I heard them on the radio

How often do you listen to honest-to-goodness radio anymore? Usually I go to it only if I’m not in the mood for podcasts, audiobooks, or my own music collection. I’ll spin through my station presets to see if I get lucky, though most often I get bad songs and ads.

But not the other day. I was feeling especially jovial after work and wanted to stay in that high, and this lineup (between three different stations) was what started when I turned on the car and ended when I arrived at home:

  • “Jet Airliner” by Steve Miller Band
  • “Sweet Home Alabama” by Lynyrd Skynyrd
  • “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go” by Wham!
  • “Always Something There To Remind Me” by Naked Eyes
  • “China Grove” by The Doobie Brothers
  • “Jessie’s Girl” by Rick Springfield

My speakers were cranked. I don’t think I’ve ever hit such a solid streak on the radio before. Not one of these songs are in my own collection, yet they perfectly matched the moment. I could generate a list of six completely different songs that would be just as great and fitting, but that’s the nice thing about radio: call in requests all you want, but you can’t engineer musical serendipity, especially across stations. You just have to get lucky.

Long live synchronicity!

4 responses to “I heard them on the radio”

  1. methink you just wanted to use the word ” synchronicity” today. Nice timing!!

    1. The only times I intentionally set out to use a fancy word is in poetry, one of the last refuges of fancy people. Otherwise it all just comes to me.

  2. I have a feeling we must belong to the same generation! I do listen to the radio in the car, usually NPR.

    1. I’m one of those Millennials you hear a lot about, the generation that apparently has been killing off all good things. But as with my love of typewriters, I still appreciate older technologies that do a simple job well. Plus with our entertainment and culture being ever individualized and over-curated, I think it’s important, at least once in a while, to submit oneself to surprise.

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