1.25.24

Gather ‘round, children, and I’ll tell you a tale of the days of yore.

Once upon a time, there were these things called record clubs, and kids would get lured into joining them because they’d give you a dozen cassette tapes for a penny. Then you’d only have to buy three more cassettes over the next year or two.

Except that the record clubs would also just randomly send you cassettes that you never ordered or wanted, and you’d get charged for them unless you sent them back. Usually anywhere between $13 and $21, depending on the cassette. Plus shipping and handling, of course.

This would lead to letters from collection agencies, arguments with parents, and promising never to join another record club again.

Until you did six months later so you could get a bunch more music for one American cent.

The cassette that lured me into signing up at the ripe old age of 13 was Crowded House’s self-titled debut album. The second single off that album — Don’t Dream It’s Over — was an instant hit for me, and I wanted more of this incredible band.

It was one of the first songs to make me sit up and pay attention to songwriting. As a young farm kid who’d not seen much of the world, it opened my mind up to the possibility that other people in places I’d never been felt the same way I did.

So I got the cassette, and I used some money I’d saved up from working on the farm to buy a cheap off-brand Walkman. I played that cassette over and over and over. I fell into every song on the album, entranced by what Crowded House was doing.

I remember one time I had to go to some sort of function that I didn’t want to go to, so I pretended to fall asleep in the backseat of the car. I spent the whole time there, just revisiting song after song.

The other thing about Don’t Dream It’s Over is that it’s the song that taught me an important lesson: music can make you cry.

It’s a song that can still pull that particular heartstring and get the tears running. I think it’s that notion, repeated throughout the song, that we have the strength to push back the powers that would divide us. “Us” being anything from two people to huge populations striving for connection.

When Neil Finn write the song, he was writing it as a “private message” to someone he cared about who was struggling and “withdrawing from their world.” At the same time, it was a message to the world. A message that remains important and sorely needed today.

There’s a battle ahead

Many battles are lost

But you’ll never see the end of the road

While you’re traveling with me