M - "Cry Myself to Sleep"

M - "Cry Myself to Sleep"

Late 1979. I was 10 years old. My favorite album was New York London Paris Munich by M. M? Well, odds are you know the album's first track, "Pop Muzik." Ringing any bells? Yeah. It's in the dictionary, alongside "Tainted Love," under "one-hit wonder."

But the entire album was (and still is!) terrific. I still remember the night that I bought this album with my paper route earnings. I played it endlessly (as was admittedly my tendency at this age). But in recent years it existed for me as a (rare) blissful childhood memory (and as a cassette tape of the album). I also think I might've gotten it again in lousy 128K MP3s during the Napster era, but lost it in the hard drive disaster of 2003. To make matters worse, I found that there was a bastardized CD version of the album floating around under the title of "Pop Muzik" that had a different running order and different versions of some of the songs. Blasphemy!

But a few years ago New York London Paris Munich was properly re-released on CD. This song, "Cry Myself to Sleep," is a previously unreleased bonus track, a reggae pop song four years before Culture Club would have the first reggae top 40 hit in the US. Dig on it, and by all means keep an ear out for the whole CD reissue. It's still great fun, and I am convinced that's not just nostalgia. There's a lot of music from my childhood that has NOT aged well. This has.