The Song of the Day is:
Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark – “If You Leave”
From the Soundtrack to the film Pretty in Pink (1986)
If you leave, don’t leave now
Please don’t take my heart away
Promise me, just one more night
Then we’ll go our separate ways
We’ve always had time on our side
Now it’s fading fast
Every second, every moment
We’ve got to, we’ve gotta make it last
Andy McCluskey – Paul Humphreys – Martin Cooper
I saw that today was the late John Hughes’ birthday. He would have been 71, but he died unexpectedly in 2009. Hughes was a filmmaker (producer, screenwriter, director, etc.) who did such a good job capturing youthful stories and ideas in the 1980’s, that he helped define what being a young person in that decade looked like. My wife and I had a fun little discussion about which song, taken from one of his movies, would be best to celebrate his legacy today. I have done a couple songs previously (“Carol of the Bells” from Home Alone and “Weird Science” from the film of the same name…we still miss you Bill Paxton), but there is a wealth of possibilities to choose from: Psychedelic Furs, Kate Bush, Yello, The English Beat and Spandau Ballet among them. I’m sure that many terrific John Hughes mixtapes exist. If I were to eulogize him with a film montage, it would be set to Simple Minds’ “Don’t You Forget About Me” from The Breakfast Club, but my wife wasn’t really feeling that song today. That’s fine, I’ll save that classic for another day. A spot or two further down in recognizability comes “If You Leave” by Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark. “If You Leave” comes from the climax of the Hughes-penned Pretty In Pink. It was specifically written for this film, and in an attempt to replicate the success of the previous year’s “Don’t You Forget About Me”, “If You Leave” was purposely performed at the same tempo (120bpm). Since I’m featuring this band, I had to confirm my speculation that “Manoeuvres” is just a British way of spelling “maneuver” (much like “colour” or “flavour”), but I wanted to make sure the band wasn’t making a pun or other wordplay. It’s easier just to refer to them as OMD. While OMD is more popular and has had much more recognizable singles in their native England, “If You Leave” was actually more famous in the US than in their homeland. Surely that was due to the John Hughes-bump. I spent a little extra time listening to the music of OMD today, and other than today’s song, i didn’t recognize any familiar hits. I did like what I heard though. There are a number of bands that have a similar sound to them, from Human League to Naked Eyes and Erasure to the Pet Shop Boys. They’re a British synth-pop and to me they seem extremely listenable, though I would have to do a lot of listening to find out what makes them unique from their many contemporaries. They’ve scored dozens of charting hits in the UK over their four decades, though with a lengthy hiatus from 1996-2006. The group mostly consists of Andy McCluskey, Paul Humphreys and Martin Cooper who all play keyboards for the group, among their other duties. The group still performs, with their most recent album being released in 2017.
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Hear Today, Grown Tomorrow 