Erasure

Man, they're getting old. And this is from 2024.

I put a bunch of music that I haven't listened to in a while on my phone's queue in my mp3 player (I refuse to stream music. This is why I need an Android; I need to be able to plug in my microSD card with all my music on it into my phone.) I listened over the last few weeks to several of my 90s and beyond synthpop bands, like Cosmicity, etc. I earlier had put all of my Red Flag on tap. Most recently I finished all of my tracks by the Pet Shop Boys, and moved into Erasure. A few years ago I got all of the "modern" albums (at the time) that I didn't have and added them to my phone, but I'm not even sure that I've listened to them more than once since then. I suspect that I have a bunch of tracks that I don't even care about, but I don't know them well enough to say. I have a more curated list of the tracks from the era when I was more into Erasure, i.e., from the 80s and early 90s. 

I was a big fan of theirs at that time. I kind of saw them as the anti-Depeche Mode; where Depeche were dark and pensive, Erasure were more light and whimsical, offering a different side of the same coin of synthpop music. Not that I used the label at the time; I called it synthesizer New Wave. And that's not exactly true; Erasure certainly had some serious and even somber tracks, but speaking in generalizations, their vibe was very different than that of Depeche Mode's. Yes, in spite of Speak & Spell and Vince Clark's original founding of that band as well. But in the 90s, I kind of lost the plot with Erasure. At some point after their eponymous album released in 1995, I didn't pay attention to them for a while. So, from my perspective, older albums like Cowboy and Loveboat were "modern" albums, by which I mean that they came out during the winter of my discontent with Erasure and I hadn't heard them before. I don't remember how far I got at the time, because the tracks are mostly all mixed without their album tags retained, but I've got a lot to listen to. But I haven't (yet) heard any songs that I didn't already know very well.

I first heard of Erasure when "Chains of Love" hit the radio airwaves in 1988, and I fairly quickly bought The Innocents. It took probably a year or so before I bought the two earlier albums, and I bought Wild! when it was new in late 1989, during my senior year of high school. Chorus came out when I was on my mission, but I saw it in a store on a p-day and bought it, even though I didn't have a CD player and couldn't listen to it until I got home, so I think my release might be a South American release. Not that that matters anymore; I haven't even unpacked my CDs, and rarely listened to any of them for the last ten to fifteen years anyway. Just a small note. I Say I Say I Say came out shortly before I got married, and I think I bought that new too; although I didn't love that one. And, as I said, the eponymous Erasure came out a year later, which I also bought new and which was the last I bought for years.

Some friends of mine and I, who were into the same kinds of music, all agreed that Erasure tended to be really good on every other album. Wonderland was wonderful, and I was surprised to discover later that it had not been a commercial hit for them, since I  always liked it a lot, and found it to have some really iconic tracks. Especially "Oh L'amour" which has become one of their signature songs, and had a top ten run on a re-release in 2003, of all things, nearly twenty years after its initial release (and now over twenty years ago too. Man, getting old kind of sucks. But I'm not as old as these artists who all predate me by about a decade.) The Circus, on the other hand, was their first hit album, but I was always kind of skeptical of it, and other than the hit "Sometimes" and a few moody album tracks like "Spiraling" and "The Circus" itself, and the uncomfortably lyrics of the otherwise interesting song "Hideaway" I never loved that album. The Innocents, on the other hand, was a brilliant album in every way, and deserved all of the success that it got. And, of course, its lead track "A Little Respect" is probably also one of their most signature tracks too, maybe even more than "Oh L'amour."

Wild! was again disappointing. It has some good tracks; "Blue Savanna", "Drama" and a few others, and I even have 12" singles from that era, for instance. It wasn't a bad album, just like The Circus wasn't a bad album, but it wasn't wonderful either. It was... a bit disappointing after seeing how great Wonderland and The Innocents were. Chorus was new and fresh sounding, and very good, while I Say I Say I Say is, again, mediocre. When they broke the pattern and Erasure was also mediocre... at the same time that "mainstream" synthpop was pretty much over. This is when I lost the plot; I didn't buy the next albums for many years after the fact. 

Anyway, I don't talk about my 80s New Wave music that much anymore. I honestly think that maybe I'm a little over 80s pop music of all kinds. I still enjoy it, but I don't really enjoy just sitting and listening to it anymore. I don't care about it as much as I used to. In spite of my pretentiousness about music when I was younger, all pop music is essentially meant to be disposable and generational, and what can I say? My generation is getting older, and our songs are too. I don't want to be like the predictably narcissistic boomers and assume that the music of my teenaged years is so iconic that everyone must recognize how great that it is... although I will point out that 80s music has had a bit of a revival, and even with people my kids' age. But the same thing happened briefly to 50s style music when I was a teenager. I don't think that that's anything that will really last. The music that I think does last is classical, especially the more accessible Romantic era classical. That I can still listen to and enjoy. And I listen to a lot of forgettable instrumental music, but I honestly admit that it's background music while I'm reading or otherwise doing something else most of the time.