Since the moment I was born, music has been a reoccurring theme in my life, accompanying me during different seasons and mirroring me as I evolve through past versions of myself.
I have a musical dad that plays guitar who basically “passed down” to me, metaphorically speaking, his entire music collection ranging from A to Z, as well as my passion for singing. When I was very little, my number one dream was to one day be a professional singer, a dream that, as the years went by and I became older, silently started to fade away. Nevertheless, I had a childhood filled with music with the presence of psychedelic rock from the late sixties to early seventies; it became my favorite music genre. Having a music nerd for a parent consisted of having Pink Floyd, which will forever be the band of my life, playing casually in the background at anytime, anywhere.
On the other side, I have an admiration for music from the eighties – yet it is a bit different from the love I have for the classic rock of the hippie era. Whenever I listen to songs from the eighties, I always feel a sense of nostalgia. It is as if I were being transported back to a decade that I had previously experienced, even though I had not been born yet, and I was a little far away from doing so. My appreciation for eighties music comes from both my mom and my dad. My mom introduced me to synth-pop playing songs from The Pet Shop Boys that she would listen to back in the day. My dad, whose entire teenage years were during the eighties, got to have what I like to call his “breakfast club” experience. This is a nod to the 1985 classic film, The Breakfast Club, since I idealize and daydream about what being a high schooler during this specific time must have been like.
The adventure with eighties music fully began for me during morning car drives on the way to school with my dad and younger sister. He would play one of his CDs with the songs that he grew up listening to when he was younger and having his very own real life breakfast club experience. The first song that would play was “Don’t You (Forget About Me)” by Simple Minds. Then, “A Little Respect” by Erasure would play next, followed by “I Melt With You” by Modern English (the sweetest song ever). After those first songs, the ones from The Cure played next with the first one being “Just Like Heaven,” a flawless track from its genius lyrics to its cheerful, almost ethereal sound. Afterwards, “Lovesong” came next. Oh boy. Contrary to “Just Like Heaven,” “Lovesong” is a melancholic song with dark yet deep and sentimental lyrics. This song by The Cure is what sent me into a phase where I only ever wanted to listen to all their songs.
Going to the last track I can remember from my dad’s CD, “Under Pressure” by Queen and my one and only David Bowie, was also included. What else can I write about this song apart from that it is completely timeless and when I heard Freddie Mercury’s singing it was life-changing? Just as with The Cure, I also went through a phase where I was glued to listening to Queen. I wanted to know every single detail about the band, its members, and watch as many videos of them playing together as I could find. So, when my dad tells me that he watched them on TV as they were performing at Live Aid in 1985 …I wish I could have been there too!
In a similar light and kind of funny, I would look at the other people in my family who lived through the eighties as teenagers and noticed that they have a sort of “been there, done that” type of attitude towards that time. I found a family portrait in my grandparents’ photo album, with everyone there smiling with a big and shiny “80’s” written all over it. Every detail in that picture shouts eighties, from the hair to the clothes, and even the background.
The nostalgia between me and the eighties, and its music, is certainly there. That feeling of nostalgia comes with looking at the family portrait and other beautiful, retro pics of my mom and my aunt during that time. It is my dad telling me how he heard “Bette Davis Eyes” by Kim Carnes playing on the car’s radio on a summer day (are you kidding me?) while he was on vacation as a boy here in the US. It is watching the masterpiece that is Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and loving every minute of it, and finishing the last episode of yet another season of Stranger Things and feeling as if a part of me stays there, in that world with those characters (scary creatures and chaos excluded). It is driving in my car with all the four windows down, during a sunset on a highway, as U2’s “Gloria” is playing and pretending just for that moment that I am reminiscing on a time that reminds me of a younger me…