TDP Sweet Sixteen Playlist: Ms. Diozzi

Ms. Diozzi is a guidance counselor at BHS, who is described by her students as “energetic and fun” – a “wicked nice lady” who “tells it like it is” and is “always on top of her game.” She also co-advises our gay/straight alliance, Spectrum, and assists on the production of BHS’s musicals. Ms. Diozzi is pictured below (on the left), next to one of her favorite high school teachers. Here is what she has to say about what she was listening to at age sixteen.

I had some trouble coming up with this list, because at first, I simply couldn’t remember what I was listening to when I turned 16 in April, 1981, the year MTV made its debut and the year I began listening to Matty in the Morning. Though I’ve had a few phases in my life during which I listened to music out of the time it was written, such as my great Beatle obsession of 1978-79 and my Led Zeppelin/Bob Seger/Steve Miller Band stage of 2000, I tend to prefer music that’s of the time we’re in. I know that whatever was on the charts in mid-1981 had to be what I was listening to, even if I wasn’t overly enthusiastic about it now or then. I was disappointed to be reminded that so many of the songs that year were ones I truly disliked. (And not just me, a couple of them, “Morning Train” and “Theme from The Greatest American Hero” would be fodder for episodes of Seinfeld in the early 90s.) Though I’d liked a lot of the sentimental music of the 70s by such artists as Hall and Oates and Olivia Newton John, by the time the 80s rolled around, my angsty teenage self had had enough already. Where was the new music? Which artist or artists were going to lead us into the new decade? We had thought that John Lennon might, but he had been killed five months earlier. We didn’t know it at the time, but music from J. Geils, the Cars, Cyndi Lauper, the Police and the GoGo’s was imminent, and Madonna, U2 and (say it like JayZ) Michael Jackson’s Thriller were right behind them, ready to take on and define pop music for the rest of the decade.