This week for Song Lyric Sunday, the prompt is a song written or performed by someone born in October.
My choice is Sam Brown, who was born on 7 October 1964, and her wonderful 1988 song “Stop!”
I could simply write about the song.
But unfortunately, Stop! comes with a memory.
And possibly a confession. 🫣
Sam Brown — Stop!
Samantha Brown is an English singer, songwriter and musician who grew up surrounded by music. Her father was rock-and-roll singer Joe Brown, and her mother, Vicki Brown, was a singer too.
Stop! appeared on Sam Brown’s debut album of the same name. Brown co-wrote the song with Gregg Sutton and Bruce Brody, and although its first UK release in 1988 didn’t immediately become the enormous hit we remember, its 1989 re-release reached No. 4 on the UK Singles Chart.
And in Norway, where I was living at the time?
It went to No. 1.
Which might explain why this song is so firmly attached to 1988 in my memory. It seemed to be everywhere.
But there is another reason I remember it.
Here comes the confession. 🤭
I Was Seventeen…
I was born in December, which is terribly inconvenient when you’re seventeen and everyone around you has already turned eighteen. 🤣
My friends were going out, dancing and drinking, while I still had months to wait.
So seventeen-year-old me came up with a solution.
Was it a good solution?
No.
Was it legal?
Also no. 🫣🤣
I changed the date on my identity card using sticker numbers.
Yes.
I actually did that.
My daughters only heard this story fairly recently, and their reaction was basically:
“MOM! 😱😱😱”
Apparently, discovering that your mother once had a somewhat flexible approach to official documentation is rather disturbing. 🤣
But back in 1988, my little alteration worked.
At least for a while.
Then HE Asked Me to Dance…
There was a boy everyone seemed to have their eye on.
You know the type.
The boy all the girls noticed when he walked into the room.
And one evening, he asked me to dance.
The song?
Sam Brown — “Stop!”
Oh yes.
This is where things started going spectacularly wrong. 🤣
Another girl apparently wasn’t particularly pleased about him choosing me.
In fact, saying she wasn’t pleased might be putting it mildly.
She saw red.
After the dance, she came for me and started a fight.
Now, I wasn’t looking for a fight—but when she attacked me, seventeen-year-old Maggie wasn’t particularly talented at calmly walking away either. 🫣
Security guards eventually had to separate us.
That probably should have been the end of it.
Except my opponent had one final weapon.
She informed the guards:
“By the way, she isn’t even old enough to be here.”
Oh.
Bugger. 🤣🤣🤣
They checked my ID.
They discovered my highly sophisticated sticker-number forgery operation. 🤭
And that was that.
I was banned from coming back until I actually turned eighteen.
Perhaps I Should Have Listened to Sam Brown
Nearly four decades later, I can’t hear Stop! without remembering that night.
That’s one of the extraordinary things about music.
A song doesn’t only preserve the artist who recorded it or the year it was released. Sometimes it preserves us.
One note can reopen a room.
A chorus can bring back a dance floor, a face, a feeling—or apparently, in my case, a teenage criminal enterprise involving stationery supplies. 🤣
When I hear Stop! today, I’m seventeen again.
I remember the boy.
I remember the dance.
I remember the jealous girl.
I remember the security guards.
And I remember that dreadful moment when somebody decided to mention my age. 🤭
My daughters may have been horrified when I finally told them the story, but I suppose children eventually discover that their parents existed before they became Mum and Dad.
We were teenagers once too.
We did stupid things.
We made mistakes.
And some of us apparently committed minor acts of identity-card alteration because we were born in December. 🤣🤣🤣
So here is my choice for this week’s Song Lyric Sunday:
Sam Brown — “Stop!”
With love, coffee, poetry, and stardust,
— Maggie The Afterlove Voice 💫
DJ Maggie in the house 🎧.
https://ditto.fm/arena-51-the-calima-conspiracy-original-mix
https://ditto.fm/arena-51-the-calima-conspiracy-alien-invasion-remix
My new song “Silenced,But not broken ” is on all streaming platforms.
Lyrics video :
https://ditto.fm/silenced-but-not-broken
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