Songs of '83: "Wishing (If I Had a Phtograph of You)"

Climbing slowly up the Billboard charts in the wake of The Police's monster hit from last week, we have my favorite song by A Flock of Seagull's, probably the most-mocked of all the synth-pop bands that penetrated the America radio market. Their biggest hit in the U.S. was "I Ran (So Far Away)" from the year before, and the one they're best remembered for, if only ironically. But this week's radio memory from 1983, "Wishing (If I Had a Photograph of You)," is a gorgeous bit of synth-pop, overwhelmingly because of guitarist Paul Reynolds's echo and delay effects. (Honestly, when it comes to using the guitar to create sonic landscapes, Reynolds beats out U2's Edge, at least when judged on the basis of the work they'd accomplished by these respective points in their careers.) I read once that, besides mocking lead singer Mike Score's hair, AFoS were sometimes rundown by other synth-pop bands of the early 1980s for still making guitars such a big part of their sound. If so, they had the last laugh.