"Reminiscing" is a song by Australian soft rock music group Little River Band, released in June 1978 as the second single from their fourth studio album Sleeper Catcher. The song was written by the band's rhythm guitarist Graeham Goble, and sung by their lead singer Glenn Shorrock. "Reminiscing" peaked at number 35 on the Australian Kent Music Report and at No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100.

Background and recording

In 2005, Goble spoke of his inspiration and recording of the song, saying "I loved watching old black and white movies, and I always also loved the music of Glenn Miller and Cole Porter, that whole era of writing, and it was my attempt to write a song to depict the romantic era. It came out very quickly, I wrote it in about half an hour. Even though a lot of people think it sounds complicated, on the guitar it's very simple to play. It nearly never got recorded – when the time came to record it, the keyboard player I wanted to use, Peter Jones, was out of town, so we cut the band track with a different keyboard player. It didn't work. A few days later when we tried it again with a different keyboard player, again it didn't work, and the band was losing interest in the song. Just before the album was finished, Peter Jones came back into town, the band and I had an argument because I wanted to give Reminiscing a third chance. Peter played on it, we cut it, and finished it, and sent the album to Capitol. Capitol said that they couldn't hear any singles on the album, and didn't know what to release. Five weeks later, someone at Capitol's New York office said 'You're all crazy, Reminiscing is a smash.' Capitol put it out, and it just immediately caught on fire, and became our highest chart hit." Goble added "It's quite staggering; you don't realise you've written something like that until it happens, until it's history."

Reception

Record World called it "a highly danceable ballad" and praised the lead vocal performance.

Impact and legacy

At the Australian 1978 King of Pop Awards, the song won Australian Record of the Year. "Reminiscing" was given a BMI Five Million-Air award for five million plays on US radio—the highest achievement ever for any Australian popular song. According to Albert Goldman's biography, John Lennon named "Reminiscing" as one of his favourite songs. May Pang, erstwhile girlfriend of Lennon, said "Oddly, with all the fantastic music he wrote, "our song" was 'Reminiscing' by the Little River Band."

Track listings

Chart performance

Weekly charts

Year-end charts

Madison Avenue version

Australian group Madison Avenue covered the song and released it as a single in March 2001. Their version was certified gold by the ARIA.

Track listing

Australian CD single

Charts

Year-end charts

Certifications

Other versions

Samples

Biz Markie sampled the song for his song "Throwback" on the album Weekend Warrior.

In popular culture