For various weird reasons, I had a compulsion to listen to the ‘official’ 1980 playlists on Apple Music, specifically the Alternative Hits. But it was fun to careen through them and I punched up the Rock and Pop lists to get a sense of the rest of the year’s flavors. Despite Apple’s playlists being generally pretty mediocre—and odd inclusions like a spate of German hits NOT by Falco—I was still compelled to serve up the next one in the timeline.

I’m generally in the nostalgia = bad-for-you camp, but there were quite a few songs I either hadn’t heard or didn’t remember, so it felt somewhat new, and definitely fun. I spun through the next couple years in succession, rediscovering some forgotten treasures and skipping some well-worn 80s playlist staples. As 1983 came up, however, those shopworn standards started to become the norm.

Nostalgia, fake friend and secret foe, started to wear me down, and after skipping most of the tracks from ’84–’87 I was about to call it quits when this fabulous sonic jewel gleamed out of the speakers:

The Cult – Wild Flower
https://youtu.be/bLxApTwMLJI

I’ve never bought a Cult album, and I have no idea why I didn’t buy Electric, even just for this song. I loved the album artwork, the type design, the band photo, and could’ve played “Wild Flower” on repeat a hundred times. I’ve taken a chance on plenty of other records without knowing anything about how the music sounded, just that the cover looked cool. Even so, nothing else I’ve heard by the band, then or now, comes close to it.

Sometimes, there’s just one, and it’s enough.