History Music / BoyMeetsGirl

* JustForPun: ''Reel Life''. [[DontExplainTheJoke Because they're Boy Meets Girl, like in the movies, geddit?]]

* ObviousBeta: They recorded their own take on "[[https://youtu.be/uSZP0c1pA1g I Wanna Dance With Somebody]]" as a proof of concept for Whitney.

* SomethingCompletelyDifferent: Album closers "Premonitions" and "Everybody's Somebody's Baby" are story songs about losing one's child to violence, with the former explicitly about a 1983 terrorist attack.

!!Tropes associated with "Waiting For A Star To Fall"
* CoverVersion - Italian [[ArenaRock AOR]] group Lionville covered it in 2012, complete with saxophone solo.
* MelismaticVocals - ''Waiting for a staaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaar!'' It '''was''' written with Music/WhitneyHouston in mind.
* OtherCommonMusicVideoConcepts - Hybrid "Garage Rock" and "Band From Mundania"
* SillyLoveSongs - On an album piled up with [[BreakupSong Breakup Songs]], no less!
* WhatMightHaveBeen - Originally submitted to Music/WhitneyHouston, then bounced around to several potential singers before finding its way back to the original writers.

!!Other tropes associated with the duo
* AntiLoveSong - Surprisingly upbeat example in "Bring Down The Moon", which urges "finding comfort in closing the distance between your life and your dreams" and finding "the spirit of romance" in day-to-day life when love falls short of expectations.
* ArtifactTitle - At 57 and 62 respectively, they're hardly a boy and a girl at this point.

* InDaClub - "Oh Girl" video, oddly for their genre, before degenerating into a bar brawl.
* JustForPun - ''Reel Life''. [[DontExplainTheJoke Because they're Boy Meets Girl, like in the movies, geddit?]]
* LyricalDissonance - Much of ''Reel Life'' sketches out the pair's relationship issues (sometimes passive-aggressively, towards each other). The melodies themselves are quite upbeat.
* TheManBehindTheMan - The co-writers of Music/WhitneyHouston's #1 hits "How Will I Know" and "I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)"
* MohsScaleOfRockAndMetalHardness - Three to four at the highest.

* NewWaveMusic
* PepTalkSong - "Be True / Soul Connection", "The Aah Song", and "Climbing".
* ProtestSong - "Bird In Hand" is an environmental protest declaring that "progress hides a vengeful lie." [[AudienceAlienatingPremise This may have helped get the plug pulled on ''New Dream''.]]
* SomethingCompletelyDifferent - Album closers "Premonitions" and "Everybody's Somebody's Baby" are story songs about losing one's child to violence, with the former explicitly about a 1983 terrorist attack.
* JustForFun/TropeNamesForABand - A middle-aged couple sings a BreakupSong album about its divorce - Boy Meets Girl!
* VocalTagTeam

Shannon and George patched up their relationship around the time of the release of ''Reel Life'' and married in the aftermath, [[ArtistDisillusionment semi-retiring]] as recording artists after [[ExecutiveMeddling the shelving]] of their 1990 followup album ''New Dream''. In 2000, they began work on their self-released comeback effort, ''The Wonderground'', but once again their personal issues found their way into their work as they worked their way to an amicable divorce. ''The Wonderground'' debuted to a warm reception as an Allmusic album pick, though a name change to [[OverlyLongName BoyMeetsGirl Music]] (apparently to avoid being buried by dating sites in search results) did the band no favors in the name recognition department.

Shannon Rubicam (born October 11, 1951) and George Merrill (born January 10, 1956) found most of their success behind the scenes as songwriters. After a relatively inauspicious debut album, Rubicam and Merrill received their first big break when a song they wrote for Music/JanetJackson found its way to [[Music/WhitneyHouston some obscure cousin of then-famous Dionne Warwick.]] "How Will I Know" exploded to the top of the charts, and a star was born. Fittingly, a sighting of a shooting star at one of Houston's concerts sent Rubicam scrambling for her notebook, writing the lyrics to a song she intended to be Houston's next smash.

