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"This is an important project."

                            ----Anonymous (Okay, my brother).

So, I've started floating the idea of the 40@40 to a few people.  Responses typically fall into a few categories:  

1. Yawn 

2. Sounds like fun, let me see it when its done.

3. This is easy, just make sure you include these 15 songs...

I've already started a number of other debates with folks who fall into category 3, and say things like "WHATDAYA MEAN no Nirvana???" or "If you don't include 'Melt with you' then you are a damn fool."
---And I quite like the category 3 people: at least they CARE.  (But I could do without the "oh and how about..." texts after they've been drinking.),  I think those people have started to personalize the idea, they think about what there lists would include, and chafe when ours don't always match up.

THAT'S OKAY! This is, and always will be a 1000% subjective and personal endeavor.

I was excited to tell my brother about this idea.  He was skeptical at first, because I think he saw it as a (derivative?) greatest hits project.  This was evident when he pushed back on my sketch of my first decade picks.

"Tainted Love? Soft Cell?"  

"If you've got that in there, you've GOT to have 'Take on Me' right?"

---Actually no, I don't.

"That ridiculous, Take On Me is a CLASSIC.  Classic song.  Classic video."

---True, but that's not the only criteria.

"Whatever"

And so here was an early and strong challenge to the very CONCEPT of the 40@40.  

But I am up to it. I decided not to eschew (or at least not wholesale cop-out) on the "why Tainted Love and not Take on Me"? question.  ---It isn't any fun to respond "because it is my list, now get off my lawn."  So I've stewed on this question a bit. 

I hadn't yet formulated my answer when, a few days later, I got an email from my brother that simply read:  "Does White Town's 'Your Woman' make the list?  ----Great question! And showed that maybe he's more of a 3 than a 1 after all!  

Here was my answer:  

"THAT is a close call. It is currently in the 'maybe' column for my second decade.  It speaks to the same part of my soul that "Tainted Love" does---for whatever reason: when I first heard them, or how they sounded, or what I was doing at the time, I NEEDED those songs then and and now more than anything by A-Ha or Duran Duran.  The top 40 is a tricky and personal and revealing list!"

---not bad for typing with two thumbs on my loaner phone while (clearly not) putting the dishes away!

---and that answer was good enough! Because it generated the quote at the top of the post.

So, I was feeling pretty good again about what I was doing, and where this was going.  And then, just for funsies, I watched the Take On Me video. 

 ---Man, that's a good video! Very clever use of animation, and the happy ending seems earned.

---Come to think of it, I don't remember ever even SEEING the Tainted Love video....

---What's that like?

---WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT?

---SERIOUSLY, WHAT THE ABSOLUTE F---?

It is a GOOD THING I was already pot-committed before I saw that video.

Now, technically, the above isn't the exact version of Tainted Love that makes the 40@40 cut----the most important thing is for it to have that aching "Baby, Baby, Baby, Where did our love go?" interlude for it to count.

But STILL, that is one randomly (yet persistently) offensive video!  And yet, that eyeliner? You GO 1981 Marc Almond!

F