Paul Hardcastle - 19 [1985]

I was 11 when this came out. It was incredible. Such cool music, and such amazing use of documentary samples. It was very powerful. The A+R man, Ken Gunbaum, says:

"Right at the end of the meeting, Paul said: 'Oh, did you see that documentary about Vietnam last week? I taped it and have been messing about with it.'
He played us a very rough version of 19. When I heard that "N-n-n-nineteen" hook, I had a "What the heck?" moment.
These were the early days of spoken-word sampling: the general public had never heard anything like it"

Paul Hardcastle explains -

"I used an Emu Emulator, an early type of sampler that had a two-second limit when it came to doing samples. That's why the hook was "N-n-n-nineteen". It was the only bit of the narrative that made sense in two seconds."

To me as an 11 year old this record sounded like it was from another planet. Who made it? Why did they make it? Nothing got explained and there was nowhere to look that sort of info up. But here was this amazing track.

Hit me up with some other cool Paul Hardcastle tracks, I don't know much of his stuff

not directly paul hardcastle related but check out this channel for some obscure 4 track tape demos in the same style.. we should have a thread for music like this, absolutely love it. vice city baby!

I'm from 1972 and yes, this was extraordinary. It was modern and future. At the same time me and my father were allowed to visit a Boeing 747, cockpit etc.., because we knew the Airports security boss. Awesome. So this song is directly linked with that memory.