In the meantime, the couple went through a yearlong separation while working on their followup album, ''Reel Life''. Lyricist Rubicam turned loose many of their relationship issues as words in the many, many songs eventually culled down to the ten on the disc. Meanwhile, after Houston rejected "Waiting For A Star To Fall", studio heads, smelling a hit, passed it around to several artists including Belinda Carlisle before Boy Meets Girl finally took back their song and took it to the top of the charts, peaking at #5 stateside and the very top throughout Europe. It continuously resurfaces on eighties collections and briefly found its way back into the pop cultural spotlight via a 2006 "sample war" involving three competing songs.

[[caption-width-right:321:I hear your name whispered on the wind...]]

* MelismaticVocals - ''Waiting for a staaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaar!'' It '''was''' written with WhitneyHouston in mind.

* WhatMightHaveBeen - Originally submitted to WhitneyHouston, then bounced around to several potential singers before finding its way back to the original writers.

* TheManBehindTheMan - The co-writers of WhitneyHouston's #1 hits "How Will I Know" and "I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)"

Shannon Rubicam (born October 11, 1951) and George Merrill (born January 10, 1956) found most of their success behind the scenes as songwriters. After a relatively inauspicious debut album, Rubicam and Merrill received their first big break when a song they wrote for Music/JanetJackson found its way to [[WhitneyHouston some obscure cousin of then-famous Dionne Warwick.]] "How Will I Know" exploded to the top of the charts, and a star was born. Fittingly, a sighting of a shooting star at one of Houston's concerts sent Rubicam scrambling for her notebook, writing the lyrics to a song she intended to be Houston's next smash.

'''Shannon Rubicam''' and '''George Merrill''' found most of their success behind the scenes as songwriters. After a relatively inauspicious debut album, Rubicam and Merrill received their first big break when a song they wrote for Music/JanetJackson found its way to [[WhitneyHouston some obscure cousin of then-famous Dionne Warwick.]] "How Will I Know" exploded to the top of the charts, and a star was born. Fittingly, a sighting of a shooting star at one of Houston's concerts sent Rubicam scrambling for her notebook, writing the lyrics to a song she intended to be Houston's next smash.

'''Shannon Rubicam''' and '''George Merrill''' found most of their success behind the scenes as songwriters. After a relatively inauspicious debut album, Rubicam and Merrill received their first big break when a song they wrote for JanetJackson found its way to [[WhitneyHouston some obscure cousin of then-famous Dionne Warwick.]] "How Will I Know" exploded to the top of the charts, and a star was born. Fittingly, a sighting of a shooting star at one of Houston's concerts sent Rubicam scrambling for her notebook, writing the lyrics to a song she intended to be Houston's next smash.

* TropeNamesForABand - A middle-aged couple sings a BreakupSong album about its divorce - Boy Meets Girl!

----

In the meantime, the couple went through a yearlong seperation while working on their followup album, ''Reel Life''. Lyricist Rubicam turned loose many of their relationship issues as words in the many, many songs eventually culled down to the ten on the disc. Meanwhile, after Houston rejected "Waiting For A Star To Fall", studio heads, smelling a hit, passed it around to several artists including Belinda Carlisle before Boy Meets Girl finally took back their song and took it to the top of the charts, peaking at #5 stateside and the very top throughout Europe. It continuously resurfaces on eighties collections and briefly found its way back into the pop cultural spotlight via a 2006 "sample war" involving three competing songs.

* ''[[GrowingTheBeard Reel Life]]'' (1988)
* ''[[ScrewedByTheNetwork New Dream]]'' (1991)

* '''EarWorm'''

* SampledUp - Four times in a two year span, between 2006 and 2007. If you listened to a "mix" station playing both modern and eighties songs, it could not be escaped.

* BigNameFan - George is a downplayed example for Music/SystemOfADown.

* CreatorCouple
** WorkingWithTheEx - ''The Wonderground''
* ExecutiveMeddling - Mere weeks before the release of "New Dream", a management shuffle led to the album being dropped from rotation. Copies already released in Europe became collector's items of a sort until the album finally saw the light of day in 2005.
* InDaClub - "Oh Girl" video, oddly for their genre, before degenerating into a BarBrawl.

