That may or may not be enough to warrant placing it on this list, but I have a strange (though not entirely unpleasant) memory associated with this song: I once moonbathed to it.
Seriously, I was seventeen, and like most teenagers, had a tendency to do weird things just because they weren't the same old-same old, and on a night that was just warm enough to be outside, I lay reclined on a lawn chair in front of the garage in our driveway, staring up at a bright full moon. There was a radio with me, I can't remember if it was the radio in my car (my big, rusty 1977 Chrysler Newport with a hood the size of Wyoming...how I miss her), or an actual radio, but music was coming from somewhere, and when "Lady" by Kenny Rogers started playing, I thought (and still do) it was a fitting accompaniment to lying in the dim, hazy light that was both silver and lime-green, and, for better or worse, a fitting accompaniment to the circumstances I found myself in. I was a junior in high school, facing the last summer of my childhood. And when summer was over, when I came back to school in the fall, I would be a father.
It was a heady time. Quite a thing...
"You have gone and made me such a fool..."
#250) "Strawberry Wine" by Deanna Carter - Perhaps no other song from 1990s country reminds me of being a deejay for a 100,000-watt powerhouse than "Strawberry Wine." Nothing overly dramatic going on here, and nothing that I personally can sink my teeth into in terms of what it's about...it's just a simple country ballad from a mostly one or two hit (though talented) wonder. But it was very popular in 1996, both nationally and in our market, making its way onto many "most requested" lists at our station for many weeks. And despite initially being dismissed by Nashville as - among other things - not memorable enough, it has since taken its place as a true country classic.
It's really quite a durable song, and totally memorable, actually, for its intimate (and suitably sullen) portrayal of a young woman's first romance with an older boy, and all the good and bad found there as she thinks back. Moving, I think, because she's not totally sure, so many years later, whether it was a good thing or a bad thing.
But it was definitely a thing. Quite a thing...
"I still remember when thirty was old..."
