30 days of music
Here’s something for a rainy Saturday. This would be a note on Facebook if Facebook let you embed songs. I’ve doubled up on a couple categories and omitted others.
And now, headphones up, if you please.
1. Your favorite song
Watch the World (Box Car Racer)
It took some time to figure out, but I always come back to this one. I love the spirit of it and the percussion-driven verses.
2. Your least favorite song
Big Yellow Taxi (Counting Crows)
3. A song that makes you sad
Personal (Stars)
4 – 5. A song that makes you happy
Vox Populi (30 Seconds to Mars)
The whole album is majestic. The intro stops around 1:00, and if you make it to 3:00, that’s one example of what the end of The Wanderers series sounds like in my head.
100 Suns (same album), which combines emptiness and unity in a beautiful way. Is this what an atheist youth group would sound like?
6. A song from [a] favorite band
I don’t know how many poignant rock songs exist, but this has to be one of the best. Great band.
7 – 8. Songs that remind you of somewhere
Sitting on Huntington Beach in the fog; watching greenish waves and the power station’s smokestacks appearing and disappearing, my 2 years in Southern California, putting Maras on the page, lots of photography, and sculpting a muse out of a recurring nightmare
Somebody’s Child (Dave Burkum)
A set of old couches in a South Dakota lodge, hanging out with Dave with his guitar, talk about fathers, this song in its raw form sounding like the only thing in the world, and what I think of when anyone says ‘ministry’
9. A song that you know all the words to
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (Iron Maiden)
(in 2 parts on YouTube)
This 13-minute retelling of Coleridge’s poem was one of my earliest introductions to literature. For me it’s inseparable from Dore’s illustrations.
10. A song you can dance to
United States of Pop 2009 (DJ Earworm)
25 pop songs combined into something great
11. A song that reminds you of someone
All that’s left of a best friend/ship, and a reminder of how very different everything was in college.
12. A song that’s a guilty pleasure
Ponyo remix (Noah Cyrus and Frankie Jonas)
Listen to this 35 times with a happy, dancing, two year old girl, and you’ll sing along with your favorite fish too
13 – 14. A song that makes you feel guilty
Shitty, emotionally poisonous hair metal ballads from the early 90s (I’m looking at you, “Love Aint Enough”.) And there’s a number in The Little Mermaid that, though I couldn’t begin to tell you what it sounds like, acts like a pinhole memory through which I can see years of teenage dumbassery brought to a fine point (don’t ask). I can’t tell you how much I love being an adult.
15 – 16. Song[s] no one would expect you to love
I didn’t know this was an old hymn until I found 75 lesser versions of it when writing this post. “When the Saints,” by the same singer, is also a quiet favorite.
It’s a Dangerous Business Walking Out Your Front Door (Underoath)
This is the only album of its kind that I like, and it’s amazing. This particular song has exceptional texture, contrast, and atmosphere. The album also contains one of my favorite songs:
17. A song that describes you
The Kid (David Wilcox)
18. A song you used to love but now hate
Who I Am Hates Who I’ve Been (Relient K)
…and no, I didn’t see the terrific irony in this pick until 3 days later. I could add all of the whiny Christian guilt-rock I used to like to this category.
19. A song from [a] favorite album
Floating in the Forth (Frightened Rabbit)
20. A song that reminds you of an event
Blue Angel (Squirrel Nut Zippers)
listening to this tape while cruising around Ocean Beach, San Diego with Sherri, in a convertible, at night, after surprising her with a ring in a seashell on the beach at Sunset Cliffs
21. A song you listen to when you’re happy
Young London (Angels & Airwaves)
“I’m not the one to admit it’s helpless / I have a sense that we will be alright…”
22. [What] you listen to when you’re sad
Top 40 radio or classic rock.
In this example, I become sad that someone has started playing top 40 radio or classic rock. It’s a terrible circle that only ends when I pay for my groceries and leave the store.
23. A song you listen to when you’re [melancholy]
Wrapped in Piano Strings (Radical Face)
24. A song you want to play at your wedding
Dave Burkum played:
Shadowlands
25. A song you want to play at your funeral
and pan slowly to the stars…
One of my favorite songs, from an unlikely source.
26. A song that makes you laugh
Business Time (Flight of the Conchords)
that’s why they call ‘em business socks
27. A song you can play [almost recognizably] on an instrument
Say It To Me Now (Glen Hansard)
This is why acoustic guitars and voices got together in the first place. I can’t really play it (or … the guitar, really), but I’m working on it in my free time, which … is to say I’m not working on it
28. A song you wish you could play
Flight of the Bumblebee (Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov)
I’d settle for being able to type that fast.
29. A song from your childhood
Spectre Man
loved this show as a kid
30. Your favorite song at this time last year
Two (The Antlers)
It’s impossible to do this and not learn something about your tastes. Apparently my perfect song:
- varies greatly in speed, often slowing to a stop
- has intricate, nonstandard drums
- has multi-layered vocals / choirs
- has a thoughtful, serious baseline (sorry, all funk music)
- has intelligent, introverted lyrics (you know, like the Ponyo song)
Thanks for the idea, Beth.
