I Am Aware Of Too Many Things

I don't normally listen to the music in stores and waiting rooms.  We'll, I guess no one really listens to it; it's intended to be an unconscious, background thing. Saying you listen to it is like saying to look at wallpaper.  I have written about it in the past.  So the fact that I notice it at all shows that I listen to it more than most.

Anyway, the reason I've noticed the background music recently is that twice in the past week, I've heard "What I Am" by Edie Brickell & New Bohemians.  That song is from 1988, and it's folky style doesn't make it candidate for 80's nostalgia, so I haven't heard it many times in the quarter-century since it was released.

(For some reason I always associated the song with hearing her perform it on Saturday Night Live, and according to Wikipedia, that was the night she met her husband, Paul Simon.)

So why the sudden popularity of this song?  I've heard that songs can be revived unexpectedly if they test well on focus groups.  Yes, big radio companies do test songs on people before they go into regular rotation, and they'll play even old songs if the guinea pigs like it.  This was a few years ago when Bruce Springsteen's "Dancing in the Dark" suddenly made it onto many radio stations.

But that doesn't explain how they decide which songs get to the focus groups.  I mean, they can't test the entirety of recorded music on those people - someone must make a decision what gets put in front of the test groups, and they are the closest thing we have to the traditional DJ.