Song Number 50

Introduced by Dave Fasula

Our Countdown to 50 begins close to home, with a song that helped put Northeast Ohio’s rock and roll fingerprints on radios far beyond Cleveland.

It has the energy, urgency, and big-hook confidence that made it feel right at home during our Riverside years, whether it was coming through an FM station, spinning on a turntable, or blasting from somebody’s car speakers.

Watch the first entry in our Top 50 Countdown below.

Welcome to the May 2026 and first edition of the Riverside Class of 1980 Top 50 Countdown of songs from our years in High School.

If you grew up in Northeast Ohio and had an older sibling with a record collection, you already knew this one by the time you hit the halls of Riverside.It explodes out of nowhere — that churning guitar rush, the drum crack that snaps your head back, and then a hook so enormous it practically bounced off every FM transmitter from the Buzzard to WGCL all the way down Route 2.

Then Eric Carmen’s vocal comes in, all ache and adrenaline, balancing sweetness and desperation in a way that made this song hit whether you heard it blasting out of a parking lot in Concord, sneaking through the speakers at a party in Leroy, or coming in strong from CKLW before the night started to fade.

And when that chorus lifts off, it’s pure local power-pop magic, the kind of record that made it feel like our corner of Ohio could make something every bit as huge, hooky, and unforgettable as anything coming out of New York or L.A. Romantic, urgent, and just a little reckless, it sounded like youth with the volume knob turned all the way up.

Now here to introduce the song is classmate Dave Fasula at Lake Erie Bluffs where he is often found walking his dog Sylvio.

Do you know what song he’ll introduce?