You’ll Always Be A Part of Me

“Always Something There to Remind Me” by Naked Eyes from the album Burning Bridges
Fifth Week of December, 1982

Something that I didn’t know (until about a year ago):

The song was written by Burt Bacharach in the 1960s and was performed by LaBelle, Dionne Warwick and R.B. Greaves, among others. The Dionne Warwick version is particularly interesting. It sounds a lot like “Do You Know The Way To San Jose,” but with different lyrics. It feels a bit surreal having heard the Naked Eyes version first. It’s a little like the time I was sitting in a diner with a friend of mine and a Mariah Carey cover version of Journey’s “Open Arms” came on the little jukebox thing that they have at the booths in a diner. You find youself singing along, wondering how you know the words to any song by Mariah Carey (or Dionne Warwick), and then you realize that the song isn’t the song you thought it was. It’s a song you know. And then you go back to drinking your coffee that the guy left in the pot too long and now it tastes burnt.

Something that I did know:

Naked Eyes had one other hit (“Promises, Promises”), but this is really their signature piece. And it also has the benefit of being a really awesome song. Really, I defy you to come up with 5 other songs that are more quintessentially 1980s than this one. You’d be hard pressed to do so. Lead singer Pete Byrne’s (I did have to look his name up) voice is perfect for this song. And maybe this is intuitive, but the idea that there’s always something there to remind the guy and the actual repetition of the phrase always seemed like a pretty nice associative metaphor to me. But what the hell do I know? I sing along with Mariah Carey.

— G.W.