The ’83 Hawaii Playlist
Forty-five songs from a 1983 senior-class trip to Honolulu. They still do not sound like 1983 to me. They sound like Hawaii.
The ’83 Hawaii Playlist
Forty-five songs. One senior trip. Honolulu forever.
45 SONGS | HONOLULU | SPRING 1983
OOD Playlists is where the songs get gathered by year, artist, mood, place, memory, or whatever else makes them belong together. The list matters, but the reason for the list is the post.
In the spring of 1983, I flew to Honolulu with my senior class, a fake Kentucky driver's license, and a hundred dollars I'd soon hand to a stranger who looked like Spicoli. The full story is here: My Friends Had Oregano.
This is what that week sounded like.
Our hotel had a downstairs club that played music every night, and we spent most of the trip in there trying to figure out what people did in a nightclub. We never did figure it out. But the songs stuck. Forty-five of them — "Come On Eileen," "Electric Avenue," "Hungry Like the Wolf," "Total Eclipse of the Heart," "Rock the Casbah" — exactly what was pouring out of every speaker in the spring of 1983.
Forty-three years later, they still don't sound like 1983 to me. They sound like Honolulu.
What songs still sound like a place you haven't been in decades?