Good Tunes: Oleander, 'I Walk Alone'

A couple weeks ago, in my post for “Into the Void,” I wondered about all the songs that faded from our memory after we no longer heard them over and over on the radio. Well, I stumbled across one of those songs recently: “I Walk Alone” by Oleander.

Yeah — Oleander. I had totally forgotten about Oleander until I saw the name while searching for something else on Saturday night.

What was I searching for? Earlier on Saturday, while heading out of the house, the lyrics of a long-lost nineties hit came to mind. “Where did that come from?!” I wondered. “I haven’t thought about that song in years.” I vowed to look it up later on YouTube, but by that night the lyrics had faded from memory. Frustrated, wanting to figure out what song had resurfaced from the depths of my mind, I checked the good ol’ Bradboard, a personal pop and rock Top 40 (apparently compiled by a dude named Brad) that I stumbled across a long time ago. I’ve used Bradboard to find songs in the past but this time it was not as helpful. The song I thought of was catchy, infectious, and sounded a lot like I heard it over and over again on All Hit 98.9 in 1997. I checked the Top 40 for 1997 on another site and found what I had thought of earlier: Gina G’s “Ooh Aah… Just a Little Bit.” Weird, huh? At the time it popped into my head, though, I was thinking that I was going out for “just a little bit.”

Anyway, I did stumble across Oleander’s “I Walk Alone” while perusing Bradboard’s yearly lists. It was released in 1999 and definitely sounds like 1999 to me; I remember hearing it a lot on Rock 108 around that time so it definitely influenced my lasting impression of music that year. It’s good sunset music (it even looks like the actors in the video are watching the sun set) and a fitting Valentine’s Day tribute for a single man like myself.