That to me would be success.

I've been spending a fair bit of time of late putting my CD collection on the computer, as one does. It's prompted me to revisit many of my eighties favourites. As a child of the seventies, I was a teenager during the eighties, when some of the best music ever was made. INXS, Dire Straits, Foreigner, The Bangles, Cyndi Lauper. All awesomely wonderfully good stuff.

Two artists particularly stand out for me, because they released incredibly good albums that really resonated with my mood and my angst right when I was particularly moody and angst-ridden. The Pretenders and Suzanne Vega. As a fifteen year old, I bought an LP of The Pretenders "Get Close". Two tracks on there blew my mind. My Baby, and Hymn to Her. From My Baby:

I want you to love me, That's all I want from you
I want you to love me, One day

I know I'm a peasant, dressed as a princess
But that doesn't mean you have to take my clothes away

If I could show you some happiness
Then I would feel like a real princess

That to me would be success

Now Hymn to Her felt like Chrissy Hynde saw straight through my charade and wrote a song just for the real me:

Let me inside you, into your room
I've heard it's lined with the things you don't show

Lay me beside you, down on the floor
I've been your lover, from the womb to the tomb

I dress as your daughter when the moon becomes round
You be my mother when everything's gone

Yeah, there was plenty of shit inside of me that I was never showing anyone, then. This song was like an anthem for my hidden feelings, and I played it over and over.

At much the same time Suzanne Vega comes along and releases her self titled album. From "Small Blue Thing":

Today I am a small blue thing
Like a marble, or an eye

With my knees against my mouth I am perfectly round
I am watching you

And from "The Queen and the Soldier":

The soldier came knocking upon the queen's door
He said, "I am not fighting for you any more"
The queen knew she'd seen his face someplace before
And slowly she let him inside.

He said, "I've watched your palace up here on the hill
And I've wondered who's the woman for whom we all kill
But I am leaving tomorrow and you can do what you will
Only first I am asking you why."

...

And she said, "I've swallowed a secret burning thread
It cuts me inside, and often I've bled"
He laid his hand then on top of her head
And he bowed her down to the ground.

"Tell me how hungry are you? How weak you must feel
As you are living here alone, and you are never revealed
But I won't march again on your battlefield"
And he took her to the window to see.

...

But the crown, it had fallen, and she thought she would break
And she stood there, ashamed of the way her heart ached
She took him to the doorstep and she asked him to wait
She would only be a moment inside.

Out in the distance her order was heard
And the soldier was killed, still waiting for her word
And while the queen went on strangeling in the solitude she preferred
The battle continued on

I rather liked that she had him killed at the end. It was somehow proper.

Back to My Baby. The last couple of verses go something like this:

C'mon, c'mon, c'mon baby, take my hand
C'mon, c'mon, c'mon show me to the love land

Can this really happen in this day and age
Suddenly to just turn the page, like walking on stage
My baby

There's a slowly rising audience cheering just after "Like walking on stage" that still gives me goosebumps. They just don't make music like this any more.

Anyway, buy these two CDs, listen to them over and over for the next six months, and then you'll understand just a tiny bit of where I'm from.

And that to me would be success.