10 Albums That Definitely Had an Impact
#3 “Reel Life” by Boy Meets Girl
The year was 2010. Moviegoers were being thrilled by “Kenny Chesney: Summer in 3-D” and I was fresh out of the beginning of my middle age, full of all the hope and enthusiasm that comes along with being in your early mid-30’s.
One day, I heard a song called “Waiting For A Star To Fall” on a radio station that plays 80’s stuff. It was a really well written and produced tune. There are 2 lead voices: George Merrill and Shannon Rubicam, the members of “Boy Meets Girl”.
I immediately bought their record, Reel Life (1988) and found what might be the only start-to-finish great pop album of the 80’s. If you can bring me a 10 song record from the years 1981-1989 that is better than this record in the areas of handling synthesizers tastefully and giving awesome saxophone players room to work, I’ll have to love it on account of how much I love this one. It’s the kind of record that proves that even though different decades of music may have their own noticeable fads, there are always solid, creative professionals who do great work.
Boy Meets Girl is still making music together. Merrill and Rubicam (that’s a pretty cool last name) take turns on lead vocals and write all the songs together. They also wrote “How Will I Know” and “I Wanna Dance with Somebody (Who Loves Me)” for Whitney Houston, who took both songs to #1.
Anyway, May of 2010, my wife and I had just begun expecting a baby.
We were listening to the “Reel Life” record a lot. All of a sudden, “Waiting For A Star To Fall” took on a whole new meaning for us.
“Waiting for a star to fall and carry your heart into my arms
that’s where you belong, in my arms baby yeah”
That came to mean a literal baby for me. I don’t know if they had this meaning in mind when they wrote it but it made the song so much more special to me. We ended up making it 2010’s “Take Gantt Christmas Single”. (We refer to our baby as “Blueberry” in that recording because we hadn’t met her yet.)
One morning, I woke up super early for no good reason so I looked up their website and the site had a contact email address. So I reverted back to a teenager and emailed them a fan letter at 3:51 am…
> Date: Wednesday, August 25, 2010, 3:51 AM
> I just in the last year found your music and have latched on to the “Reel Life”
> album like a crazy person. “Waiting For A Star To Fall” was the first song I
> heard and it’s become one of my favorite songs ever.
> “If You Run” is too awesome for words. The prechorus and chorus are just
> perfect. Anyway, I’m looking forward to checking out your other
> material but I just wanted to let you know you’re great so you can stop
> wondering what I think. :)
To my suprise, I got an email back from the Girl half of the band…
-Hi Jason,
-Thank you for letting me know what you think!! I like your kind words!
-Enjoy checking out our other tunes as you go. I too have a fondness for If You Run -
-the chorus just feels good to sing.
-May your day be glorious.
-Shannon
Hopefully, I’ve set the stage for a collaboration with them in the future.
BoyMeetsGirlMeetsJason!
Here is the song referenced in the email - “If You Run”
