Computer-assisted nostalgia

Here's what I've been doing for fun: I went to YouTube, where I found a poster named Top40Bill who creates medleys of every song that was in the Top 40 for a particular year. I started with 1974, which is the year I turned ten. And then I felt every feeling that it's possible for music to make you feel.

I've been working my way through my Pop Music Imprinting Period since then, and I've discovered:

- that the radio in North Carolina in the 1970s was pretty racist. (Which shouldn't surprise me considering that the North Carolina Eugenics Board was still sterilizing black girls against their will while I was singing "I'd Like To Teach the World To Sing" with my fourth grade class on the other side of town.)

- that looking at photos of the 5th Dimension is like looking at some fabulous Polly Pocket set where all the clothes are different but they all match and they're all amazing.

- that Elvis Presley, Al Green, the Pointer Sisters, Rick Springfield, and Supertramp all had Top 40 hits the same year.

- that most of the artists of the seventies were really, really ugly. But Al Green was pretty cute when he was young, and so, weirdly, was Mack Davis.

- that I can deeply and profoundly detest a song and yet be familiar with every note in it. I'm looking at you, Paul Anka.

- that Andy Kim ("Rock Me Gently") wrote "Sugar, Sugar" for the Archies, and also was Lebanese.

- that the Raspberries and Alice Cooper had multiple hits, which have been mercifully forgotten.

- so many bad covers. So many.