I’ve written about Tears for Fears’ “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” before. It’s one of those songs from the 1980s that takes me back to another time in my life. I wouldn’t relive high school for all the money in the world, but the music from that era can always make me think about those days. I don’t know why that is, but I suspect I’m not the only one who feels like this, either.
Last night it was raining in Chicago, and I was driving around, looking for something to listen to on the radio. And I turned to an 80s-related nostalgia station, and this song was playing. Whatever mental images of this song I may have already, they were supplemented by the images of night, the city, and the rain coming down.
Back in the 1980s, I was a long way from Chicago, both literally and figuratively. I never in my wildest imagination would have thought this is where I would end up living. But here I am, and there’s no place else I’m ever going to be after this, either. This is home for me now.
So as I drove through the streets of my new hometown, listening to the sounds of another time in my life, I realized that memories are a lingering thing. They can be good, or they can be bad, but they are always there. To the day I die, I’ll mentally picture the video for this song, with the guy (the singer, I think) driving a convertible through the desert, and the band playing this song in the studio, and two other guys doing some sort of a dance routine in what appeared to be time with the song.
But now, the next time I hear that song on the radio, I’ll possibly also think of a rainy night in Chicago, and a trip down Western Avenue, and the not-so-young-anymore guy who harkened back to an earlier time in life. As the band tells us in their song, “nothing ever lasts forever.”
Blue Batting Helmet 