Music Monday: Blaugust 2023 Edition

Week two of Blaugust has begun, and it’s supposed to be an introduction to myself. I wrote this post a little over a month ago and that’s probably as much of a deep dive as I’m willing to get into for this month. Instead, I think I’m going to take this introductory week to share some things that had an influence on me, starting with music.

I’m pretty sure I tortured our entire neighborhood as a 6 year old, by climbing onto our swing set and singing “Part of Your World” on repeat at the top of my lungs while I tried to see how high I could get. When I think about this song, it’s one of the first images that goes through my head. Considering the only access I had to it would be a VHS tape of the whole movie, I’m kind of proud of child me for learning all of the words and then singing it for myself; because how else would I have been able enjoy it? As an adult, the song holds a bit of a different meaning for me. It’s such a literal “I want” song, and as someone who spent what felt like an eternity on the outside looking in on life, it was a very literal experience for me to listen to it.

Teen-aged me listened to a lot of Celine Dion. Part of that is down to Titanic and “My Heart Will Go On,” but her music became a bit of a hyperfixation for me. This song makes me think of a summer I spent a lot of free time sitting on the floor in front of the stereo system in our basement, reading liner notes from all of my mom’s CDs and listening to them on repeat. I had no CD player of my own, and that stereo wasn’t moving out of the cabinet it had been built for, so I sat on a thin layer of carpet on a concrete floor and listened to music for as long as I could stand it. For a while, I thought I was past enjoying her music, but it seems like nostalgia keeps me coming back to it.

It’s Adam Sandler’s fault that this song is in my music library. At some point, I went to a post-game event at my high school, and I think the options were basketball in the gym, something else in the multi-purpose room, or camping out on a beanbag in the hallway by the library and watching The Wedding Singer on the only space of bare wall big enough for them to project it. If I’m remembering correctly, I may have made one of my parents wait in the hallway for the movie to finish, because I was enjoying it so much. I liked it enough that I ended up getting BOTH soundtracks at some point. (They released two of them, because the first one was so popular, why not go for even more money with a second?) Those soundtracks got a lot of play when I finally had a CD player of my own. I always appreciated that this song is the one that made it onto the soundtrack, and not “I Ran,” which is a good enough song. But this one had this dreamy quality that hooked me the first time I heard it, it’s something I still enjoy about it now.

“Baba O’Riley” is here because it marks my foray into internet piracy. This song haunted me through my adolescence. It’s something I’m pretty sure I didn’t hear in its entirety until I was nineteen or twenty years old, which is such a shame, because it’s a GREAT song. I downloaded a lot of music illegally from the internet. I got on that bandwagon just after Napster imploded. First it was Limewire, and then it was Ares, and then things get a bit hazy for some reason. The problem with this song, is the title is nowhere in the lyrics. I’m pretty sure it sat in my illegal library under the name “Teenage Wasteland” for an embarrassing amount of time. There’s always something here for me in this song. Belting vocals? Yes please. Driving drums? Yes please! Guitar solo ripe for an air guitar moment when I’m in the car? YES PLEASE!!! Hearing it still makes me happy.

This song found me after I entered my CSI era. It is a bit tied up in my internet piracy antics, but it was gifted to me from an internet friend I lost track of more than a decade ago. Whenever I hear the song, I think of her, because she was the epitome of cool to me. Neko Case and her music in general were an incredible discovery for me. This song unlocked another world for me when it came to music. I think until this point, I was pretty generic in my genre appreciation. There was a lot of rock, some pop, a little more emo than I’d like to admit, but things that bled into the country realm were few and far between. I’d struggle to categorize her music entirely as the alt-country I used to, but her vocals and instrumental choices made me pause and appreciate the musicality of things outside of the realms of music in which I’d become entrenched. I’ve liked her music enough to spend money on concert tickets on multiple occasions. Her music in general shows up on the playlists I assemble when I want something to sing along to, because I like the way her voice haunts me a little bit.

I don’t think I really had a great appreciation for this song until it came up on an episode of the podcast All Songs Considered. They did a Valentine’s Day songs episode, and someone chose this one, I think to be a bit cliche and basic, but it still sparked a pretty interesting discussion. When I look at the repetitive nature of the song, I’m pretty sure I know why my brain likes it. I have a habit of putting some songs on and just listening to the same one on repeat. The day my family was able to get me a pair of headphones, it was probably a huge relief, because even in the days of cassette tapes I’d indulge in hitting the rewind button the second a song was done and trying to start it over again. There are layers in this song, so it’s something crunchy my brain can really get into, maybe for some of the same reasons I like “Baba O’Riley” so much. But I get to hear the same lick over and over again without having to hit repeat.

I love the whole album this song comes from. It’s kind of a toss up between this song and “It’s Only Dancing”, but I love the build and hope in this song. I think it’s one I’d try singing for karaoke or something like that, except that I always get a bit emotional on my first listen through it when I hear it, and I’d get all raspy and lose my voice if I tried. It’s a fun song though. The whole album is great, listen to Heart Murmurs if you get a chance.

This song made me pick up my very neglected guitar again. I never got the chord progression right, but it really made me want to try again. Sara Bareilles is another artist I listen to when I want to sing along. I’m very happy to have an alto range, and to find a few singers who sit within the notes I can reach without screeching. The first song of hers I remember hearing was “King of Anything,” but this one ended up on repeat more than a lot of her others.

There’s this great podcast called Song Exploder, that interviews musicians and gets them to talk about a particular song they’ve written. They literally break the music down into instrumental and vocal tracks, and go into where the lyrics came from, how they came up with the moments that sometimes punch you in the face. Carly Rae Jepsen talked about this song on an episode of that show. I think the thing I like about this one is how it feels like it’s from now, but it also has some element that calls back to an earlier era in music. A lot of Emotion probably falls under that umbrella, but there’s something about this one that just hits me the right way.

I love this version of this song. I think about it every time I’m in Minneapolis and we walk past Orchestra Hall on our way to Convergence. I actually stood on the same stage with the other Concordia choirs for three years of Christmas concert performances, so I hear the song and there’s a more vivid picture in my head than for a lot of other live recordings. It also makes me Google a lot. Dessa’s lyrics can be so thought-provoking, this song is no exception. It makes me think of just going through the motions, sometimes you’re just doing it because… you’re doing it, along with the rest of the world. It’s easy to get caught up in habits, I’m definitely someone who embraces the ritual of routine at times, probably a bit too much. There are sometimes days in a row where the same thing happens without fail, and it does feel a bit like I’m racing in a circle with everyone else, even though maybe I don’t have to go as fast as I think I do.

This ended up SO MUCH MORE verbose than I anticipated. I guess that’s what I get for picking 10 songs. 5 might have been better, but with over 3 decades under my belt, that’s a lot of music to pare down. There are voices missing here, because my music library is varied. But, these songs are the most “me” you’ll be able to see.