"What About Love" by 'til tuesday

1986 / #26

Rate Your Music score: 3.55 out of 5!

I have a knack for innovation and thinking outside the box.

When I was 13, I copied down the characters from a children's book, and spent most of the fall setting aside each day to mimic the misbehavior of a particular young character. They each had a specialty, such as cutting photos out of perfectly good books, tracking mud everywhere, acting up in school, or losing things. I think I even started writing an Atari BASIC game based on this.

I think this is what led me to act up at a younger cousin's birthday party at McDonald's. I stuck tape on a light bulb over a table, causing it to melt onto the table. I shot straw paper at some old man. I filled the toilet with tissue paper. Other than that, I didn't do anything that bad. I got in trouble though. These days, the school system would connive with the McDonald's to ban students from the restaurant, even though this event had nothing to do with school. But when I was growing up, this was a free country - usually. Well, sort of.

I think the character in the book who tracked mud everywhere may have been what inspired me to get mud all over my shoes at recess at school and track it all over the building. I also kept a muddy brick in my desk for months.

Music can be a snapshot in time. These days, Billboard's Hot 100 is dominated by Christmas or even Halloween oldies for half the year. Last fall, Billboard tightened the rules as to how long a track could stay on the chart if it was below a certain position, but inexplicably said this change wouldn't apply to seasonal songs. But in 1986, records zipped up and down the chart with dispatch. And 'til tuesday - as with a-ha, the band's name was usually written in all lowercase - came through!

I don't ever remember seeing the video for the enjoyable lost hit profiled in this entry until YouTube came along. When I first saw it, it looked like lead singer Aimee Mann had a big, long column of mucus dangling out of her nose at 2:36. But it's actually a strand of hair.

I'm looking over my shoulder for more lost hits!