So THAT'S who it was! For those times when you heard a song when you were young, and only found out who it was, like DECADES later!

.. I picked up a cheap copy of "Mirror" by Emitt Rhodes, played it this morning, and was amazed to recognise "Birthday Lady" from something that was played on UKTV back in 1971 or so.

Heck, the video is even on youtube!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzCl4WttEAA

Thanks Mark, I almost started this thread myself a coupla weeks ago! There was a period during a camping holiday in the summer of '77 when the radio station's playlist seemed to consist of only 3 records: "I Feel Love", "Barracuda" and a spacy one I never knew the name of. It took 20 years and a viewing of "Boogie Nights" to discover that the song was the Brothers Johnson's "Strawberry Letter 23". It was a double revelation since I'd been familiar with that song title since the '80s, knew it'd been a big hit but didn't know what it sounded like. In retrospect I'm surprised I didn't connect the two independently. (Of course, post-internet it'd have taken me five minutes rather than two decades.)

Ah, wondeful track.

I picked up the 12" single and found that the bit where the intro comes in too fast, then repeats slower, wasn't the DJ messing up but on the record!

Not decades in any way, but it still felt like an eternity. I listened a lot to Radio Lux in the summer of 1983, and one of the songs they played a lot was "Everything Counts" by Depeche Mode. I never got any idea who it was, I mean I had heard the name Depeche Mode and all, but didn't manage to hear them present it as them. I really liked the song, but never found out who it was.

Then, four years later, I decided to investigate DM somewhat, and I bought a cassete of "The Singles (81-85)". Which is when I found out that "Everything Counts" was indeed quite familiar.

this happened to me! I was in a Friendly's restaurant in Delaware in the late-90's ('97/'98?) and heard a beautiful airy fast ballad with plaintive male singing, rhythmic starts n stops and terrific West Coast guitar harmonies & modulations a la Lee Underwood (Tim Buckley), Bryan MacLean (Love) and John Cipollina/Gary Duncan (Quicksilver Messenger Service). wasn't sure who it could be, but suspected someone like Traffic.

eight or so years later, shopping in a grocery store I finally heard it again. wasn't gonna let it get away this time so I hopefully asked the store manager who was standing nearby and had (just) a few years on me. the song was already fading but he got it - the singer: Marty Balin, the band: Jefferson Starship, the song: "With Your Love" (from Spitfire 1976). still sounds lovely!

Weird that this should show up. In the morning when no one's up and I'm making my daughter's lunch for school I'll hum some tune or other but all the time I'd find myself humming a little melody in waltz time whose title I couldn't remember at all or why I always was dredging it up. It was driving me crazy not knowing what this song title was! About a week ago I was cleaning and previewing some vinyl I was selling at auction and, lo and behold, "Junk" from the first McCartney solo record. I hadn't heard that song in at least 30 years but I guess a memorable melody is a memorable melody.

I've posted about this before, but I heard a wisp of a song in a bank lobby several years ago. The sound was terribly faint, so faint that I couldn't make out a single word, but the sound and melody were instantly familiar and deeply evocative. It was agonizing. There was no one around to ask (bank was closed, its lobby only open to weekend ATM users), and I knew that I'd never retain the half-heard, half-remembered fragments of the tune. I listened for a minute or two, surrendered to the fact that I might never figure out what it was and went on with my day. Fast forward a few years, and somone here posted a random youtube link on an 80s thread. Turns out it was Robert Palmer's "Johnny and Mary", and it's every bit as wistful and oddly creepy as I remember.
Thanks, ILM!

For me, it's mid to late 70s songs that I must have heard on the radio as a very young child. I identified two of them recently: "Oh My My" by Ringo Starr, and "When I Need You" by Leo Sayer.

For many years, this was Chicago's "Wishing You Were Here", and then it was Stevie Wonder's "As". However, I think I've arrived to the point where I've found all my lost childhood songs. Damn internet.

