Everyday in May: Songs that Bring Back Memories

I'm making up for a lot of Every Day in May posts today and backdating them, so they will all say "today's prompt," even though I didn't write them on the day for which they are posted. Once again, I got really busy, and will have to catch up on comments over the weekend. Today's prompt is: "Five songs or pieces of music that speak to you or bring back memories. Use Grooveshark or YouTube to include them in the post."

I love music, but that was not always the case. During the time I was raised on the farm, we played very little music, and we had no TV. My parents had records, but I don't remember them ever playing anything. At least they never played anything I remembered until later on. The weird thing is that I love their musical taste, but I guess I just couldn't appreciate it until I got older. I just didn't care about music back then.

But then we moved to the city, and started watching TV. One evening, we were watching the Grammy Awards, and something amazing appeared. It was a group of three women dressed in shiny gold dresses. They jumped around, danced and sang their hearts out on a compilation of three different songs. I was an instant fan. It was The Pointer Sisters, and this was one of the songs they sang:


Ruth Pointer always reminded me of my mother because my mom has such a deep voice. Do you remember the song "Automatic," with that deeper than deep voice? I love that song. Anyway, my mom luckily had a cassette tape, and I listened to it over and over. I just loved it.

But then Duran Duran came along, and I found myself with a girly crush on Simon Le Bon. My mother also happened to have a Duran Duran tape, so that was another one I listened to over and over and over again. Here are clips from the first music video and song that hooked me in:


By the way, I have no idea what "The Reflex" means, or what the hell they are saying. I'm not sure it makes any sense to them either. I still love that song anyway, but it's more about the feeling it evokes rather than what it means.

After crushing for awhile, I got back to loving truly quality music when I saw a music video for "These Dreams" by Heart:


I quickly learned through my mother that Heart had been around for a long time. Again, she already had some of their music. I love "These Dreams," but after learning of their other music, I realized that it was just so-so compared to the rest of their musical selection. I could probably make this whole post just about Heart, but instead I'll just link to some of my favorites: "Crazy on You," "Magic Man," and "Barracuda." That's just a very small selection. They have so many awesome songs!

Then came my very first concert: Billy Idol. I've already written about this, but because that was one of my favorite concerts of all time, many Billy Idol songs are memorable to me. This is another one where I could make the entire post about just one musician, but I think this video and song probably sums up my memories best:


The last memorable song I'm choosing is one that hit me like a ton of bricks when I first saw it as a video on MTV (back when they still played music): "I Need You Tonight" by INXS. This song and video hurled me back into crush-dom (or should I say "crush-dumb"?). Both the song and Michael Hutchence was about the hottest thing I had heard or seen on TV. Needless to say, I was floored, and was addicted to INXS for about two years:


I'm just glad my crush on Michael Hutchence had long since died out by the time he committed suicide. It was still very sad news, but I would have been so crushed had it happened back then. I'd rather remember INXS in their successful days as in this video than in their later years. Ah, memories!