“Eyes On Me” is a better CD single than “Blue (Da Ba Dee)”

In my life, I have purchased two CD singles: “Eyes On Me,” which I just ordered this month, and “Blue (Da Be Dee),” which I bought at FYE back in 2000. One of these was a great purchase.

The only reason this thought even occurred to me is that I just ordered the “Eyes On Me” single for myself off of eBay, and it’s such a great little release. It comes on a mini CD! It’s cute and compact, with enough space for three tracks (the song, an instrumental version, and a Faye Wong B-side). I guess this is how CD singles were sold in Japan, and you know what? I love it. I could imagine paying a couple bucks for this.

Meanwhile, over here in the US in the glorious Midwest circa the year 2000, I spent what I remember being twenty fucking dollars on the CD single for “Blue (Da Ba Dee).” (It may have been $15 and I paid with a twenty, but either way, it seemed like a LOT even at the time). Jogging my memory, I think it was this release (via Discogs). It was a full-size CD, and it came with two versions of “Blue (Da Be Dee),” one slightly longer than the other.

Don’t get me wrong: I was quite excited to have a copy of “Blue (Da Ba Dee),” because I was 10 years old in the year 2000 in the cultural desert of Indiana. But this was also one of the first times in my life I ever felt like, maybe, I was getting price-gouged. My mom tried to help me make sense of what I had purchased by explaining the concept of 7-inch vinyls to me, and yet, in a world where I could just rip a CD and get the song I wanted, the idea of a CD single seemed kind of silly and wasteful. Looking back on it, there’s certainly no way it cost $20, right? For two versions of “Blue (Da Ba Dee)”? Could we live in such an unjust world?

My 25-year-streak of thinking CD singles are stupid was successfully broken by “Eyes On Me.” What I’m trying to say is that CD singles both peaked and crashed as a medium around 1999–2000.