Annoying Earworms From The 80’s

There were a few of them, right? Beat it, Sussudio, and Like A Virgin. They got in our brains and stayed there until we hated them! (yet loved them)

Patrick was obsessed with earworms like those. In 1984, I recall that he kept mentioning one of them, but he couldn’t remember its title. He wouldn’t shut up about it.

‘No, Patrick. I don’t know it. I don’t know that song.’

‘You’ll know it when you hear it,’ he said with enthusiasm. ‘It goes like this.’

He sang a few bars, but it didn’t make a difference.

I shook my head. ‘No! I don’t know it,’ I shouted. It didn’t help that Patrick was a lousy singer. It didn’t help that his voice was breaking. We both suffered from that.

I liked Patrick. We often spent hours talking about our music collections. We had similar tastes. Our cassette tapes were shared and copied. I should’ve known that song right away. If it was on one of his tapes, it would’ve been on one of mine. Somehow, this one slipped through the cracks.

‘No mate! I have no idea what you’re talking about. I don’t even like that song!’

And then, just last weekend, a random Spotify ’80s playlist shuffled itself to an oddly familiar tune. An old song boomed out from inside my headphones. I liked it, but wondered what it was. I waited for the chorus to come and, ZAP, that old mystery was solved. That was it! That was the song Patrick was on about that day! Computer One – a stupid ’80s earworm. I knew the song. I did. I knew it well. I just never knew its name. 

Computer One did have its title in the chorus, so I should’ve known. I didn’t listen to it right. I may have had good reason to disregard it; its intro has a distinctively plastic quality. I wasn’t a fan of plastic tunes at the time. (What saves it is a nice guitar riff anchor.)

CasioTone-styled high-hat 16th notes begin a number that Depeche Mode or New Order could’ve recorded, but it’s not by either of those groups. Instead, it’s by a virtually unknown one-hit-wonder band from my own country. It tells the story of a man longing for his lost love and asking his computer questions about why she left him. (Romantic, right?).

At the end of the 1970s, there was a belief that computers would come to know everything and take over. People could ask any question, and it would return with an answer. (We also believed machines would rise and become self-aware, but that’s a different thing.)

When the eighties arrived, songwriters were ready to explore those narratives that humanised computers. Together in Electric Dreams led the charge, but many lesser-known songs also walked this path. Computer One was one of them. Spotify ’80s landed me right in the middle of a long-lost memory.

And then, as I listened to its words for the first time in three decades, I wondered about the song’s applicability to modern life. Online dating has become popular since the release of Computer One. Swipe right/left is today’s thing – and we can’t take our eyes off our devices. I watch and listen to younger people spend more time with them than nurturing the relationships they have with those right in front of them. They want their phones to be everything, to answer every question they ask. The irony is that technology can’t answer any of the more profound, existential questions they’re asking it. Although it is human to talk to inanimate objects, technology only synthesises empathy.

Computer One ends with a hard-hitting light-bulb moment. Our lovesick guy realises that he is going about it the wrong way and, instead of spending time with his girlfriend, he’s transfixed to a machine. Now she is gone and lost forever.

Patrick was right. I did like the song. I get why he was so obsessed with it. I think I like it more now because of that. And it resolved a mystery to a long, unanswered question. It’s not an earth-shattering revelation, but I think it’s a nice thing. Spotify gave me a precious little gift.

When I wrote SEETHINGS, I dropped a few gifts like this one into the story. Music has been a constant presence in my life, and I appreciate the special connections that certain songs have to the past. When I listen to a particular lyric or tune, I’m whisked back to when I first heard it. I can actually see myself and the people around me at that exact time. I handed this character trait to my protagonist to take a reader like you on a similar journey into the past.

If you also enjoy being whisked away by nostalgic music, the 80s, or reliving parts of your childhood, you may just enjoy reading my novel SEETHINGS.

–Michael Forman (Author of Dark Adult Fiction)

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