Ice Cube - "It Was A Good Day"

I think that 1993, the summer between sixth and seventh grade, was the first time that I really watched MTV. This was back when they actually showed music videos, and they showed them pretty much the entire time. Shows like "The Real World" had just started (I think that was in 1990 or 1991?), and I discovered this world of cool stuff. Around this time was when I really started getting into music, which is critical as I now always see music as being a literal soundtrack to my life, as indicated by my little slice of The Internets. This song just seemed awesome, like it would be perfect for driving around in the summer (once I had a license, or access to a car, or had friends with cars).

This time was a pretty critical one in my life, as the sixth/seventh grade years were, in my opinion, the point at which my true personality really started developing, and also when I really started struggling with who I was/am, how this did or didn't fit into my or my parents' image of who I should be, and when I really think my emotional/psychological problems really started to manifest themselves. Also, the idea of serious relationships totally blew my mind. You could not pay me enough to go back to middle school again. What a terrible time of life.

(Props to KEXP for playing this song just out of the blue today!)

The Weakerthans - "Plea From A Cat Named Virtue"

Mike connected me with this song. It's from a cat to his owner, about becoming a stronger person. Getting some self-esteem, and cats. I had the lyrics posted in my office for awhile. While they have been replaced, the importance of songs and cats has not.

Urge Overkill - "Girl You'll Be A Woman Soon"

Never put this on a mix tape for a 21-year-old girl who is finishing her junior year in college, especially if you are her graduating-senior boyfriend who is dumping her and moving across the country. It's just demeaning, and vastly irritating. I never really liked the song to begin with , never really cared for Neil Diamond, nor for Pulp Fiction, and this didn't help at all. Although the moving away and the breaking up were ultimately very, very good. Also, when you are reliving the past in the present via Facebook, don't select "It's Complicated" for a three-month relationship that happened six years ago. Seriously.

The Long Winters - When I Pretend To Fall

Summer of 2003. I am a newly-minted college graduate, have moved back across the country for what I then think is only a temporary pulling-my-shit-together break before jumping into a young, urban, professional existence in our nation's capital (in a non-existent job) living with a friends (who actually do have some kind of plan, unlike myself). Living at home, adopting/being adopted by a tangental group of friends, reactivating dormant crushes, crushing and being crushed, spending through my savings, being grounded, filming a movie. This is how I spent my summer vacation. Patrick burned me a copy of this CD, and I wore through it. The songs are each important, relevant in their own way - "Cinnamon" used to irritate but I became enamored; "Stupid" was my story; "Blanket Hog," "Bride and Bridle," it goes on and on. "Nora" is the most potent, for me, and it brings me back to the sadness of the end of the summer, the realities of who I was, who I was dealing with, and the world in which I had to exist. I still think I (mostly) made the right decisions, but I guess one never knows.

The liner notes have letters that John Roderick has received from girls he has dated. It is hilariously sad. Mike used to say, imagining the average female listener (but mostly imagining me) and her response to John's lyrics and life, that "I could change him!" I couldn't, but it will never keep me from saying it.

LCD Soundsystem - "Someone Great"

This song means everything to me. I can instantly recognize the pulsing intro from the first note, and I always catch my breath. Whenever it comes on my ipod, it's guaranteed at least a half-dozen replays before I can move on to something else. The hold on me is three parts. It was a song I loved from the first time I heard it. It is a song about death. And it is the song that, for me, most summarizes everything about everything that happened with John. I don't cry when I hear it; usually I just mouth the words to myself and drift off into what is a funny other-worldly moment for me. One morning, right after John's death, John in the Morning was playing seemingly everything that had to do with my John (British stuff, his favorite bands, songs that had poignant or depressing meanings to me, etc.), and he played this song, mentioning how he just played a bunch of songs about death and how this was a really strong one for him. I had never really thought much about the lyrics before that moment, but once I did, there was no going back. It had been a favorite song, and I had (ironically, it turns out) just put it on a mix for Tom since it spoke about "someone great." I didn't see what it really meant until then. That's what happens when I don't pay attention. Anyway, I'll never forgive myself for everything that happened with John, but I'll also never believe that I really ought to. And I am very, very sorry.

I wish that we could talk about it,
But there, that's the problem.
With someone new I could have started,
Too late, for beginnings.
The little things that made me harassed,
Are gone, in a moment.
I miss the way we used to argue,
Locked, in your basement.

I wake up and the phone is ringing,
Surprised, as it's early.
And that should be the perfect warning,
That something's, a problem.
To tell the truth I saw it coming,
The way, you were breathing.
But nothing can prepare you for it,
The voice, on the other, end.

The worst is all the lovely weather,
I'm sad, it's not raining.
The coffee isn't even bitter,
Because, what's the difference?
There's all the work that needs to be done,
It's late, for revision.
There's all the time and all the planning,
And songs, to be finished.

And it keeps coming,
Till the day it stops.

I wish that we could talk about it,
But there, that's the problem.
With someone new I could have started,
Too late, for beginnings.
You're smaller than my wife imagined,
Surprised, you were human.
There shouldn't be this ring of silence,
But what, are the options?

When someone great is gone.

