An Open Letter To Radio 10

Dutch Radio 10

Dear Radio 10,

I need to ask for your help with something… Something life-altering important. I need you to help me solve a mystery.
The other night I was driving home in my car (since that is what I usually drive home in and driving home in someone else’s car would be both odd and illegal) while listening to a radio station. I am ashamed to say it was not Radio 10. It was an inferior radio station. I won’t name them. I will simply apologize for this indiscretion and ask for your forgiveness. I promise it will not happen again.

Anyway… where was I? Ah yes… I was listening to ‘not Radio 10’ as they played the same song again for the fifth time that day. I decided to switch to a much better radio station. My car radio made the usual sound of a robot having a breakdown as it searched through the frequencies. Eventually it settled on Radio 10. When it did my heart suddenly quickened. The song suddenly coming through my speakers was one that I’ve been trying to identify for the last two years. You’re glorious radio station had suddenly given me a chance to find out the song’s name. I knew I had to act fast.

I have the app Shazam on my phone (which can identify songs). I’ve had it on my phone for the past two years for just this reason. However, as we all know; driving and using a phone at the same time is highly irresponsible. I frantically started looking for a place to pull over. Unfortunately, I was driving through a small Frisian village and both sides of the street were already lined with cars. I started to panic that the song would end before I could find a place to stop. I might have started to speed up just a little. Suddenly I spotted an empty parking space in front of the local bicycle repair shop. As quickly and safely as I could I pulled in (making sure to follow the standard mirror/signal/manoeuvre procedure).

As I brought the car to a stop I felt a mix of victory and excitement. I had successfully found a place to park before the song ended. I was about to find out the name of the song that had been haunting me for two years… I pulled on the hand break and was about to retrieve my telephone when the song suddenly ended…

I was crushed. I was too late. I had come so close… So close to ending the torment of two long years. I’ve tried doing everything I can to identify that song. I’ve tried singing the tune to people. However, my singing sounds like a robot having a break down and they have been unable to identify it. In one moment of desperation, I even tried singing to the Shazam app. It was just as confused as my friends. It does not help that I’ve only ever heard 20 second snippets of the song. I’ve tried describing it to people but, “I think it’s 80’s or 90s, maybe 2000’s or 2010’s,” and, “it’s either in another language or I’m just not hearing it right,” turn out to be a bit vague as a description.

Radio 10. Please. You can help me. You can end this two-year obsession. I beg you and promise to only ever listen to Radio 10 from now on. Please, can you tell me the name of the song that finished playing on your radio station around 19:40 on Thursday the 17th of August? I can’t tell you what time it started playing because I have no idea how long it is… yet.

Kind regards,
Stuart – An accident-prone Englishman living in The Netherlands

Update 1: Thank you everyone who sent me yesterdays playlist. I could not find it myself. Strangely the song is not on there. There is a gap in the time line (between Time Of My Life and You Give Love A Bad Name) but the song itself is not there. Could I have imagined it? Am I going crazy? Maybe.

Update 2: YES!!! We got it!! Thank you to DJ Edwin Ouwehand and the people who put me in contact with him. The song is Ti Sento by Matia Bazar. No wonder I never found it. I kept on telling everyone I thought it was French song 80s. It’s Italian. I got the 80s part right though. I can finally rest and listen to the song all day. Thank you everyone. That escalated fast and got solved a lot quicker than I expected. Now… if anyone can help me with the Speculoos mystery

Stuart

Stuart is an accident prone Englishman who has been living in the Netherlands since 2001. Even his move to the country was an unintentional accident, the result of replying to a cryptic job advertisement he found one day in a local British magazine. Since then he has learned to love the Dutch (so much so that he married one of them) and now calls the country home. He started the blog Invading Holland in 2006 as a place to share his strange stories of language misunderstandings, cultural confusions and his own accident prone nature.

17 Responses

  1. Dutchy says:

    https://playlist24.nl/zoeken.php?? Pick the station, date and time.
    It shows Bon Jovi, Bill Medley, Vanessa Paradise and Franki Valli around that time period

    Hope that rings a bell ;-)

    • Stuart says:

      It must have been between Bon Jovi and Bill Medley. I remember hearing Bon Jovi after but I checked youtube and Bill Medley is not the one I’m looking for.

  2. The DJ (Edwin Ouwehand) reacted on twitter: this is the song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1Smw_ufkaM

  3. Cristina says:

    One of my favorite songs ever. You have good taste in music :D

  4. ephie says:

    I swear to god , if i was you , i would just do it whilst driving, c’mon Stu be a savage:) …. cheers mate ..

    • Stuart says:

      But then who knows what other kind of criminal behavior it might lead too. I’ve already been done for speeding on that same street :p

  5. Sometimes, I really, really heart the Internet. :)

  6. I had a song I had listened to in the 80s. It wasn’t popular, didn’t even make the top 100 here in the US. The only reason I ever heard it was because MTV played the video to it after an airing of “The Young Ones”. Fast forward 15-20 years, and I remembered the song. I knew the song title was “Boystown”. I finally remembered a snippet of the lyrics (“It’s a man’s world, but it’s a Boystown”). A Google search and a few minutes later, I found it. It’s a song by Rob Jungklas. The most notable thing about the song is the video, which was directed by Godley and Creme. It was using the same “jump-cut” style as the Wang Chung video for “Everybody Have Fun Tonight”. But instead of having the same background for each jump-cut, it showed Jungklas in different locations, in what is a seizure inducing effect. Be warned. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2DxqG3qnlU

  7. Dutchy says:

    Holy moly… Even after a couple of seconds I’m already foaming around the mouth :-D

  8. Oh it`s a pity… I`m cheering for you.

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