Westerm music - Familiar???

Nope. This isn't a 'songs of the 21st century countdown'... This is different.

Kids my age grew up watching Chitrahaar on Sunday mornings till the early nineties. I really do not know when exactly I started listening to English music. I remember being your run-of-the-mill adolescent whose love for music centered around contemporary bollywood numbers. I had no idea who Dylan or Lennon was. Far I was concerned, The Beatles were a family of bugs who lived down a cottage from Mr. Catterpillar in an Enid Blyton book.

So, recently as I was going thru and arranging my music, I was genuinely surprised at how much Western music I have. The suprise stemmed from the the fact that I actually liked so much Western music... understood and liked it. Amazing. I was introduced to it a decade ago, when I got my first PC. I got a free music CD with the PC drivers, and Billy Joel's 'River of Dreams' was the first song music ever owned. It remains one of my favorite songs to this day.

Anyway, as I was running thru my collection, I noticed a few old songs that have just stuck around ...

Here's one song for instance, that everyone who was born around 1980 in India is familiar with. This is regardless of whether the person is interested in western music, interested in music at all, owns a computer, speaks English ...... "Summer of '69' by Bryan Adams. The song is played at all social functions, if the occassion demands a song. It effortlessly cuts thru the folk songs at a traditional Indian wedding. It can make bored employees break into a jig at a corporate annual get-together with the same ease. It shall be played at Holi and Diwali celebrations, even Ganpati visarjans, for no apparent reason - probably just because everyone in the youth understands and enjoys it. I know its been remixed with Punjabi bhangra music, and has been given every synthetic treatment possible.

It just so happens that listening to western music is the cool thing while you're growing. If you think you can't relate to this - think if you had to choose between a guy who listed to Kumar Sanu, and another who listened to Bob Dylan - who would you pick? Seriously.... who would you be seen around with? With this whole trying-to-fit in mindset, an uninitiated kid starts listening to whatever (s)he can lay her / his hands on. Some english tracks have become legendary in this regard.

Take 'Desert Rose' by Sting for instance. It was probably 4 years after I had initailly heard the songs, that I could actually make out the lyrics. And I know most people still can't. The frustating part about this song is, that it is so familiar. And yet when it plays, you find yourself unable to sing any of it, thereby forfeiting the claim that you are actually familiar with the song!

And the there's the eternal love song 'Nothing's gonna change my love for you'. Everyone shall have a copy of this track. It shall either be by Glenn Mederios or George Benson, although I have not been able to determine who actually sang the song.

Other tracks worth a mention that may ring a bell include Uptown Girl (Billy Joel / Boyzone), 25 minutes (MLTR), It's my Life (Bon Jovi), Pretty Woman (, Roy Osborne), Careless whisper (George Michaels), Hotel California (The Eagles) and Candle in the wind (Elton John)

If you can relate to this, do leave back a comment with your comments.