The History of Cassette Singles: Short, but Eventful

Cassetts singles appeared in record stores around 1982. I don't remember the first one I saw, but sources credit "Vacation" by the GoGos as the first US chart song issued on cassette single.

The new configuration made possible formats not practical within the limits of a seven-inch vinyl 45. Packaging also changed.

Their life span coincides with the appearance of innovative music that was also fun to listen to. The 80s suggest glitter, the 90s grunge, but in the cracks are some very nice songs that hold up well almost twenty years later.

AN EMOTIONAL FISH - "CELEBRATE"

The first cassette singles came in plastic boxes with insert cards like cassette versions of vinyl albums.

Cassettes like this one, with the hit and four other songs including one non-album track, were at first called "maxi-singles." The format eventually became familiar enough to not need such a designation.

An Emotional Fish are from Dublin, and they do sound like U2, and another late 80s British band I really like; the Charlatans UK.

THE SUNDAYS - "HERE'S WHERE THE STORY ENDS"

The standard packaging for cassette singles became a cardboard slipcase not unlike that of a VHS video tape.

Harriet Wheeler, bless her dreamy, heart-shaped singing voice . . . there was no Internet with its lyrics sites. Until I bought the CD and read the actual words, I used to make up my own, to go along with "the only thing I ever really wanted to say was wrong, was wrong, was
wrong . . . " (Yep. Know exactly whatcha mean.)

"Here's Where The Story Ends" was issued on cassette in the traditional format of vinyl 45s; the hit on one side and a single song on the other.

WHEN IN ROME - "THE PROMISE"

Warning! Guilty pleasure ahead! I like this song and have no idea why, other that this it's pure 80s. Adding to the mystery is its status as one of those songs whose artist I never knew until I searched it out in the record shop, since by then radio deejays stopped giving song titles. Even today, if I hear it on an 80s Flashback Lunch, I have to stop and think . . . oh, yeah, When In Rome . . .

This cassette single is a variation on the two-song format: the hit/radio version backed with a dance mix; in this case a longer edit with no vocal.

DNA FEATURING SUZANNE VEGA - "TOM'S DINER"

This is MY song. My name is in the title, and there's a restaurant back home in Flint just like this one. It really is Tom's Diner.

I liked it so much that I bought it every way it was issued: DNA vinyl and cassette, and the Suzanne Vega album "Solitude Standing" on the three configurations available in 1987: 12 inch vinyl, cassette, and CD.

The DNA cassette single has the 7 inch vinyl version backed with the 12 inch version that's almost two minutes longer.

SHAKESPEAR'S SISTER - "STAY"

Essayist Virginia Woolf, in a 1929 piece titled "A Room Of Her Own," gave William Shakespeare a sister and spoke through her to state that, had she existed and been creative like her brother, as a woman her assigned role in society would have still relegated her to a lifetime of drudgery.

In 1985, the Smiths recorded a song called "Shakespeare's Sister." Siobhan Fahey borrowed the name for her post-Banarama group. The last "e" was accidentally left off. So the name is not a typo.

"Stay" reminds me of one thing: March 1992 in London, when it was at the top of the UK singles charts. It's on several of my London radio airchecks from that visit.

Thiscassette single, like many others, included a second song and samples from other songs on the full-length CD from which it came.

THE VERVE - "BITTER SWEET SYMPHONY"

Still in the shrink wrap. $1.79 for the hit single and three non-CD songs. What a bargain. Vinyl 45s with only two songs cost $1.59, if you could find them in 1997.
Sing along: "Well, I've told you once, and I've told you twice . . . " Alternate words because the music is the Rolling Stones' "The Last Time," lifted from an easy-listening album of Stones songs credited to the Andrew Loog Oldham Orchestra. The only royalties earned by The Verve are for Richard Ashcroft's lyrics. And they're not bad either. "I'm a million different people from one day to the next . . ." Yes. I also know exactly what he means.

After around 1999, cassette singles began disappearing from record stores as the CD single became the configuration of choice. Then record stores began disappearing. Today songs are downloaded. They're easier to play and store, and can be purchased from home, but there's nothing to hold. No picture sleeve or slipcase whose design made the song sound better; no text to scan for writer or production credits, no cool labels to look at. A world in which music exists in the abstract only sounds like a colder, less friendly, place.

The cassette single lasted only a little less than twenty years. They're hard to find even in thrift shops. The thrift shop test indicates that certain cassette singles, despite their recent vintage, could become collectables in the very near future.