I'm Gonna Win

I love looking through “This Date in History” websites. I was looking at one particular website for December 4 and saw that in 1981, one of the “chart toppers” was a song called “Waiting for a Girl Like You,” by Foreigner. If you are 35 or over you probably remember the song. I’m old enough to have owned it on a 45. If you don’t know what a 45 is, then I’m way too old.

Anyway, I loved the song “Waiting for a Girl Like You” and I listened to it frequently. I was 15 years old in 1981—just starting high school. I had this thing about 45’s back then. I would listen to the popular song on Side A, but I always liked to give the song on Side B a chance. I found some real gems over the years. The flip-side of “Waiting for a Girl Like You” was a song called “I’m Gonna Win.”

I loved that song the first time I heard it. It has an edgey feel to it and it is one of a myriad of rock songs that round up the troops for some imaginary battle. Here are a couple of lines from the song:

I was not born, to be a fighter
But now’s the time I have to learn
To keep my head, above the water
Gotta play with fire, but not get burned

Of course, at the age of 15, I didn’t really have any real battles to worry about. Oh, I was overweight and got picked on once in a while, but it was never anything I couldn’t deal with. My battles had more to do with getting a girls’ attention or winning a starting infield position on my baseball team than they did anything else. But a battle is a battle and this song gave me all the inspiration I needed.

I wish that iPods had been around back then because they keep track of how many times you listen to each song. I would love to know how many times I listened to “I’m Gonna Win.” Certainly more than I listened to “Waiting for a Girl Like You” on the A-side, and probably just shy of the numbers of times I listened to “Urgent”—another great song on the Foreigner 4 album, which I didn’t own until much later in life.

That makes me think of something else.

Back when I was listening to 45s, I didn’t own a lot of albums. 45s were ninety-nine cents and it just made more sense to buy singles instead of albums. That changed with cassettes and then CDs. A person could still buy singles singles in either medium, but they were harder to find. Then came the iPod and MP3s and now I’m back to buying one song at a time, unless I really like an artist.

Wow, the name of one song can bring back a lot of memories.