I like to say that music keeps me young. I’ve managed to stay in touch with what the cool indie kids are listening to despite the fact I’ll officially push into my late 30s this year. As my tastes have changed over the past four years, getting younger as I grow older, I’ve in turn pushed some of the mainstream music I grew up on out of my library. But there are the guilty pleasures I can’t get rid of, no matter how uncool they might be. This is the story of a song from way, way back I recently rediscovered.

First, a note about how I ran across this track. If you don’t know about <a href=”http://hypem.com/”>The Hype Machine</a>, you need to check it out. They check the world of music blogs and track everything that’s being posted so that you don’t have to. It’s a great way to keep up with new artists (Try before you buy!) and coming across the occasional track from way back.

A couple weeks back, as I was running through my daily scan of what was on THM, I saw an entry for Dolly Parton. For some reason – kitch, memories of my youth, boredom – I decided to check it out. After going through a few Dolly Parton jokes (Wasn’t the first dirty joke just about everyone my age told somehow related to Dolly Parton?), the blogger offered up a few of Ms. Parton’s late 70s pop hits.

The only one I listened to was her #3 hit from early in 1978, “Here You Come Again.”

I know I’ve heard this song a few times in the past 30 years, mostly at a small, crowded, sweaty bar in Kansas City, but I probably had not really listened to it since it was spinning in high rotation three decades ago. I’ll admit it: it’s a genius little piece of pop music. A bouncy little piano intro, which could have been on a Billy Joel song. Sweeping strings that pull you into the main body of the song. The slightest bit of twang in the guitar lines to satisfy her country fans, but overall a perfect example of 70s pop. For added emphasis, it checks in under 3:00, which I think qualifies it for gem status.

I will admit, I probably heard this song a million times when I was a kid. An aunt and uncle that had been in Germany for several years brought me a very sweet, very Euro clock radio for Christmas 1977. Although it was only AM, that’s all you needed back in the day. So I spent just about every waking moment listening to whatever I could pull in. During the day, that meant the local stations, which were mostly pure 70s pop. At night, I could get stations from St. Louis and Chicago, which meant I usually fell asleep to bands like Styx and Queen. Living in southeast Missouri at the time (one of the three TV stations we could pick up was from Kentucky, just to put it into geographic perspective), the local stations ate up that strange late 70s genre of pop-country. I’m moderately ashamed to admit I know a few Crystal Gayle, Kenny Rogers, Ronnie Milsap, and of course Dolly Parton songs. But hey, that’s the way I rolled then, a slave to what the radio stations gave me. And I was six, cut me some slack.

But I’m not ashamed to admit that after listening to it a few times over the past couple weeks, that I have a soft spot in my heart for this magical little ditty.