Monday Morning Match is a simple post – maybe a quote, inspirational story or idea – intended to spark some motivation inside each of you so your week gets off to a fantastic start on Monday morning.
Every time I hear one of the songs, it brings me back to another place and time. I still remember the day my roommates and I brought the new CD home from the record store and listened to it in our penthouse suite in the fraternity house. (It wasn’t a “suite” and we simply nicknamed it “The Penthouse.”) I didn’t count but I’m guessing that we listened to that CD more than thirty times over the next thirty days.
Every song was ingrained into our heads. We heard the numerous hit songs on the radio or playing on the jukeboxes in the campus bars. The songs went on all of our mixed tapes we created for road trips and we blasted them from the oversized speakers in front of the house on football Saturdays.
It was released over 32 years ago and while it wasn’t filled with as many Number 1 hits as some of their other albums, U2’s The Joshua Tree was one of those iconic CDs that is a classic that brings me and many of the people that ever heard it back to the place were were in our lives the first few times we heard it. To me, The Joshua Tree is a classic because every single song on it touches me in my head or my heart every single time I hear one of the songs.
Of course, most people will remember the hits like “With or Without You,” “Where the Streets Have No Name,” and “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For.” But for the true music aficionado or a long-time fan of U2, it’s the songs like “One Tree Hill, “Bullet the Blue Sky,” and “In God’s Country” that make this CD such a memorable collection of songs. As for me personally? If it was close to “last call” in that neighborhood pub and I had one credit left on the jukebox, you can expect me to choose song number five – “Running to Stand Still.”
(Don’t see the video above? Click here)
Like most bands, it’s the hits that make you famous but it’s the “b-sides” that earn you long-term fans. Those throw-away songs for many that become something that defines the way people look (or hear) you in the future.
No one is looking to be a “one-hit-wonder” so ask yourself; What is that memorable lyric or “song” that you’ll be known for years from now? Will you be able to do something in your career that years from now, people will remember? How can you deliver your service, product, or represent your brand in a way that will not only be effective in the moment, but will be memorable after the moment is over, the service is offered, or the transaction is completed?
When I hear a song from The Joshua Tree come on the radio or shuffle across my Spotify playlist, I instinctively smile and reach for the volume knob. What will you do today, this week, or over your career to make people think of you and the way you made them feel?
Go build relationships, solve problems, and have fun this week. The more people listen to that tune over and over and over again, as we did in “the Penthouse,” you’re going to, one day, be considered a classic.