POPFESSIONS

Steve Earley

The thing that makes me laugh most about being 13 was that it was the age I tried so eagerly and failed so spectTACularly to fit in, that I secretly abandoned all effort and spent the rest of my teens enjoying a punch-line that only I really got. Turns out that straight boys don’t express their crush on Mariah Carey by writing the lyrics to ‘Hero’ on their school bags. Nor do they talk about Belinda Carlisle being ‘hotter as a Go-Go’. NOR do they put posters of Sophie B Hawkins (just face, no tits) inside their lockers. In general, fancying girls “because of the music” does not project the idea that you’d know how to show a girl a good time in an upstairs bedroom at the next free gaff.

Sophie B Hawkins’s ‘Whaler’  got me through that awkward stage. I first heard ‘Right Beside You’ on a then fledgling radio station Dublin’s Rock 104, and instantly felt like I was splashing around naked under the Irish Sea, in a good way. For a short period they added ‘As I Lay Me Down’ to the play list at the same time, and I’d listen hour upon hour at night waiting to press record on my tape deck, the goal being to have a full cassette full of just those two songs. I then copped on and bought ‘Whaler’ itself. “She is SO RIGHT’ I thought. “This album IS The Sea!” I played it until it warped.

 But nothing beat the thrill of hearing ‘Right Beside You’ or ‘As I Lay Me Down’ on the actual radio. It was like it a public service, provided only for me. A breath of fresh air with each play telling me everything would be OK. Those songs became the soundtrack to my first “I think I should” girl kiss, my first “uh-oh what’s all this” boy crush, not to mention my first “he’s not bad but his Dad is a RIDE” situation.

Just last week an end-of-series montage of some US drama on telly began with the intro “It felt like springtime on a February morning…” and the 29-year-old me instantly burst into embarassing snot-tears. From my 2^nd floor flat in Islington, I was back in ‘94, splashing around under the sea again.