Remember “Freestyle” music? You know, Alisha’s “All Night Passion“, Sa-Fire’s “Boy I’ve Been Told“, Expose’s “Let Me Be the One“? Go ahead, click on the links, dance around a little, I’ll wait here.
Ok, now I’ll tell you something else – I still listen to this stuff. I used to have hundreds, no really hundreds, of these songs on vinyl, the 12” extended remixes and I played them to death. The music makes me just get up and dance and I’ll tell you something else: the couple of years that this stuff was so popular, all I did was dance. It was also, surprise surprise, the skinniest time of my life! But I digress. I loved this music and I still do. Unfortunately there was a time when I had to put all of my things in storage and the facility told me that the units were climate controlled, but they lied. All of those beautiful pieces of vinyl were melted beyond recognition when I hauled them out of storage. I thought these songs were lost to me forever.
A couple of years ago, this music started to slowly show up on Itunes and I was overjoyed… little by little I started to grow my collection and now I’ve acquired quite a bit of my original collection. At $.99 a song, it’s really easy to, song by song, grow your music library. Of course when you look back through your Itunes invoice history and realize that you could have bought a car with all the money you’ve spent, you might get a little sick to your stomach, but that’s another story and shall be told at another time.
Enter the “genius” sidebar in Itunes 8 and now we have issues. I click on a song and Itunes very conveniently lists all of the other songs by that artist as well as recommendations based on feedback and purchases made by the Itunes community. Example: I click on click on “Heartbeat” by Seduction and I get a listing of all the other songs by Seduction that are available for purchase, ooh and look “It takes Two” I forgot about that one. (There’s an album of their greatest hits for $7.92 – but I’m not interested in the albums because there is always a ballad or two and c’mon – let’s know our limitations, mmmmk? Thanks. ) Under the area of songs from the same artist, is the list that makes it really interesting. Based on user information they’ve listed recommendations.. ok, there’s “Boy I’ve been Told” (see above), “My Heart Skips a Beat” by the Cover Girls, “Too Turned On” by Alisha, Give Me Tonight by Shannon, “I Wonder if I Take You Home” by my girl Lisa Lisa and wait! Jomanda?!* I forgot about her! I loved her! I need all of her songs, right now. Click, click, click, click. Add to cart, enter password – and I’m all Jomanda all the time, or “toim” – She must have been from NY too. So $5.00 later, I have 5 new songs, a renewed interest in this playlist and maybe I’ll even dance around a little and get my cardio on. I could use it.
And, lest you think I’m only about the dance music, remind me to tell you about the time I had a couple of glasses of wine and restocked my Springsteen library.
*I think I owned every outfit in that video.