My Top 1000 Songs #784: Oblivious

[I've been writing up my Top 1000 songs on a daily basis--you can see them all in descending order by hitting the All My Favorite Songs tag.]

Another back-to-back example of an artist for whom I can't claim a great passion, but a song that endlessly delights me. The one other time we saw Aztec Camera on the list, it was a bit of a ringer, a pairing with Mick Jones that sounded more like Mick's Big Audio Dynamite than the rest of the band's own work. This time, we're heading back to the beginning, the opening track on Aztec Camera's 1983 debut High Land, Hard Rain.

"Oblivious" is one of those new wave era singles that has a magical ability to transport me back to my high school years. Which is a little odd, as I have little memory of actually hearing it back then--the gentle, jangly Scottish band wasn't the sort of thing you'd hear on the radio in my midwestern 'burb. So I dunno, maybe it's just something I subconsciously picked up along the way, a random late-night appearance on MTV that permanently lodged in my brain; or something I belatedly discovered a few years later in college, yet it just felt like a high school song. Regardless, it's a delightful little gem, one of the tracks that's totally of its era but still feels vibrant and fresh--countless bands I've come to love since are pretty indebted to Aztec's sound--largely on the strength of a drop-dead perfect chorus.

Live acoustic: