Continuing on with the 30 Days of Truth, here’s question 24:
Day 24 → Make a playlist to someone, and explain why you chose all the songs. (Just post the titles and artists and letter)
Hmm, music has such power for me to evoke emotion and where I was at that point in my life. I think I’ll dedicate this playlist to me and some of the milestones they embody.
Age 10: Partridge Family “Summer Days” (hokey ass song if ever there was one)
This lyric ” … we reached the top of the world together / there, you give your love to me / and I remember perfectly / high above all time and space / and I remember summer days” – well, I thought “there you give your love to me” meant she gave him her heart. Yeah. No. Not so much. I do believe she gave him something else, though. Something a ten year old in 1970 couldn’t quite wrap her head around just yet.
Age 18 and first days of fall and going to college: “Right down the line” Gerry Rafferty
I hear this song and it’s fall 1978 and I’m working at a fast food place, hanging with my friend Laurie and getting ready to go to Towson University. Good times. Totally. Love this song!
Age 28 and hanging out with the hellish boyfriend: “Waiting for a star to fall” by Boy Meets Girl – this song was all over the radio and it reminds me of finding out that he was a cheating ass. It took me about two years to get rid of that association and now it’s one of my most favorite songs. Trivia: it was written for Whitney Houston but she passed on it so the original songwriters recorded it. It’s such a happy song, isn’t it?
Age 32 – so so so codependently and desperately in love with a married man and the soundtrack that summer was “Ghost” by the Indigo Girls.
The lyric that says it all: “and i feel it like a sickness how this love is killing me / but i’d walk into the fingers of your fire willingly / and dance the edge of sanity i’ve never been this close / in love with your ghost”
This song was what got me through a month where he and I agreed not to talk – he’d call me and the song would be on in the background – we’d say nothing and just hang up when the song was done. It was so dramatic but I had never felt like that for anyone before and it just about killed me. This is a truly poetic and beautiful song. Give a listen. It’s worth your time. Trust me.
“My bitter pill to swallow is the silence that I keep …. in love with your ghost” – yeah, I’m not crying over here or anything.
Age 42: This comes from a period that has its own playlist and it was during my “dark night of the soul” that eventually led me to where I am now. This song by Incubus Wish you were here brings me back every time I hear it along with “Barely Breathing” by Duncan Sheik – wanna know the kicker lyric for me? “Don’t know who I’m kidding imagining you care …” and a big bunch of others capped with “Pictures of you” by The Cure. Ah, good times, that dark night of the soul.
Age 48-49: The year(s) of my Cookie obsession (which is just in hiding until his new cd comes out in 2011) I’d list some of my favorite YouTube clips but there’s too many. Here he is at his most beautiful vocally: “Avalanche” from just about a year ago. He will always be on my playlist. For reals. I loves him.
(I’ve had fun going back and listening to the video clips. Especially the David Cassidy one – I think I have a thing for singers named David.)