"A Girl Like You" by The Smithereens

Hey listeners! It’s time for the Radio Dial to sift through the airwaves and pull back another long ignored and unfairly forgotten chart hit from many moons ago. Tonight’s featured track? The Smithereens, with “A Girl Like You”!

Taken from their 1989 LP “11”, the title and album cover of which was a tribute the original Rat Pack version of “Ocean’s Eleven”, this lead single achieved #3 on the modern rock charts, and peaked at #38 on the hot 100.  Featuring Pat Dinizio and Jim Babjak on vocals and guitar, bass by Mike Mesaros, and drummer Dennis Diken, and a sound that draws equally from the harder rock of The Who and the Beatles, and the power pop of the Knack, “A Girl” sounded quite alien on the top 40 stations of the time, when sandwiched between  New Kids on the Block, Milli Vanilli, and Paula Abdul.

The “11” album was among the first cassettes I purchased with my 30% off employee discount at the Square Circle record store (my first COOL job!), and it was also the first song from my high school years that I recall hearing on a classic rock station… around 2002. I knew then that if a song from 1989 was considered classic rock, then I had gotten old. But that’s fine with me!

And given that I grew up in Maryland, I’ve always enjoyed that little shout out to Washington, (DC?) in verse 3.

“I'll say anything you want to hear, I'll see everything through.
I'll do anything I have to do… Just to win the love of a girl like you, a girl like you”