Community Corner

Listening In: Bing Crosby, Van Halen and a Forgotten '80s Classic

We want to know what you're listening to. Play our weekly contest and get free stuff.

Welcome back to Listening In, our surprisingly popular weekly look into your listening habits. I’ve been having a great time writing this, and it seems like you’ve been enjoying reading it. I have potential contestants through the end of next month, which is great.

Here’s how it works. If you want to play, send me an email with your name and hometown. Each week, I’ll pick a name at random and fire off an email back. If it’s your week, you then send me five songs you’re listening to.

The most fun way to play is to hit shuffle on your iPod, and write down the first five songs that come up. But you can also just scour your CD or vinyl (or cassette, or 8-track, or wax cylinder) collection and pick five tunes for me.

Find out what's happening in Montgomerywith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Then, in this space each week, I’ll post your five songs, with commentary. The hope is we can spark some musical discussion in the comments below.

This week’s contestant is Tierney Wagner of Montgomery, who sent in an impressively random selection, with her own thoughts about each song. My reactions are in italics. Take it away, Tierney…

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1. “Because You Loved Me,” by Celine Dion. This song came out my senior year of high school and I loved it. I never dated in high school, I was not a romantic by any means, but this song really moved me. I might have had something to do with the fact that it was the love theme from the movie Up Close and Personal, and I always had a thing for Robert Redford... 

Well, I don’t have the same warm and fuzzy thoughts about this tune, but I like that it’s in this list, because it makes the rest of Tierney’s choices seem so interesting in comparison.

2. “White Christmas,” by Bing Crosby. I was raised with music, and some of my fondest Christmas memories involve the records my parents used to play during the holidays. A few years ago my dad took some of his records and put them onto CDs for us. Hearing this brings me back to being a little girl decorating the tree with my sister and brother. It also makes me think of Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye dressed up as the Haynes Sisters.

I have nothing bad to say about this. Bing is the man. Though my Crosby-related Christmas memories are all about "Silver Bells," which my grandparents owned on 78 RPM record.

3. “Hey Ya!” by OutKast. When my husband and I first heard this song we called the radio station to tell them to stop playing it - we thought it was that bad. It ended up growing on me so much that it was on our Must Play list at our wedding.

That. Is. Awesome. Big OutKast fan here, particularly of the weird one with the great first name. I like the music they’ve made separately (and “Hey Ya” is totally an Andre 3000 solo track), but I wish they’d get back to collaborating, and soon.

4. “Waiting For A Star To Fall,” by Boy Meets Girl. I love ‘80s music, always have. My niece calls it the "oldies" and I always say, "This is not the oldies!"

Wow, I haven’t heard this song in 20 years, easy. I used to listen to it all the time, and it still makes me feel like I’m 13 years old. Come to find out this duo actually had four albums. (This is from their second, 1988’s Reel Life.) Weird how some careers can slip right by you. I hope I don’t lose all credibility when I say I still like this tune.

5. “Love Walks In,” by Van Halen. My older sister and cousin were into hard rock music so when I reached junior high this became my favorite genre of music as well. 5150 is just a great album all around, as is Van Halen as a band. The teenager in me still loves those hair bands...

Me too! This is actually a really good song, and gave me hope for the Sammy Hagar era of the band. I like this one because cover bands couldn’t play it without a keyboardist. I was indispensible!

Many thanks to Tierney for playing along. You can come pick up your free stuff during my office hours, Mondays and Fridays from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. at Starbucks on Orchard Road in Montgomery, or we can make other arrangements.

And if you want to play Listening In, send me an email at andre.salles@patch.com. Thanks! 


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