"Better Things" is a series of weekly posts, each about one song I really love, by an artist I haven't featured in the previous This Year or Portions For Foxes series. See the introduction for more.
I don't know if this is my favorite Split Enz song - there's a part of me that will always hold out for Dirty Creature, far darker and starker - but it's a wonderful bouncy pop song that's just about perfect.
History Never Repeats was a hit, I think - maybe more in their native New Zealand than over here in North America - and gave a title to at least one of their greatest hits records. And, like so many of the songs I've been writing about, it's largely a break-up song - the history that will not repeat is that
There was a girl I used to know
She dealt my love a savage blow
The song is straightforward from there: a fine pop sound, circa 1980, with a video (linked below) even more of its time, in all of its splendor.
Good pop music is like a soap bubble: shiny, shimmery, floating on its own power, gorgeous to look at and even more exciting the more light plays on it. But poking at it will only make it burst and disappear. So I think I'll leave it there, with this very very early-MTV video, that I have to imagine all of the participants now look back at and regret:
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