Our song

It was the 1980s, and we were in an expensive night club with a DJ and dizzying lights and too many people. "No Smoking" wasn't yet a thing, and tobacco stink was stinging my eyes. Me being me, I should've been grumpy and looking for the door, but instead I was having a wonderful time, dancing with April, my first serious girlfriend. She was more serious to me, though, than I was to her.

After dancing, we returned sweaty and ecstatic to our table and drinks, and she shouted to me, "I wish the DJ would play 'I Melt with You'." The place was so loud that I'm the only one who could've heard her, but coincidentally, that song started playing just moments later. We laughed and abandoned our drinks and darted onto the dance floor again.

We both liked that song, and so did everyone else who had a radio. At the beach, at a party, in the car, or on your Walkman, you couldn't go an hour without hearing Modern English, "I Melt with You," and I always wanted to crank up the volume. It's a smile from the first notes.

April eventually dropped me, of course, but she did it gently. No surprise; I was Lyle Lovett and she was Julia Roberts. Even years later, though, "I Melt with You" was "our song," at least to me.

Then a second-rate chocolate company reduced it to an annoying jingle for candy bars. After that, I couldn't hear even a snippet of "I Melt with You" without thinking about chocolate. That's how advertising works, and that's why advertising is a dingleberry on humanity's butt.

Then again, the band was a one-hit wonder, and once it was clear that there wouldn't be a second hit, what would you choose — artistic integrity and a lousy job to augment your shrinking royalties, or would you cash that chocolate check to have no financial worries for the rest of your life? Maybe that's what I'd do, too. Make me an offer, and this blog could be Hershey's Diary of a Fat Slob.

During the pandemic, Modern English got back together to re-record the song, via some elaborate socially-distanced video collaboration. I had to hear it, and it was the first time I'd really listened to that song in years.

Suddenly I was young and only slightly pudgy, and you know, even without my misty memories of April, it feels impossible to be in a bad mood when that song is playing. All of yesterday morning I melted into it, and then for another few hours late in the afternoon. Maybe I'll grow weary of hearing it over and over again, but — not yet. First thing this morning, I hit 'play' and 'repeat', and again it's making me smile.

If a better piece of bubble-gum pop-music has ever been made, name that tune. I'm nominating "I Melt with You" by Modern English as the most purely perfect pop tune ever recorded.

Pay attention to the lyrics, though — it's a bubbly, buoyant song about making love as World War III explodes all around. When nuclear weapons obliterate all humanity, I'll melt with you...

And now I'm remembering the restaurant where April & I ate dinner that night, and the dress and perfume she wore, and her smile as she swayed to that song. 

She's a grandmother now, three times over, probably as wrinkled and gray as I am, but to me she'll always be young and beautiful.

I'll stop the world and melt with you
I've seen some changes but
    it's getting better all the time
There's nothing you and I won't do
I'll stop the world and melt with you

The future's open wide...

 5/28/2021  
Republished 7/27/2023  

 itsdougholland.com
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