I Melt with You

“I Melt With You” is a funny song, isn’t it? Here’s a song that sold nothing when it came out on a British independent label 24 years ago, was never on regular radio, was only a small college radio hit…yet do you know anybody who knows anybody who knows anybody who doesn’t know this song?

It was somehow the first what I guess you’d call “alternative” song we got a hold of in 6th or 7th grade. I don’t know how we got it or where it came from, but all of a sudden we had this song and the Violent Femmes first record. Someone must’ve had an older brother in college or something. It was the first time I realized there was real music out there, I didn’t hafta listen to whatever Culture Club ‘hits’ Richmond’s Q94 fed me. I was then lucky enough, along with a few friends, to find the Ramones and the Replacements and on and on and on. But it seems to have started with somehow, seemingly instantaneously, “I Melt with You” landing in someone’s Walkman. While most everybody else in my class stayed true to Q94, they still seemed to know “I Melt with You.” I believe it’s now called a new wave classic. This is fascinating to me. They probably originally printed only a few thousand copies, now you prolly hafta go to Mars to find someone who couldn’t sing this song on cue. I guess Valley Girl helped too.


Of course, I find the one guy in the world who needs to read a lyric sheet for this song.