O.M.D.: "Tesla Girls" (1984)

If my narcissistic, self-centered, starfuck-attitude former friend from community college was right on one thing, it was his taste in music - specifically synthpop and new-wave after the Eighties when it was mostly tossed out. Good thing he stuck to his guns. "Tesla Girls" would be the only unidentified song on a mixtape he gave me that I recently ended up revisiting. I saw why I scoffed at something that was once cute, silly, and full of charm. Of course, this was in the era of new-wave Romantics (hi, With Sympathy-era Al Jourgensen!), but revisiting your Atari youth, via local retro- arcades and having the ones closest to you waving the synthpop / new-wave flag, meant that I would appreciate it even more, even if I didn't catch this through Weird Science (Hughes, 1984).

Orchestral Manoeuvres in the dark