My girlfriend Jane back in 2001 or so while near Baker Street in London: "It always makes me think of that Gerry Rafferty song."

Me: "Gerry Rafferty?"

Jane: "You know, with the sax part."

Me: "...huh."

Etc. etc. so after digging it up:

Me: "Oh THAT'S what it's called!"

And I didn't realize until this very second that there was a video, actually:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EgbGaYTkkPU

Another that took me nearly a quarter-century to identify: Jimmy Castor's "Troglodyte", which I may never have heard more than once or twice as a five-year old in my parets' car, but all that growling and the "sockittomesockittome" made a big impression. (Evidently, since I didn't hear it at all in the 20+ year interim between childhood and buying the Rhino comp in the '90s. Once those noveltyish singles fall off the chart, they're basically never revived by oldies radio.)

Can we include songs that we still don't know what they are? If so, deep in my subsconscious there is a song that I for some reason associate with Queen's "Killer Queen" and the theme from Maude, and it rhymes "ladies" with "Euphrates," or something to that effect, and has a verse that ends maybe with the line "my lady fair". I can even halfway hum it (but unfortunately I can't transcribe the hums here.) But whatever it is, I haven't heard it for at least 30 years. And as time goes on, I'm wondering whether I may just have dreamt it.

> Gerry Rafferty

Wow. While I instantly recognized the sax part, I don't remember a thing about the verse. It's like they've grafted some random AM ballad into this famous instrumental.

Rufus Wainright? (xpost)

...would have been three or four years old when I heard that song in the mid/late '70s. So nope, probably not him.

yeah, posted in haste.

Google'd "Tigris and Euphrates" and "ladies" ...

There have been dozens of songs from the 70s which I heard when I was very young which I've managed to work out over the last five or six years (thanks to the internet). I'd heard of Supertramp, but had no idea what they sounded like, until I realised that I knew Breakfast In America and The Logical Song. Ditto for Electric Light Orchestra (whose music I only realised I knew when Mr Blue Sky was used in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind).

Then there are songs I knew, but didn't know the name of, or who they were by, and had never even heard of the group/singer they were by, which I managed to track down by humming/singing to random people until someone could identify them: e.g. Forever Autumn by Justin Hayward.

The strangest one of all was a song that I saw on Top of the Pops before I was even 4 years old. Despite only hearing it for a few weeks in 1977 and then never again for three decades I could remember the tune clearly and some of the lyrics ("pack up your rubber duck", "I'm so sorry"). I was convinced it was by Kate Bush and couldn't understand why it was never mentioned in any article/feature about her. Or why nobody else seemed to remember her singing this song. Eventually google told me it was You're Moving Out Today - Carol Bayer Sager (who she?).

*(well, more than ten)

Carol Bayer Sager (who she?).

The former Mrs. Burt Bacharach, among other things.

The most surprising one to me was "Human Nature" by MJ. I randomly heard it when I was in my late teens, and it was one of those songs I hadn't even realized I had heard before, but it came back to me instantly. I must have heard it a lot as a small child and probably not at all since then. The song still makes me feel nostalgic, even though I have no specific memories attached to the song.

"No One Ever Is To Blame" and "Lily Was Here" were songs I could hum bits of that took me years to figure out.

I probably heard "Who Loves You" about a zillion times on the radio as a kid, and it was only in college that I discovered that it was by the Four Seasons.

recently discovered that the beautiful spacey soft rock tune that has haunted me in restaurants and drug stores for years is.... "waiting for a girl like you" by foreigner.

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ughhh just click it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4_r-x9MOYU

That's a good one for this. Just last week I was trying to pass that hard earned knowledge on to someone else.

I never knew the artist or the title of "Vehicle" by the Ides Of March until it appeared on this poll Have a Nice Decade: The 70s Pop Culture Box CD1 Poll. Thought it was a more palatable than usual Blood, Sweat and Tears outing.

