The Guardian has launched “Six Songs of Me,” a project to map as many personal playlists as possible in an effort to understand the intersection of music and culture better.
They’ve set up a special site where you can pick your most meaningful songs in six categories. They’re hoping to gather enough data, Clarke says, to “help us think more fruitfully about the ‘big questions’ that lie behind the sounds of our lives.”
The categories, in the form of questions, are listed below, along with my answers to each.
I would love to hear your answers, too.
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1. What was the first song you ever bought?
I purchased the vinyl recording of Brice Springsteen’s “Welcome to Asbury Park” (the only vinyl I ever owned) specifically for the song Blinded by the Light, though I soon fell in love with the entire album.
2. What song always gets you dancing?
As wrong as this may be, it is currently Madonna’s Like a Prayer.
3. What song takes you back to your childhood?
Childhood is a slippery term, but assuming that my teenage years qualify as a part of my childhood, it’s Guns n’ Roses Sweet Child O’ Mine. For two full summers, that song was blasted from the windows of moving cars more than any other song I can remember.
4. What is your perfect love song?
When You Say Nothing At All by Alison Krause. My wedding song. I picked it even before I began dating my wife.
5. What song would you want at your funeral?
These Are the Days by Van Morrison. I love the way the song intertwines the past, the present and the future, and the harpsichord is simply divine.
6. Time for an encore. One last song that makes you, you.
Cat Steven’s If You Want to Sing Out, Sing Out. For a long time this was my theme song (recently replace by Bon Jovi’s We Weren’t Born to Follow), but I have always thought that this song expresses my personal philosophy best.
From the top…
1. Probably the Ghostbusters soundtrack when I was seven. I loved the opening theme, the one by Ray Parker Jr. I begged my mom to buy it for me and had the vinyl record. I recall the kids in my grade school classes breakdancing (yes you heard that right) to it so I wanted my own copy. My attempts to breakdance as a seven-year-old must have been fun to watch.
2. Electric Feel by MGMT. If you call what I do “dancing.” However when I asked the DJ to play it at my wedding it pretty much cleared the dancefloor.
3. Penny Lane by the Beatles. My parents were big Beatles fans and played those records in the house. It’s about the only area where my musical tastes overlapped with those of my parents. Penny Lane has that nostalgic feel in spades.
4. I Believe (When I Fall in Love It Will Be Forever) by Stevie Wonder. Actually my wife and I differ on this song, even though we are both big fans of Stevie Wonder. But it pretty much sums up how love feels, at least for me.
5. Better Things by the Kinks. Because life will go on without me, and I’d like to have people feel inspired to do good things because they knew me. This song is a reminder of that.
6. Oh wow this is a tall order. There’s hundreds of these, and they rotate depending where I am in life. Presto by Rush was one for a while. Nearly everything on the last few Replacements albums could fit into this category. This month it’s Lucky Now by Ryan Adams, really the theme song to getting used to being 35. I don’t remember were we wild and young? All that faded into memory…
Matthew, there is absolutely nothing wrong with your answer for #2.
My answers:
1.) Lady in Red by Chris de Burgh
2.) Like a Prayer by Madonna. Always. When I am an old lady in a nursing home, I will still dance to this song.
3.) (There’s No Place Like) Home For the Holidays by Perry Como. My only happy holiday memories from childhood involve listening to this song while helping my grandma bake her special Christmas cookies.
4.) When You’re Next to Me by Mitch & Mickey from the soundtrack to “A Mighty Wind.” You can’t dance to it. And it’s a song written by Michael McKean & Annette O’Toole, and sung by Eugene Levy & Catherine O’Hara for a Christopher Guest movie, so you wouldn’t think it could be taken at all seriously. It’s incredibly sappy, but since it pretty much sums up how I feel about my husband, I’m going with it.
A close second would be “Deh, viene non tardar” – Susanna’s aria from the last act of “The Marriage of Figaro”.
5.) Nearer My God to Thee. This song has always triggered a teary catharsis for me at funerals, and I fully intend that my spirit will stick around long enough to enjoy it at my own.
6.) It’s Easy, Mmmkay from the South Park movie, because it’s so deliciously, subversively profane. Also, because I work with children (and have young nieces and nephews), I have to find creative ways to avoid saying out loud the word I might be thinking if, for example, an entire bottle of paint explodes on my shirt or I accidentally smack my hip against a table corner. (I do not, however, say “buns,” “poo,” “bich” or “mmmkay”)
I have to admit, the inclusion of the South Park song here is pretty impressive.