Next up in the Eliminator challengers is Stephen Marley, one of the numerous sons of Bob Marley, with his 2007 reggae release Inna Di Red. And it’s weighted random opponent is the 1979 mellow classic Longer by Dan Fogelberg.
Here are the youtubes:
Analysis: This is a true should we refresh the music (?) battle, and the answer is YES WE SHOULD.
Longer, by Dan Fogelberg, might be the quintessential late 1970s mellow peace and love acoustic let’s all chill song of all time! I mean it just screams mellow and old. The Eliminator is starting to develop a rule that if the song has strings in the background playing musak, then it has almost no chance of staying in the top 1000. But let’s all face it, Fogelberg was really just vibing at the time. It just feels so serene and peaceful and the world is all going to come together and everyone is going to fall in love. And I don’t know if that’s Chuck Mangione on trumpet, but the song is just so so 1970s. It got to #2 on the pop charts in 1980, fighting with Queen (Crazy Little Thing Called Love) and Pink Floyd (Another Brick in the Wall).
Inna Di Red, on the other hand is new to me, as much as new reggae from a son of Bob Marley can be. But it just a whole fresher vibe and feel! And reggae is decidedly underrepresented on this top 1000 list. So it’s heavily favored going in to this battle. Modern reggae is a lot more layered and complete than early versions. It’s more highly produced, and for reggae that’s a good thing as those old Bob Marley songs were underproduced if anything. This is not a huge pop hit of any kind, but this song is just fun to listen to and put in anyone’s playlist, really.
Inna Di Red makes the top 1000. It’s also going in pretty low at #841, but I think it might survive some challenges over the long term because this song just gets your head bobbing and it is fairly fresh.
