The Music Advent Alphabet, R-U and bonus V

For R I went with a Christmassy song (although it's not really a Christmas song, just because it mentions Christmas - although actually I think "sad Christmas songs" could be their own genre, almost) - and not incidentally, this is one of my favorite songs of all time: Joni Mitchell, "River"

After that I got in an 80s groove, although none of these songs are much alike. The first one is a rock song: Rainbow, "Stone Cold"

This is one of those very silly songs (or well, the video is very silly, anyway, and I think MTV must have been where I first heard the song because the two are inextricably merged in my mind) that you can't help sort of liking anyway. Also, at 22 or so, I thought Joe Lynn Turner was really cute.

Then we have this sort of smooth, slick thing that is "True" - I think Spandau Ballet was lumped generally under the "new wave" banner at the time, but I also think for this song, at least, that's pretty debatable:

This is a song that never caught on in the US, as far as I know. Simple Minds had a Moment in America (mostly because of Breakfast Club) but they were a much bigger thing in Europe. Anyway, this is my favorite Simple Minds song. I think I posted this video during Holidailies last year but I didn't actually use it for a Music Advent pick at the time.

(As I said when I posted it before, I don't remember seeing this video at all back then. I just knew the song.)

And as a bonus (because I'm pretty sure I'm not actually going to use it for Music Advent tomorrow), another one of my fave 80s songs, Ultravox's "Vienna"