Songs #169 & 170 - It's TWOsday!

Song #169 of 9999                                                  Song #170 of 9999

Title: I Melt With You                                               Title: I Ran (So Far Away)
Artist: Modern English                                             Artist: A Flock of Seagulls

Year: 1982                                                               Year: 1982
Album: After the Snow                                            Album: A Flock of Seagulls

Last night's blog post took a long time to write, what with the opera research and such so I'm going to make this a quickie. It is TWOsday so I thought I would just post two representative songs from the post-punk/new wave era from groups few of us have heard from since their 1982 debuts and say very little about them. :)

For me, "I Melt With You" is the better of the two songs, its apocalyptic love story dripping with emotional resonance even as digital music technology and severe hair and fashion were working hard to strip away such feelings from the pop charts. One of the things I really like about this song is how each musician in the band plays such an integral role in the arrangement. I never noticed it before, probably because I was too busy mimicking Robbie Grey's vocal delivery at maximum volume while jumping up and down.

"I Ran" is a simpler song about your run-of-the-mill alien abduction. This song really benefits from the call-and-response relationship between Mike Score's monotone vocal delivery and Paul Reynolds's clever two-note guitar lick. The thing I most remember about this song when it came out was Mike Score's haircut which seemed so bizarre and interesting at the time. Very catchy minor key song, probably a little too long and repetitive for the current market.

Happy TWOsday!