Retro Spins: Simple Minds - Once Upon A Time

I thought Simple Minds were an 80's product. I had no clue they were around in the 70's, releasing their first studio album Life In A Day in 1979. In fact, the band released seven albums before finally hitting my radar in 1985 with songs, Alive And Kicking and Don't You (Forget About Me). I may have to go through their albums to see if there are songs I know from them, but didn't know it was Simple Minds.

That's a project for another time though. For today, I want to actually fire up their 1985 album, Once Upon A Time for a little Alive And Kicking.

The title song is the leading track of the album, and it's not terrible. It sets a pretty solid pop tempo. However, it was track two which took me by surprise. I had forgotten about the song, All The Things She Said.

It was because of this, decided I would head over to the Top Forty pages and see what else I should expect from the album. Both Alive And Kicking and All The Things She Said were present and accounted for on the charts, which was expected. As was Don't You (Forget About Me). However, for that particular song, you'd need to turn to the soundtrack for The Breakfast Club.

Also on the charts was Sanctify Yourself, which admittedly in title, sounded familiar. However, being track seven of eight on the album, I wasn't quite too that one just yet as I typed this sentence. So far though, this was setting itself up to be a solid album.

As for non-hits, Ghost Dancing definitely grabbed my attention. It featured a solid drum beat to it that really sucked me in. I'm such a sucker for percussion. It can make even the worst songs awesome. Oh Jungleland, was good track. I added both to my shuffle list for another listen at a later date.

Looking further into the history of the album, I came across a fun little fact. Apparently when Once Upon A Time was originally released, it featured two versions of covers. Okay, so that's nothing special. However, when you take said covers, you can put four of them together, two of each, to create the full images of the cover. Check it out!

While I couldn't see myself buying four different copies of the album to display it in this manner, I have to admit it's a pretty cool concept. Apparently, this is also how several stores displayed the record on their shelves when it was first released.

Overall, Once Upon A Time was a fantastic album. I can definitely see myself wanting to dig a little further into the band to see what else I may have missed over the years. Fortunately, I have a greatest hits from them too, so I can check out the singles and decide from there.

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