Friday, July 12, 2013

What’s Playing, Part II

 

The first (and second) time I told you about a song that tickled my fancy, it was for a little ditty popular at the time.  Tonight, it will be about a song popular almost five decades ago.  Strangely, even though I most often listen to country music, tonight will not be a country offering any more than the last was.  It’s true that of the six primary pre-sets on my car stereo, three of them go to country stations.  One goes to a top 40ish type station, and two others go to oldies channels.  The top 40 channel is usually my last choice when I’m looking for a song (I’m a channel surfer from way back) as I’d usually prefer older top 40 songs to today’s chart toppers.  That’s a sure sign of aging, but I’ll just have to live with that I guess.

Anyway, sometimes (and more and more frequently it seems) I hear songs of my youth on the oldies channels, and that really does make me feel old.  But tonight the song that caught my attention was a true oldie, even for an old woman like me.  (And apologies to anyone reading who remembers this tune as part of their own childhood.)

“Bad To Me” is a catchy little song that came out in 1963 (‘64 here in the US), so I suppose, technically, it is a song of my youth, if my infancy counts.  But for me, an “oldie” is anything that was old when it first came to my attention, so this fits the bill.  Anyway, back when I was a kid and first heard this song, I always thought it was the Beatles, and then when I found out it wasn’t, I thought I was just goofy, as apparently I thought all British groups sounded alike.  It was much later that I discovered the song was written by John Lennon, and then I didn’t think I was so goofy at all for being confused.  In fact, I thought it might make me really musically savvy somehow, that I could recognize a songwriter’s style, even if I couldn’t recognize his voice.  Pretty silly the things kids think, isn’t it? 

Anyway, regardless of who sang or wrote it, I always liked it, and I still like it today.  I don’t hear it often, but I did hear it playing tonight, and I turned up the volume, rolled down the windows, and sang along.  Maybe you’ll want to do the same.

 

What’s playing in your world tonight?