My was 'Toast & Marmalade For Tea' by Tin Tin, which ran through my head for over 30 years until I Googled some of the lyrics I recalled. This was a fantastically satisfying discovery. HOWEVER:

I will be insane until someone helps me identify this other song. It is an AM-radio, late-sixties sounding pop song, sung by a man with a voice reminiscent perhaps of Glen Campbell, in that range. It has a haunting, melancholy Jimmy Webb-ishness to it, and the lyrics tell a story of an adolescent boy who loses his innocence one night to an older woman and becomes a man as a result. Somebody on this damn board can surely say, "Oh well of course, it's 'blah blah blah' by 'blah blah.'

Oh well, of course it's "Summer (The First Time)" by Bobby Goldsboro

(I thang yew)

I worked in a rather shitty home furnishings store when i was a student, so every weekend for 5 years or so i had to put up with some bunch of unknown and mostly untalented studio musicians slaughtering the hits of the last 20-30 years over the store P.A., because they were too cheap to pay to play the real recordings. thus i have a huge backlog of songs i know down to every lyric and riff in my mind, yet no idea who a lot of them are. Just about every month i'll work out another; most recently i realised i'd been listening to all of the singles from Tango In The Night every week. Nothing better than cheap studio musicians screaming Little Lies at you while you try to serve irritating customers on a saturday.

Years ago when I worked in a pub "Pictures of Matchstick Men" used to come on the jukebox regularly, but it was only in the last year I realised it was a Stone Roses song.

i love this thread.

xpost is that satire, or did you mean to type Status Quo there?

http://www.engagecommunitychurch.com/content/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/you-decide001.jpg

http://newsflash.creatingkeepsakes.com/images/radio_button.gifI will
http://newsflash.creatingkeepsakes.com/images/radio_button.gifThat was big of you.

Until 2 minutes ago I had no idea that I Was Made For Loving You was by Kiss. Thank you Ken Bruce.

This might seem shockingly ignorant here, but it took me the entire 90s of Toto - "Africa" being a punchline to jokes to realise that, oh, that's THAT song! Right.

Meanwhile, as a kid I loved "Major Tom" by Peter Schilling, and was suddenly reunited with it via the medium of unexpected youtube embed while wandering round the internet one evening. I suppose internet-involving answers take all the romance out, though.

I've never heard "Major Tom" before but fuck me it's brilliant.

Yeah, but then...

It's funny, the track (which I mentioned on post 1) was something that would pop into my head every so often, but if I'd tried to google it, all I would have as a basis would be "Well, it was on TV once in the early seventies, and the bloke sings "a ha ha I love you" at one point"

Which is not exactly going to limit the search results...

I heard Pete Shelly's "Homosapien" a lot when I was a kid, but it wasn't until many years later--and I'd been listening to the Buzzcocks for some time--that I put two and two together.

Meanwhile, as a kid I loved "Major Tom" by Peter Schilling, and was suddenly reunited with it via the medium of unexpected youtube embed while wandering round the internet one evening. I suppose internet-involving answers take all the romance out, though.

woah, ^THIS

I clicked on this thread to say "Major Tom". I actually started an ILM "identify this song from my rubbish description of it plz" thread to no avail. Then I stumbled across a cover of it online...

xp

Oh well, of course it's "Summer (The First Time)" by Bobby Goldsboro

(I thang yew)

― Mark G, Thursday, October 15, 2009 7:07 AM (6 hours ago) Bookmark

So in THE VERY NEXT POST after mine, the genius Marg G effortlessly solved a riddle of the ages for me. Thank you sir.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYHEBa6Xx48

Wow, ^^^ song is great!

Seconded, great song!

My mystery song I heard on college radio sometime in the 90's. All I remember was someone saying/singing, "...and then the cops came" followed by someone singing, "..and then they came." I may even be wrong about that. I remember it being kind of angular, but it's all very hazy. I meant to call the station to try to find out what it was, but I forgot.

btw - see above:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gyp0f8L5nd4

millie jackson's version of the bobby goldsboro tune, off caught up, is sublime