Saturday, February 22, 2025
Time: 11:40 AM
Song: Wild Night
Artist: John Mellencamp, Michelle Ndegeocello
Mode of Consumption: Playing over speakers at Burger King in Rock Falls
Link to song: https://open.spotify.com/track/6opIwpImZYdxNgG4wpDxED?si=c0c4797fca3c449f
We ran a couple errands on Saturday morning including a stop at the bank to move some money from our savings into a CD. Our reward for this adulting was to head over the bridge into Rock Falls and eat some greasy fast food. It’s not something we do often, and probably look forward to too much.
We made small chat while we consumed our burgers and French fries, breaking only to take a drink of soda.
About midway through the meal, John Mellencamp and Michelle Ndegecello’s cover of Van Morrison’s Wild Night played over the speakers.
“Man, I really loved this song when it came out,” Jodi said. This cover was released in 1994, when both Jodi and I were twelve. I remembered it getting lots of air play.
“I even had Mom drive me to the mall one Saturday so that I could buy the single,” Jodi continued. “But when we got there, they were all sold out.”
I imagine she was going to buy that single on cassette tape. It’s possible it would have been on CD, and maybe, just maybe, there was still 45s in 1994, but I doubt that the local record store carried vinyl (or much vinyl) by that point.
Sometimes it’s easy to forget how the world has changed. In 1994, Mellencamp and his record company likely made a mint just off the sales of the single for this song. Not to mention the sales of the album “Dance Naked” that also featured the song. I know the album must have sold pretty well, because I see that CD quite a bit in sale bins at garage sales and used music shops.
While vinyl has made a cute comeback into the market, it still doesn’t sell a glimmer of what hard copies of vinyl, cassettes and CDs sold in the 70s, 80s and 90s. The fact is everyone streams music. When a new tune gains attention, all a twelve-year-old has to do is get on Spotify to hear their favorite song.
The artists get a bit for that, but it’s nowhere near the income artists received back in the day, much less the mountains of cash the record labels made.
More importantly, when a couple like Jodi and I eat at whatever equivalent to fast food is in thirty years they won’t have that kind of story to talk about. Maybe just a mention of them remembering the song that was playing.
I think we’ve lost something.
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