How did "Start Me Up" become the theme for the Windows 95 launch?

Date:August 28, 2006 / year-entry #292
Tags:history
Orig Link:https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20060828-26/?p=29943
Comments:    11
Summary:Add this to your trivia pile. Keith Combs links to a pair of articles that that go into the history behind how Start Me Up become the theme for the Windows 95 launch. Part 1, Part 2.

Add this to your trivia pile. Keith Combs links to a pair of articles that that go into the history behind how Start Me Up become the theme for the Windows 95 launch. Part 1, Part 2.

Comments (11)
  1. __monty__ says:
    August 28, 2006 at 10:42 am

    … And the most appropriate line in the song:

    "You make a grown man cry!" :)

  2. A. Skrobov says:
    August 28, 2006 at 11:31 am

    There’s also this another look at the story…

    http://www.relisoft.com/Science/allchin2.html

  3. Jonathan Wilson says:
    August 28, 2006 at 12:34 pm

    There is actually a parody song of "Start Me Up" by Wierd Al Yankovic called "Windows 95 Sucks" making fun of how windows 95 was expensive and how it required a lot of people to buy new hardware and stuff.

    Having come through from Windows 3.x up through Windows 95, a lot of what the parody song says is actually true (the whole "need a bunch of new hardware" thing for one)

  4. DjLizard says:
    August 28, 2006 at 2:24 pm

    It’s all about the Pentiums, baby.

  5. vince says:
    August 28, 2006 at 4:02 pm

    Just a note… Weird Al didn’t write the Windows 95 song.  Just because someone labels a song that way on a file sharing network doesn’t make it true!

  6. Mike Dunn says:
    August 28, 2006 at 4:23 pm

    Yeah payin’ the bills wit’ my mad programming skillz.

    Defraggin’ my hard drive for thrills.

  7. Judah says:
    August 28, 2006 at 9:18 pm

    Jonathan,

    Despite the hardward upgrades required, surely you’re glad the general public isn’t still running Win 3.x, eh? :)

  8. Paul Coddington says:
    August 28, 2006 at 10:14 pm

    "… And the most appropriate line in the song:

    You make a grown man cry!" :) "

    Yep – it came to mind every time the ad played for me, and I expect everyone else who knew the lyrics.  Especially as the ad left the song hanging with that as the very next line.

    This illustrates the dangers of using a song on the basis of one line taken out of context being superficially similar to what you want to say.

    I wonder if the ad campaign planners realised this would happen?

  9. Archangel says:
    August 29, 2006 at 1:54 am

    I feel quite nostalgic now – I remember being really excited about the ‘new Windows’ and how cool it looked.

    Funny really, given that now I’d rather use Windows 95 over having red-hot needles run into my eyes, but it’d be a close run thing :-)

    I wouldn’t want to bet on Vista having any ads even 1/10 as cool as those ones.

  10. Reuben Harris says:
    August 29, 2006 at 12:10 pm

    Does anyone else remember Bob Rivers’ excellent parody, Bought It Up?

    Have a listen:

    http://www.bobrivers.com/player/player.asp?atype=tunes&ID=815&Speed=4

  11. JenK says:
    August 29, 2006 at 7:55 pm

    "You make a grown man cry!" :)

    -o-

    There was a lot of laughing over that line in my section of the bleachers….*

    *http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/archive/2005/08/24/455558.aspx

Comments are closed.


*DISCLAIMER: I DO NOT OWN THIS CONTENT. If you are the owner and would like it removed, please contact me. The content herein is an archived reproduction of entries from Raymond Chen's "Old New Thing" Blog (most recent link is here). It may have slight formatting modifications for consistency and to improve readability.

WHY DID I DUPLICATE THIS CONTENT HERE? Let me first say this site has never had anything to sell and has never shown ads of any kind. I have nothing monetarily to gain by duplicating content here. Because I had made my own local copy of this content throughout the years, for ease of using tools like grep, I decided to put it online after I discovered some of the original content previously and publicly available, had disappeared approximately early to mid 2019. At the same time, I present the content in an easily accessible theme-agnostic way.

The information provided by Raymond's blog is, for all practical purposes, more authoritative on Windows Development than Microsoft's own MSDN documentation and should be considered supplemental reading to that documentation. The wealth of missing details provided by this blog that Microsoft could not or did not document about Windows over the years is vital enough, many would agree an online "backup" of these details is a necessary endeavor. Specifics include:

<-- Back to Old New Thing Archive Index