POPFESSIONS

Lucy Moore

The first tape that I ever owned was ‘The Best of Buddy Holly and the Crickets’, which I begged my Mum to purchase after a visit to Rock Circus, during which I had become strangely mesmerised by the Buddy Holly waxwork. I also got a mug which I still enjoy tea from. It was my seventh birthday. Nowadays that story makes me sound cool and 50’s revivalist. It also hides the gaping vortex of shame that my first CD single purchase, two years later, was Next of Kin’s ‘24 Hours From You’

Next of Kin, if you are not familiar with their oeuvre, were a fresh faced, long haired, boy band of Essex brothers widely tipped (by me) as the next Hanson. 

The band grazed the top 20 with 24 Hours from You back in 1999, when I was 9 years old and just in the mood for their brand of non-threatening faux transatlantic rock and roll. However, if I’m honest, the main reason behind this single purchase was the fact that they were kind enough to give away a free beanie hat with each copy sold, something which I felt a shrewd investment. It also seemed to make up for the £3.99 price tag, which I would hitherto have spent on sweets, scrunchies, or Girl Talk magazine.

Being only 9 years old, my memories of the song are relatively hazy, although I’m sure I could still sing you all the words if pressed. Instead they come to me in cringe inducing flashes, each one making my palms sweat with embarrassment.

FLASH! I’m wearing the beanie hat in the changing room of a swimming pool, waiting for my Mum to finish helping my brother get dressed and pretending in my head that I’m on the set of a music video, in which the pool will play a crucial and frankly extremely rock and roll centerpiece.

FLASH! I believe the song’s opening- the sound of a plane taking off- to be impossibly glamorous and dream of marrying any of the three band members in order to live a life which features at its core plenty of plane hopping and VIP departure lounges.

FLASH! During the song’s guitar solo, I run around the kitchen table and then slide on my knees across the floor pretending I’m on stage. Sometimes with a tennis racquet.

Like a lot of things you do at 9 years old, I eventually tired of the song, but there’s still part of me which has a soft spot for it. For better or worse it will always be the 1^st single I ever bought with my own money. Well my Mum’s, but you know what I mean.