This month, all my A to Z Challenge posts will feature a song that is on my personal list of “deep cuts.” These are songs that my husband often razzes me about, that there’s no one else who has ever heard of them or is listening to them, or they’re songs that possibly are just not that mainstream. If we are of the same era or run in the same musical taste circles, none of these may seem that off the beaten path, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t fun songs! Enjoy!

I graduated high school in 1985, so my musical taste leans very heavily toward all things ’80s! I was definitely into the whole new wave thing — my favorite band was Duran Duran (a song by them will make an appearance later in this challenge). The radio station I listened to was out of a local university — 88.1 FM WLRA (their tagline was, “We’re what’s left on the FM dial). It was on that radio station I heard bands like Trio, Wall of Voodoo, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Missing Persons, and Sigue Sigue Sputnik.

But one band I never heard on WLRA was Dramarama! I actually only recently stumbled upon their song, “Anything, Anything” while listening to 1st Wave on SiriusXM (because you KNOW I love that station — it’s WLRA for the modern times). I loved the song upon hearing it because it has that definite underground ’80s club, semi-punk, screaming into the mic feel about it. It feels Plimsouls adjacent. Smidge of the Ramones maybe.

I did a little research on the song and found it came out in 1985, which surprised me a bit because it has a real early ’80s feel to it. Then when I watched the video, which is below, I thought the voice of the lead singer didn’t match his appearance and that the band actually looks to be on the later ’80s side of things, getting close to the hair band heydey, so this just makes the song all the more appealing to me! I also learned that the lead singer wrote the song about his own deteriorating marriage, so it falls right in line with the whole tortured love song thing I shared in an earlier post, and you can really hear the angst in the song.

Give it a listen and let me know what you think!