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This week’s music blog is for people of a certain age.  Mine. The senior class of 1979. Because spring of that year heralded the release of Supertramp’s “Breakfast in America,” right when we were poised on leaving behind the predictable society of high school (however welcome that departure would be) to head out into the Real World. “The Logical Song” from this album became our anthem, the song we would sing at the tops of our lungs whenever it came on the radio.

I’m not sure teenagers today could fully appreciate that song now. Sure, there are still social outcasts in high school, and sure, there’s Good Charlotte’s “Anthem” for them.  But that song doesn’t address the social pressures we were under in the 70s. Back then, there was still a VERY strong emphasis on toeing the lines society drew (and society drew some pretty rigid, boring lines back then), on not being different, on following rules, and on behaving in ways that were the acceptable norm. (That norm being much like the lines society drew.) We were expected to go to college and get good jobs doing the sorts of things our parents did. Creative endeavors weren’t an option. They were too...different.

Then along came “The Logical Song.” My, oh, my, did my friends and I respond to it. We were the social outcasts back before there was a certain coolness to being a social outcast. Despite that, we wanted to embrace our differentness and carry it into adulthood, and we feared that might not be possible. But “The Logical Song” made us realize that there were grown-ups out there who felt the way we did. Who had managed to hang on to their individuality even when others were telling them they had to conform. Because “The Logical Song” presents a person who did what he was supposed to do--he toed those social lines--and lived to bitterly regret it.

That was a powerful, heady thing to realize back then. To follow our hearts simply wasn’t advice we ever heard.

Of course, “The Logical Song” wasn’t the only good song on the album. Everything on this album was good--and still is. And still surprisingly topical in many ways. I heard “Long Way Home” on the radio this week (hence this blog), and it holds up magnificently, almost thirty years after being written. So does “Just Another Nervous Wreck.” And “Goodbye Stranger.” And the title track still makes me smile as much as it did the first time I heard it.

“Breakfast in America” is just a really nice collection of music, some fast, some slow, some rock, some roll. More than that, though, it’s an emblem of a certain time. My time. When music was really starting to matter to me. When I realized how expressive songs could be. When I needed to hear that it was okay for me to follow my own path. I owe Supertramp bigtime for that.