Wednesday, January 25, 2017

Song #150: "I Got You"--Split Enz (1980)

We begin the Top 150 today paying homage to a short, but influential portion of pop/rock music history.

"New Wave", in its mainstream popularity, didn't last a long time as an "era". There were rumblings of it on Top 40 radio in the late 1970's as the disco stranglehold began to finally wane, but 1980 was the year that the genre took over, for a time, the charts.

After M's "Pop Muzik" helped usher in the new decade, you had everyone from Gary Numan and Devo to early radio songs from The Police, as well as today's group from New Zealand, putting New Wave on stereos and car radios nationwide.

The genre's effect, however, lasted well into the decade as it morphed and evolved, but 1980 was a special year for its sound, and from that year, today's tune, the only charting song for Split Enz in America.

They almost had two songs in our Top 500, as "Nobody Takes Me Seriously" fell just short, but they do make the countdown with a song that caused me to immediately turn up the radio back in the magical, transitional year (personally and musically) of 1980.


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