If New Wave Songs Were Romance Novels

While driving home from the WisRWA Conference (which was fabulous; more on that later this week), I had my Sirius radio on 1st Wave, which seemed appropriate on a weekend when we celebrated the 30th anniversary of WisRWA.

About halfway home, they played one of my favorite guilty pleasures, Animotion's Obsession, which also seemed amazingly appropriate for a weekend focusing on romance novels. The official video even brings to mind old-school historical romances, with exotic settings, fantastic costumes and cheesy covers.

For the rest of the drive home, I made a game of thinking about what kind of romance novel each song I heard would be. Some of them did not quite work, but most lent themselves rather well to one particular genre or another:

• Iggy Pop's Lust for Life would be a M/M erotic romance, complete with threesomes and BDSM.
• The Cars' You're All I've Got Tonight would be a contemporary second-chance romance.
• Alphaville's Forever Young would be a either a new adult or a paranormal romance (or a NAPR).
• The Cure's Hot Hot Hot makes me think of urban fantasy for some reason.
• The Human League's Fascination would be a new adult erotic romance.

I'm going to have trouble listening to 80s music now without playing this game in my head.