Shoes, Ships, and Sealing Wax

Those oldies but goodies

I've admitted, unashamedly, several times, that I listen to the local oldies station. They were making my evening during dinner tonight when they played Oh Babe, What Would You Say?, Hurricane Smith's 1972 hit.

I love that song. I haven't heard it in years.

Then they ruined my evening after a few commercials by playing Uptown Girl by Billy Joel.

I have nothing against Billy Joel. There was a time when I really liked Billy Joel, even...I pretty much wore out my copy of The Stranger. I still like Scenes from an Italian Restaurant...especially the line "They got a divorce as a matter of course and they parted the closest of friends."

But my oldies station didn't play Scenes from an Italian Restaurant, or Piano Man, or My Life.

No, they played Uptown Girl. That song has a video. No song that has a video (not a promotional film, a video) is an oldie.

Is it?

What defines "oldie?"

I think of oldies as '50's and 60's...which they were in the '70's and '80's. I guess it is time for me to suck it up and realize that the popular, current music from my youth is now old. I need to come to terms with the fact that somewhere someone is playing an album that I heard on the progressive campus station when I was in college, and his kid is saying "Dad, do we have to listen to that ancient crap?"

I need to start looking for the "easy listening" radio station.