Here's my pitch so I get booked for One Track Minds.
Sometimes I think about the greatest artists of the various decades. So you've got Elvis for the 50s, The Beatles for the 60s, and for the 70s (and maybe the 80s) David Bowie. Then I think "but he's just a pop start who writes and sings great songs". Then I think "some songs aren't just great songs". There's no just about it, great songs are, well, so much more than just songs. This is where words fail me, so let's talk about Heroes.
Some of you may know it as "the tunnel song". This comes from the film The Perks of Being a Wallflower, which was originally a book. I've read the book and it's different to the film; in ways which I annoyingly didn't write down. So I'll have to read and watch again, no great hardship.
One of my children remarked when I said I liked the film, but it's a teenage film. I didn't have an answer then. I do now. I was a teenager once. In fact I was roughly a teenager when the film is roughly set. So I can sit there on the sidelines and watch it unfold.
It comes from a time when music was more wild than it is these days. It lived on the radio, which you could tame with a tape. You could buy your own. If the announcer didn't say what the song was though, it was lost to you. That happens in the film, which is why they call it the tunnel song
It's funny how it gets used, for example, when we want to celebrate the NHS. Surely they're heroes for more than just one day? (See also "Born in the USA" and politicians campaigns.)
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