Hey there, it's Stephen Dubner. You are about to hear the third episode of our newest

podcast, The Economics of Everyday Things. It is hosted by Zachary Crockett and you can

get all the episodes on any podcast app. Here's Zachary.

I recently talked to a woman whose name I have heard hundreds of times. At the grocery

store, karaoke bars in my car. But before the world knew her name, she was just a typical

teenager in the late 1970s living it up in Los Angeles.

It was a pretty carefree life in those days. We would just go to someone's house and

rock out the cars, the pretenders, Pondy. Oh yeah. All those songs that you would just

air guitar in your bedroom. I was a 16, 17 year old person. I was working in a clothing

store and this guy said, I'm playing at SIR Studios. Do you want to come check me out?

And so I went and brought some friends. They were honestly really good. And then he asked

to take me to lunch and he told me, I'm absolutely madly in love with you. We're going to

be together one day and I was like, what are you kidding me? You're many, many years older

than me and I'm just not available. He ended up really pursuing me. I didn't go with

him for that first year when he was kind of being my groupie. That's when he's writing

these songs. Every club, the star with the troubid or the whiskey, three shows at night,

selled out, cut to. I'm driving back to my work and I'm just like, did I just tear a song

with my name in it on the radio? Like what just happened?

From the Freakonomics Radio Network, this is the economics of everyday things. I'm Zachary

Trachet. Today, my Shirona. It's the story of how one hit single can pay off for decades.

On August 25, 1979, my Shirona seized the number one spot on the Billboard Hot 100. It

stayed there for a full six weeks, becoming the biggest hit of the year. In an era of

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