Squeeze never had a Top 20 album or a Top 10 single in the U.S. I looked it up. And their biggest hit (#15 in Billboard) had a lead vocal by a guy who isn't in the band anymore. But I saw them play twice this week (indoors and out) and you would think they were this non-stop hit-making machine. At the first show i asked my +1 how to account for this surface disparity and she said MTV and alternative rock radio, which made sense, since the in the early '80s, the golden era of Squeeze (they did headline Madison Square Garden, after all), those things actually mattered. We thought Squeeze had hits because in that world they did. Difford & Tilbrook wrote smart, infectious pop music.

I'm sitting here with a 2 CD set called 'The Big Squeeze.' These are the first eleven songs on CD 1:

Take Me I'm Yours/Goodbye Girl/Cool For Cats/Up The Junction/Slap & Tickle/Another Nail In My Heart/Pulling Mussels (From The Shell)/Is That Love?/Tempted/Black Coffee In Bed/Annie Get Your Gun.

If you don't love at least half of those songs, I'm not sure we can be friends. And I bet that if you were around in the early '80s, the hooks are implanted in your brain.

The second Squeeze show this week was a free one in Bryant Park, and as I went in, I heard a young woman say to her friend, 'When I heard about this show I wasn't sure who they were, and then [her boyfriend] played me their cd and I knew all the songs.' One way you know pop music is working: the band launches into their next tune, and one girl says to another girl, 'I LOVE this song!!!,' and bounces delightedly and sings along (this isn't annoying at an outdoor show, for some reason). This happened many times ('Is That Love?,' 'Goodbye Girl,' 'Annie Get Your Gun,' etc.). The songs are very singalongable.

When I told a newish friend I was going to the second show yesterday, she e-mailed me, 'Wow. Two shows. You must have worked with them in some way?'

'No,' I e-mailed back. 'Just a fan.'