When in Ireland...

I can’t remember the first time I heard Delerium’s trance-techno collaboration with Sarah McLachlan.  I can’t even remember the fourth, or fifth, or seventh time.  While a trance-techno track doesn’t sound very radio-friendly by American standards, it was a non-stop hit in Ireland, apparently.

I was on a three-week study abroad program one January, living in Galway at a hostel with a dimly-lit lounge that was always full of French-speaking backpackers.  After three weeks of going to the grocery, pharmacy, internet café, fish ‘n chips stand, and anywhere else where music was piped in, it was abundantly clear that “Silence” was a breakaway hit.  I even remember hearing the dance remix at odd times of the day, say around 10 in the morning, when club-style music typically used to inspire dancing seems out of place for a morning radio show.

There’s something infectious about the track, though, at least after hearing it a dozen times, and as soon I returned from Ireland I started going into withdrawal.  It turns out that downtempo dance music actually makes a decent companion to shopping trips and fast food.  I had to scour  the internet to find the track, though.  Americans just hadn’t yet caught on to the dance-music-on-the-radio phenomenon.