* TheManBehindTheMan - The cowriters of WhitneyHouston's #1 hits "How Will I Know" and "I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)"

* OneHitWonder - In popular memory, at least; "Oh Girl" from the debut album cracked the top 40, but nearly thirty years on is mostly forgotten.

* RealitySubtext - ''Reel Life'' and especially ''The Wonderground'' - half their output! - carry the weight of George and Shannon's then-collapsing relationship.
* SignatureSong - "Waiting For A Star To Fall", of course.

* UnintentionalPeriodPiece - The video for "Oh Girl" is a spectacular portrait of ''MiamiVice''-era style.

* WhatDoYouMeanItsNotSymbolic - Try and piece together what's going on in that "Bring Down The Moon" video. While some of it probably means something, WordOfGod is that they and the director [[FauxSymbolism just loved the imagery of the American Southwest at the time.]]

* BigNameFan - George is a downplayed example for SystemOfADown.

** Alongside the likes of PhilCollins, TheBeeGees and Hall & Oates on ''Reel Life'' producer Arif Mardin's [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin "All My Friends Are Here"]]

* NewWave

* SomethingCompletelyDifferent - Album closers "Premonitions" and "Everybody's Somebody's Baby" are story songs about losing one's child to violence; the latter may be a SequelSong to the former.

* Melismatic Vocals - ''Waiting for a staaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaar!'' It ''was'' written with WhitneyHouston in mind.

* CoverVersion - Italian [[ArenaRock AOR]] group Lionville covered it in 2012, complete with saxophone solo!

* TruckDriversGearChange - Just after the second saxophone solo, with an effect "breaking" the vocals.

* CoverVersion - Italian [[ArenaRock AOR]] group Lionville covered it in 2012, leading to a rare saxophone solo in a rock song.

* ExecutiveMeddling - Mere weeks before the release of "New Dream", a management shuffle led to the album being dropped from rotation. Copies already released in Europe became collector's items of a sort until the album finally saw the light of day in 2005.
* LyricalDissonance - Much of '"Reel Life'' sketches out the pair's relationship issues (sometimes passive-aggressively, towards each other). The melodies themselves are quite upbeat.

* ArtifactTitle - At 47 and 52 respectively, they're hardly a boy and a girl at this point.

Shannon and George patched up their relationship around the time of the release of ''Reel Life'' and married in the aftermath, [[CreatorDisillusionment semi-retiring]] as recording artists after [[Executive Meddling the shelving]] of their 1990 followup album ''New Dream''. In 2000, they began work on their self-released comeback effort, ''The Wonderground'', but once again their personal issues found their way into their work as they worked their way to an amicable divorce. ''The Wonderground'' debuted to a warm reception as an Allmusic album pick, though a name change to [[OverlyLongName '''BoyMeetsGirl Music''']] (apparently to avoid being buried by dating sites in search results) did the band no favors in the name recognition department.

Shannon and George patched up their relationship around the time of the release of ''Reel Life'' and married in the aftermath, [[CreatorDisillusionment semi-retiring]] as recording artists after [[Executive Meddling the shelving]] of their 1990 followup album ''New Dream''. In 2000, they began work on their self-released comeback effort, ''The Wonderground'', but once again their personal issues found their way into their work as they worked their way to an amicable divorce. ''The Wonderground'' debuted to a warm reception as an Allmusic album pick, though a name change to '''BoyMeetsGirl Music''' (apparently to avoid being buried by dating sites in search results) did the band no favors in the name recognition department.

* OtherCommonMusicVideoConcepts - Hybrid ''"Garage Rock''' and '''Band From Mundania'''

* SillyLoveSongs - On an album piled up with BreakupSongs, no less!

* OneHitWonder - In popular memory, at least; "Oh Girl" cracked the top 40, but nearly thirty years on is mostly forgotten.
* PepTalkSong - ''Be True / Soul Connection'', ''The Aah Song'', and ''Climbing''.