DO Parade’s readers remember the agony of hearing just a snatch of a song on the radio or television, falling in love with it, but not knowing what it was called or who was performing it?
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Parade certainly does.
There were many instances over the years, but Parade remembers a particular one.
Coming home late one night in the days before the internet, Parade flopped on the lounge, turned on Rage, caught the last couple of minutes of an incredible, monumental, hair-raisingly good song and sat transfixed as it played out and then faded slowly into the next film clip.
It was like falling in love at first sight with a stranger walking by on the street and then seeing them melt into a crowd and disappear forever.
There was no information given as to what the song was called or what album it came off (that came at the start of the film clip), so Parade went to bed that night with just some half-remembered lyrics in his head and the certain knowledge that he had to find out more.
Nothing happened for about three months and then Parade came home late one night, flopped on the lounge, turned on the television and caught the same last couple of minutes of the same song he’d previously fallen in love with.
Unfortunately, Parade still didn’t know what it was called.
Parade thought of all that when he caught up with his nephews this week and was listening to a bit of music.
When a particularly good song came on and his nephews liked the sound of it, they simply pointed their electronic devices at the speaker in a calm and authoritative way.
“What are you doing?” Parade asked.
“Shazam,” one of them said.
Shazam, it turns out, will tell you what a song is called (and give you the lyrics if you want) as long as you let your device hear a little bit of the music.
Mystery solved, according to Parade’s nephews.
But has something – the satisfaction of the search, the fun of the mystery, the slow build to the big reveal - been lost along the way?
It all seems just a bit too easy.