Chuck Klosterman, 43, is an essayist and author of nine books, including his latest, “But What If We’re Wrong?” (Blue Rider). He spoke with Marc Myers.

I was raised on a farm in Wyndmere, N.D., where there wasn’t much to do except listen to the radio. The first song I loved that I found on my own was Eddy Grant’s “Electric Avenue,” in 1983. I was 11. I had grown up with four older sisters and two older brothers, so most songs I heard came from them. This one was different.

On our family farm, I had no idea that my life was limited. Wyndmere had a population of 500, and no one I knew had cable TV or was aware of MTV. All I had was my clock radio, so I listened to the Top 40 station from Fargo, Y94 FM.

“Electric Avenue” was my introduction to reggae, even though I had no idea what reggae was and the song isn’t exactly reggae. Grant’s song was about the Brixton area of South London, where many people from Jamaica lived in poverty. It came out just after the Brixton riot in 1981, but I didn’t know that until later.

For some inexplicable reason, I thought the song was about prostitutes’ hard lives in Jamaica, though I knew nothing about prostitution or Jamaica: “No place to hang all our washing / An’ an’ I can’t blame all on the sun” and “Oh no, we gonna rock down to Electric Avenue / And then we’ll take it higher.” I just assumed it had a sexual subtext, or perhaps I wanted it to have that subtext.