed, which it was but they ended up CHANGING the music on the menu screens! Anyways here's the track which I found randomly:


My uploading of this really silly 80s pervert video masquerading as an exercise tape (which has ended up being my most-viewed upload with over 2 million views!) triggered YouTube's content ID system as Network Music Ensemble, which helped me find a TON of favorite production tracks from that era. Spotify has a number of complete albums.


This a new wave synth track I heard a couple times in the 80s and could never find again til recently. I even tried singing what I remembered of it into a song ID program and it couldn't get it, then I finally stumbled onto it:

Played this about 10 times in a row when I finally found it- still can't find it on CD.

andicus

That one got me, as well, when I was a kid. My problem was that I thought it was a Beatles tune, so I spent ages trying to figure out which album it was on. I eventually borrowed a Wings Greatest LP from a friend, and there it was!

A more recent one, still probably about 10 years ago, was Blues of the Prairies, by Oscar Peterson. It used to play as part of a rotating set of tunes on the Ontario Parliamentary Channel. I really liked it, and was pretty sure it was Oscar Peterson, but it took forever to track down the name.

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Nick Danger

I listened to college radio too. "Um, I got kind of behind in announcing the songs. Here's what I played in the last 90 minutes. You just heard (), and before that was () . . ."

Of course, you were usually long gone by then.