After I learned that today is the 45th anniversary of the release of Rick Springfield’s “Comic Book Heroes,” I grabbed my CBH CD as I headed out the door to listen to it on the way to work.
It’s been awhile since I listened to it and I belted out the “Na, na, na, na na”s as I sped down the freeway.
Check out this cool video of the promo for this album, a cute 24-year-old Rick Springfield with his Australian accent:
The song he’s singing in this video is my favorite from the album. I’ve always especially loved the line “And if I get to be a star, or maybe nowhere near that far…” because by the time I heard it (I was 4 when it came out, so it was several years later), he was already a star and I loved that he got to be where he wanted to be.
Now I kind of see that song as a love song to his wife, although he didn’t know her at the time (she was about 12 at the time – he wouldn’t initially meet her until a few years later – although he did say once – maybe in “Late, Late at Night”? – that she did have a small poster of him on her wall when she was younger, which is so adorable). But she has stuck by him through all his ups and downs and obviously believes in him.
I wonder what RS would say about this video – would he still have decided to wear that shirt if he knew it would live on forever on YouTube?
Seriously though, what a great album. So fun to sing along to and I even remembered most of the words. And that accent…
The party ended when I picked the kids up from school though. “What are you listening to, Mom?!” They’ve developed their own musical tastes by now (not like a few years ago when they would just listen to whatever I put on). Their tone changed when I told them who it was and listened a little more intently, but only to one more song before requesting something else.
After knowing who it was, my 10-year-old said he could sometimes tell it is RS’s voice, although he noted that the music sounds so different from other RS songs.
The other songs that move me from this CD are:
“The Photograph” – such a sad song, even today it made me a little teary-eyed – and “Born Out of Time” – because in my young teenage mind, that’s how I felt about RS because of the 20-year age difference. If only…
So weird that in this video he’s 25 years younger than I am now.
My Rick Springfield crush 