The rain drizzled down, as we drove back from Oxford in my friend’s Mazda 6 TS2. He turned up his stereo, to fill the car with suitable festive music. A break in our casual conversation, I began to listen attentively to the music being played. I then asked my friend, C, the artist for the song that was currently blaring out of the speakers. He quickly answered with some assurance, “Wings”. Never one to judge my friend’s high intellect, even for such a trivial subject as music, I felt reassured that this was the artist of the song. However, just to check, I asked to see the CD case for the album being played. It was, The No.1 Christmas Album. Released on 9th December 1996, the quality of the music was exceptional and music there to appeal to both old and young. As the reviews on Amazon clearly indicate. However, by now, there were various other songs that I had heard and I never got the chance to recall the song I had enquired about. I searched for them on the tracklisting, and tried to make some mental notes. That was Sunday, and I do recall checking the tracklisting in full on Amazon, and downloading a few songs. The song was forgotten for now. I began to think, is this really a Christmas song? When I had heard it earlier, it sounded far from a festive number, with no reference to any seasonally related paraphernalia.

Christmas Eve, and with all my family arriving home, I didn’t actually make my way to bed until nearly 12:30am. So, I decided to listen to the radio on my Nokia 7210. (Yes, I know I need to upgrade my handset!) I briefly heard the song again, but the reception was poor, as I was switching across all my preset stations.

Today, I decided to check the song listing for the album again and recalled the song chorus. I looked for songs by Paul McCartney or Wings but found not what I sought. I continued to scroll down and there it was, “Freiheit”. I searched for the song and found it, then I played it on WinAmp 5.01. This was the song, I had been hunting for. I was then desperate to find out more about this band, this song and to discover, why their sound was so familiar to the famous Beatle. My first port of call was BBCi, and searching via the TOTP2 Database. No luck there. I had to dive into the deep end and use Google. I found the lyrics, that was easy enough, but finding out more about the band, that seemed more of a difficult task. Luckily on surfing through several Google results, I discovered a page dedicated to the German 80s band, Münchener Freiheit on The Leopard’s Lair. For now, I’m just going to enjoy the song and discovering more of the music.

The hopes we had were much too high
Way out of reach but we have to try
The game will never be over
Because we’re Keeping The Dream Alive…