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Today's CoronaVinyl category is "D," and let's go with some new wave -- Thomas Dolby's 1983 EP Blinded By Science.
Dolby had a hit the year before with "She Blinded Me With Science," which went to #5 on the Billboard Hot 100, #1 in Canada, and #7 in New Zealand. The Blinded By Science EP contained extended versions of four songs on Dolby's 1982 album The Golden Age of Wireless, plus the full-length version of "Airwaves," as the album version in the U.S. only had the shorter single version.
Like "She Blinded Me With Science," the other songs are all very angular, electronic synth pop. What struck me is the the difference between these songs and the Christopher Cross album I listened to yesterday, which was released only a few years prior. This sounds like it's music from the future compared to the smooth soft rock of Cross. A spaceship versus a yacht. Blinded By Science went to #20 on the Billboard album chart.
Dolby himself is an interesting guy. In addition to being a session keyboardist on some pretty massive albums in the '80s -- like Foreigner's 4 and Def Leppard's Pyromania -- he has scored films (including Howard the Duck!), founded his own software company that dabbled in virtual reality and helped pioneer ringtones for cell phones, was the musical director for the TED Conference for 11 years, and is a professor at Johns Hopkins University. Not too shabby.
Since the EP is only five songs, I'm not going to choose a favorite from each side. Spotify didn't have the EP, but YouTube did, so that's embedded below.
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