Song Lyric Sunday. Hold/Pause/Stop/Wait 11/10/20.

It’s Sunday and this week our prompt from our gallant host Jim Adams is Hold/Pause/Stop/Wait.

Two very different songs this week but I love them for different reasons 💜 To be honest I don’t know why I love Wait by M83 I just find it so haunting.

As for Toto and Hold the line. Well it’s my era isn’t it 💜

“Wait” is a song by French electronic music band M83. The track was released on 5 December 2012 as the fifth single from their sixth studio album, Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming (2011).

A music video was made for “Wait” and was released on 5 December 2012 that was directed by Fleur & Manu and produced by Jules de Chateleux and Jean Davi. A trilogy was successfully made after they finally made this video together with the other two music videos “Midnight City” and “Reunion“.^[3][4]

“Wait” was featured in the 2014 film The Fault in Our Stars by Josh Boone, which he requested to be included as one of the songs for the film.Also in 2014, the song was featured at the end of The Vampire Diaries season six, episode five. The song was also featured in the 2012 film Step Up Revolution, and in the 2019 film Five Feet Apart.

“Hold the Line” is a song by the American rock band Toto. The song was written by the band’s keyboardist David Paich, and the lead vocals were performed by Bobby Kimball. The song was released as the band’s debut single, and was featured on their debut 1978 eponymous album. The song was a huge success in the U.S.; it reached number 5 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart^[3] during the winter of 1978–79, and number 14 on the official UK chart.

Keyboardist David Paich noted that the song was relatively easy to develop. He began with the piano riff, which would become the song’s intro and chorus. After toying with the piano riff one night, he started singing “Hold the line, love isn’t always on time”, and found the lyric to be a suitable fit. The verses were subsequently finished two hours later.

Jeff Porcaro on “Hold the Line”, in a 1988 interview with Modern Drummer:

“That was me trying to play like Sly Stone’s original drummer, Greg Errico, who played drums on “Hot Fun In The Summertime.” The hi-hat is doing triplets, the snare drum is playing 2 and 4 backbeats, and the bass drum is on 1 and the & of 2. That 8th note on the second beat is an 8th-note triplet feel, pushed. When we did the tune, I said, “Gee, this is going to be a heavy four-on-the-floor rocker, but we want a Sly groove.” The triplet groove of the tune was David’s writing. It was taking the Sly groove and meshing it with a harder rock caveman approach.”

Several of the band members recall hearing “Hold the Line” for the first time on the radio:

“I flipped the first time I heard myself on the radio. My mom called me up and said, “Turn on KLOS.” It was the song “Hold the Line,” and I started running around the house in my underwear, screaming, “I’m on the radio!” My wife was cracking up. It was just a thrill.” (Steve Lukather, Guitar Player magazine, April 1984)

Bobby Kimball had a similar experience when he heard Toto for the very first time on the radio: “I was asleep, I had my alarm clock set for noon because we were gonna do something in the studio, some promo and when the alarm came on there was the radio and “Hold The Line” was playing. And my room was totally black and I was looking for the telephone and I called Paich and I heard him scream, he was living over there with his girlfriend and he was screaming around and falling over trying to get to the radio.”

This is part of Jim Adams Song Lyric Sunday.