American Top 40 Flashback - "Laughter in the Rain"

I don't know if I'd go so far as to call this song a milestone in my musical taste development, but it does serve as an example of a song that I was determined to champion at a time when everyone else made fun of me for liking it.

You have to consider the time and the context - this was January 1975, and I was a freshman in high school, that period of time when kids - even your friends - can be relentlessly cruel. This was around the time when it was no longer cool to listen to AM Top 40 radio, and in Sacramento that meant you weren't cool unless you were listening to KZAP, 98.5 on your FM dial. Now don't get me wrong - KZAP (and always read all four letters, don't say K-ZAP) in its glory was a great, great radio station. But I wasn't quite yet ready for FM radio and the adventurous nature of the overall FM ouevre. I was still addicted to AM radio.

So, I liked this song, it was catchy, it stuck in your mind, and it had a great vocal, even if Neil sounded a little...well, you can probably guess what the other ninth graders were saying about him. In those days I was too much of a coward to defend my opinions once the insults started flying, so I would just enjoy it in silence.

"Laughter in the Rain," Neil Sedaka - a great pop song, and the #1 song on this day in 1975.