Cassettes & Chocolate Milk

I had lived with the frustration of not knowing the artist name or the song title. I had lived with the annoying possibility of not ever knowing. More often than not, such feelings attached themselves to anonymous reggae-pop dance hits of the early-to-mid 1990s. They were never particularly good songs, as such, but they contained a memorable quality which compelled me to seek them out. They sometimes featured on home-made mix tapes, dubbed from the radio. Occasionally, they lived on subconsciously, as thumping drum beats or neverending sustained notes. I only recently realised that I managed to conquer that impossible task: I had discovered the artist name and song title of every lost song, ever.

It was a grand and thoroughly challenging task, requiring hours of painstaking research online. It was sometimes stupidly impossible, having to google and regoogle lyrics which had no semblance of originality: Oh yeah, baby. Occasionally, the song title would feature a spelling mistake, à la Malcolm McLaren's Operaa House, or the song title would be entirely omitted from the lyrics altogether. There could be any number of reasons why these songs became lost. The fact is, we all have lost songs. Songs that haunt and taunt us, that compel us to sing to confused friends in Maths, in the hopes we might one day achieve that moment of clarity.

We thought it would be this way forever, as we would so frequently ask each other, "what was that videoclip where Stalin's face morphed into Thatcher's?" But as time went on and as more people contributed videos, lyrics, questions and answers online, the number of lost songs we were looking for diminished dramatically. Not only that, the application Shazam provided a hassle-free, almost instantaneous service to identify lost songs. Upon discovering my last lost song, Marcella Detroit's I Believe, I couldn't help but feel a little disappointed that there weren't more to be found. Inasmuch as it is intensely satisfying to be able to identify lost pop, there is nothing more exciting than knowing there is more left to be found.


Cassettes & Chocolate Milk: Early 90s Dance Podcast #36
Technotronic - Pump up the Jam
Milli Vanilli - Ma Baker
Snap! - Rhythm is a Dancer
KLF - Justified and Ancient (Stand by the Jams)
Jon Secada - Just Another Day
Janet Jackson - Love Will Never Do (Without You)
Elisa Fiorillo - On The Way Up
The Shamen - Ebeneezer Goode (Beat Edit)

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