We're safe, for the moment.
Saved,
For the moment.

Cat Power - "Cross Bones Style"

This is the only song that I can play on the guitar, and when I say "play," I mean half-assedly pluck with awkward zombie hands. And I spent a long time learning how to make those zombie hands, sitting in the crappy Brooklyn apartment trying to find some dexterity. Cat Power (by which I mean Chan Marshall) represents emotionally-broken girls everywhere, particularly those in college (and I would have probably been really into her in highschool as well). This song was first given to me on a mix cd my senior year of university, and fascinated me from the start. Some of the her songs are heartbreaking because of the hurt and pain, though others because of the ineptitude of their protagonists as they make their ways through a world shadowed by the inevitable misunderstandings and sufferings that arise and people try to interact with one another and claw their way through each day. I've never seen her perform live, but I hear there are a lot of tears shed by her on-stage at nearly ever show. I don't know whether I should applaud her raw, surface-level emotions, or give her a psychotherapist's business card. Probably both, which is why I can't listen to her most of the time. Too close to home.

Deee-lite - "Groove Is In The Heart"

This song makes me think about dancing around St. Nicks with Vanessa before assemblies in my senior year of highschool. I recall the video from the "MTV actually showed music videos" phase, and it was weird and hippie and colorful. While highschool was it's own kind of hell, I liked being a senior.

Arctic Monkeys - "Mardy Bum"

John loved the Arctic Monkeys, and was especially proud that they were from Sheffield, his university town. The fact that they are both particularly English and also from the North and also from Yorkshire placed them very high in his esteem. At the start of our relationship he got me into them, which I was hesitant about at first, as I hadn't been especially excited about the singles that were on KEXP. Mostly, it was kind of hard to tell what the hell Alex Turner says half the time, and the frequent use of colloquialisms (exemplified by The Streets, which is another matter altogether) meant that some explanation was occasionally required. John explained that being "mardy" was like being sulky or grumpy or saturnine in Yorkshire. Thus, it was decided that this was a song about me. The fact that I am described as difficult is quite accurate; that this one term sums up several of my day-to-day character manifestations is rather moreso. But I quite like the Arctic Monkeys now, and seeing them in concert at the Showbox was the last activity that I did with John.

John Mayer - "Body Is A Wonderland"

Bringing on the sentimentality in full force. Spring 2002, my ill-fated junior year at university, my ill-fated faux romance. We kept different hours. He studied natural science, I was immersed in social science. I liked to read, he thought it was "too sedentary." I liked to talk, and I certainly did so when nervous, and he - didn't. Truly, I suppose, this was a case of affection, or at least tension, without a solid basis, which is why it was good that it only went on for a few months. People must have thought we were mad; that, or that I was flailing wildly coping with my messy life and disheveled emotions (true) and that he was just getting laid with no real commitment before graduating (doubtless, also true) (although I wouldn't define anything having to do with me, especially with dating me, as "easy"). It's hard to think back and come to any solid conclusions - all I know is that we haven't had two words to say on the couple occasions we've been in the same place, and it's bloody awkward. But this was our love song, "our" song, and I wrote the most pertinent lyrics in a picture frame twinned with a photo of us. It was all a very sweet notion. I was going through a popular music phase, and hoping some romance was out in the world for me. I read The Unbearable Lightness of Being at this point. I kind of failed.

Muse - "Plug In Baby"

I liked Muse at university, but I only had one album. Then I find out that Muse is one of Tom's favorites, and this is one of his most favorite songs. And his mobile ring (nice). For some time I tried to construe a means of making this "our" song, but there's really no way to do this. At least, no way that embraces a positive and optimistic future, one where weird bad shit doesn't happen. Like, er, reality. Anyway - love the song, makes me think of Tom, finally learned the lyrics, but not a song that will make it onto the Greatest Wedding Hits album.

The Futureheads - "Hounds of Love"

I used to find this song really irritating. From the "oh, ohoh, oh, ohoh" beginning, it was just too much. But it's one of Tom's favorite songs, and I can close my eyes and see him showing me how he and his friend Gareth used to dance to the song when it came on while they were en route to Glastonbury. I can see the shaking, the pulling shapes, and the facial expressions, and it makes me laugh. He's put it on mixes for me, so now I can listen whenever I want.

Liz Phair - "Fuck and Run"

Ah, 2002. I have been a very bitter young lady at varying points in my life, and this song really embodies that spirit. I got into Liz Phair in spring of 2002, toward the end of my junior year in university. After my year-long dramatic relationship fell apart across the winter months, and I got into a new relationship one week later, I spent this spring being all swoony over dating a graduating senior who would end up moving across the country. While I was around campus at the very end of the year for JA training and reunions and graduation and trying not to fail out of school, I was holed up with my way-too-many belongings in my tiny, terrible temporary room blaring Liz Phair non-stop. It felt like everything around me was changing or ending. And this song just summed up everything I felt at that point, although it maybe didn't underscore the absolute misery and hopelessness and existential flailing that I had going on at that point in my life, beyond the simple desolation and abandonment of the unavoidable end of a relationship between two individuals poorly suited to one another. And thank god for that. Not to mention the fact that the song says that the cycle is a lifelong one.