Hardware

I knew they were from the 80s. I did not think they came out before '88-'89 though.

I remember when the CD was relatively new. And they were still writing the standards for it. Red Book is the standard for CDs. Philips, Sony, and the others went to the record companies and they negotiated quality vs storage amounts. The quality the music industry demanded would have allowed about 8 minutes per disc. The compromise got that up to 80 minutes. Now, CDs have pretty good quality audio. For a while we said "CD quality audio" and that meant something, largely in gaming, but also in streaming later to differentiate from lossy audio (that, to most of us, sounded the same). Later we'd surpass "CD quality audio" (e.g. Dolby Atmos on Apple Music... though, not everyone agrees spatial audio is an improvement) but for a decade or two, it meant something.

Anyway, my first CDs were "Bat Out of Hell II: Back Into Hell" by Meat Loaf, and yes, I understand what he won't do for love. I don't know why this was ever questioned. Certainly not by anyone who listened to the song. He said he wouldn't move on after she died. Because the fictional version of him talking was this immortal type, like a benign vampire or something. She made him promise that when she died, he'd move on and find someone else. That was where he drew the line. It's literally right there in the lyrics and it isn't hard to understand. The others were the Bodyguard soundtrack (so, mostly Whitney Houston), and "No More Tears" by Ozzy Osbourne. So, early 1990s. CDs had been out for a while, but I was happy with tapes for some years before I got a CD player. And, fun fact, I at least had the Meat Loaf CD for a while before I got my first CD player. I just kept it in a drawer until I could play it.