I Could Be Happy: The Best of Altered Images

Artist: Altered Images
Released:1997

Not that anyone remembers this, but Nickelodeon was commercial free during its early, Lewis & Clark years on cable TV. This inevitably led to gaps in programming, with nothing but dead air separating Pinwheel from The Tomorrow People. To remedy the situation, the channel would air music videos. Mind you, music videos were still somewhat of a novelty. MTV was only a year old, while VH1 and Friday Night Videos were but a glimmer in Viacom’s eye.

I’m certain that Nickelodeon aired a variety of clips, but the only two I remember were Billy Joel’s “Pressure,” and Altered Images’ “Happy Birthday.” Anything involving Billy Joel can be a life-scarring event, so the less said about him the better. “Happy Birthday,” on the other hand, was fantastic. Arguably one of the happiest songs ever written, “HB” is chock full of rolling tom-toms, scratchy yelping guitars, and a lead singer who sounds permanently attached to a helium tank. The song was so catchy that I…promptly forgot about it for, oh, about 21 years. It was only through the miracle of VH1 Classic (I should write a blog about that channel alone) that I reconvened with the band.

I Could Be Happy: The Best of Altered Images contains “Happy Birthday” and some other tracks from their brief career. A non-entity in the US, the band scored a few Top Ten hits in England during the country’s “anything goes” era of pop music (I’ll explain this in another review, I swear). The early songs find the band mining a Siouxsie-light sound, while the latter compositions are straight-up new wave deliciousness. The band also manages to find an undercurrent of sadness amid the pop assault via their lyrics, which dabble in the fecund themes of longing and regret.

I still can’t figure out how Nickelodeon latched on to Altered Images. Perhaps the video and the song were innocuous enough to appeal to the pre-adolescent audience. I guess its other option would have been Ronnie James Dio running around in a bearskin with a broadsword, slaying hunchbacks in a castle. “Holy Diver” or “Happy Birthday?” Yeah, I thought so.