Alphaville’s “Forever Young” album is 40 years old this fall.
I don’t remember hearing the iconic title song until fall 1989, when I was a freshman at Bowling Green State University and it grabbed my guts and heartand squished them to a wrenching pulp while still filling me with wonder and hope and possibility every time Marian Gold’s voice reached up for that final yearning verse about adventures missed and songs forgotten.
My roommate had the Alphaville Singles Collection from 1988, I put the original “Forever Young” on a mixtape so I could listen to it back home after the school year, and then at some point I bought the full album on cassette. I honestly can’t remember if it was before or after I spent July of 1990 in Germany, which made “Summer in Berlin” hit much differently. (Also, yes, it’s a different feel, but I do also love the Special Extended Mix from the Singles Collection, with its energy and danceability, and I’m listening to that version right now and it is a delight I haven’t listened to in too, too long.)
When I went back to BGSU as a sophomore that fall, I had a bit of a rough start to the year: Two of my closest friends weren’t there any more, I had a lousy randomly-assigned roommate, and I often felt alone. One mopey afternoon I walked four miles round-trip to the K-Mart on the south end of town and spent a good chunk of my saved money on a boom box with a CD player and lugged it back to my dorm along with two CDs – “Forever Young” and “Pink Floyd: The Wall.” (Yeah, mood. I know. Funny postscript – I mentioned this purchase to my parents and they said they’d been planning on getting me a CD player for Christmas, so I took the boom box back a couple days later. I feel like I bummed a ride from someone that trip.)
Anyway, I love the whole “Forever Young” album, but the title track remains one of my all-time favorite songs. I kept listening to it through college, through a terrible relationship, through a move to Florida while in said relationship, and then, a little bit after that unfortunate episode had come to its end, I met this girl Jenn and played it for her, and we kissed for the first time, and then a couple years later we got married and stayed that way. (I mean, that alone would be an excellent reason for this to be my favorite song, right?)
Why do I love this song so much? I mean, it’s ’80s synthpop. It’s melancholic and dreamy and its swells run deep and it’s everything I’ve always loved about a particular style and sound of music. But also, while “Forever Young” has never changed, I have.
I was 18 when I first fell in love with this song. I’m 53 now. That’s 35 years of listening to “Forever Young” on countless warm-night drives with the windows down, and close nights with rain on the windows, and mornings on the way to work at Walt Disney World, and after second-shift jobs when most of the world was silent. I listened on visits home from college, when Hartville, Ohio’s roads seemed suddenly small and narrow but still mapped in my DNA; and out between the vast cornfields of Northwest Ohio; during dark times in Florida when I was far away from everyone who knew me best; and on the interstates when Jenn & Kelsey slept during overnight road trips; and driving home from visits to Kelsey when she was in college.
I listen and sing (badly) because even when I was a teenager, I recognized the beautiful impossibility of the song’s chorus. I listen because while I’m singing “Forever Young” I think how I really do hope to actually get to be old. I sing it thinking of people who did in fact, die young – and the perception of that has changed, too. I think of my friend Tobi, who died when she was four years younger than my daughter is now; and my dad, who died seven younger than I am now; and my grandfather, who died several years younger than my mom is now.
“Forever Young” still strikes resonant chords, and it never hits the same as the years pass – but the me of this moment loves it just as much as the me of all those other moments, and at this point, I’m pretty sure the me of the moments to come will still be listening to it and feeling the echoes of all of us who sang along the way.
John Booth Writes 