The Soundtrack of My Life

Music has a role to play in all of our lives. Whether you fall in love while a song is playing, have your heart broken while a song is playing, or have a memorable experience while the radio is playing. It's happened to us all, a soundtrack has emerged in our lives, often without us even realizing it. The power of the art we love acts on us in ways we never imagined. For me, I have a remarkably strange and diverse soundtrack to life. It contains pop songs and obscurities, soundtrack tunes and classic rockers. It's diverse and its singular to my life and experiences.

This is the soundtrack to my life.

I Think We're Alone Now

I had my first kiss at the age of 11. I didn't plan it that way. I met a girl from a neighboring town. Her parents brought her to my town every Tuesday for a card game at my parents' bar. They brought her with them because they assumed she'd be a great friend for my little sister. But, it wasn't long before she was spending more time hanging out with me. This girl had a shy smile that hid a wicked cool streak. Her crooked nose fit on her face in just the right way. Some found it unattractive but not me.

It was August, 1987 and the biggest song in the world was ironically perfect for my girlfriend and I. We wanted to be left alone and my friends, my sister, would not let that happen. Thus it was our luck one night to slip away. While my friends were distracted, this girl and I slipped out of their prying gaze and dashed off. We hid beside an empty garage at a nearby house. We excitedly watched as my friends came rushing out looking for us. When they took off the other way, we were both thinking of Tiffany, I Think We're Alone Now immediately became OUR SONG.

I Think We're Alone Now was inescapable at the time and while it wasn't to my tastes as an 11 year old boy, but the girl liked it and I liked her. And, even as 11 year old's, we could understand how that song mirrored our story, if in title alone. It made us giggle before we finally took advantage of our time alone. I was terrified, but she could not be more prepared. While I was tentative, she took the lead, even pressing forward with a 'French Kiss' as our very first moment of intimacy. I would lord this fact over friends for a few weeks, my first kiss had tongue! It's all very silly and childish now and that too befits the song, I Think We're Alone Now, a song about silly, youthful, experiments in adult intimacy.

Somebody to Shove Soul Asylum

I had my first great heartbreak in High School. I fell in love with someone who did not love me. For a time, over the phone, we were inseparable. We talked for hours and about everything. I mostly listened as she talked about herself, but I was certainly happy to be there. I thought she was my girlfriend and that we were in a mutual relationship. We had dates and we kissed and we had mutual friends who supported us. Around that time I heard a song that lifted my heart and made me think of this girl, Somebody to Love by Soul Asylum.

It was 1993 and like so many people my age, I loved Soul Asylum. The album Grave Dancer's Union remains a favorite of mine to this day. While I bought it because of the song Runaway Train, just like everyone else did, I found on the record, a song that became my own. It's a banger of a rock song and since I was already a fan of titles and lyrics that I could literally apply to my life, the song Somebody to Love, featuring the lyrics "Waiting by the Phone, waiting for you to call me up and tell me I'm not alone," became my song. Every day for months I came home from school and literally waited by my phone for this girl to call. And, nearly every day, she did call and the calls felt intimate, as if they meant something.

Head Over Feet Alanis Morrisette

You can imagine then, my hurt when I found out that those calls really only meant something important to me. The girl, she just wanted someone to listen to her. I could have been anyone on the phone and it would have been good enough for her. I was the only one willing to listen to her self-centered stories about the boy who got away. Yeah, that should have been a clue, she spent a lot of time talking about this guy who had seemingly seduced and abandoned her. I even went to this guy, who I considered a friend, and asked for his permission to date her. He shrugged it off, he seemed barely aware that this girl harbored such feelings for him.

None of that mattered, not really. What I was missing was my own immaturity. You can sense from how I told that story, a lingering bitterness. That's not the truth. I simply wasn't really listening to this girl. She was telling me very clearly what she wanted and I simply pined and felt entitled to her affection. We bounced around each other as friends for a few years and I remained dedicated to the idea that eventually she would see that she owed it to me to be with me. I adopted the song, Head Over Feet by Alanis Morrisette.

That song is about a woman who is thanking a male friend for being so supportive and loving and always being there when she needed him. He was a good friend. I thought that I was a good friend but I know now that I really wasn't. I was sad and desperate and waiting for 'my turn.' I assumed that being a 'nice guy' I would get to be with the girl I wanted. But that's not how life works. I couldn't accept that this young woman wanted something that I wasn't mature enough to give her. I didn't respect what she wanted, I only wanted what I wanted. I used Head Over Feet to justify myself. After therapy and emotional growth, I still find it hard to listen to Head Over Feet today, it is now symbolic of something I'm deeply and correctly embarrassed over.

Radio Radio Elvis Costello

My favorite musician of all time is Elvis Costello. For me, Elvis Costello can do no wrong. His music is a constant companion, a reliable friend, something to fall into when I am in a funk and need way to get back up. Watching the Detectives, Everyday I Write the Book, Shipbuilding, High Fidelity, and dozens of well known or obscure Elvis Costello songs have been constantly rotating in my mind since I first stumbled on Costello during High School, after I saw the movie Singles, where Costello gets the weirdest dialogue shout-out.

It would take far too long to contextualize the scene, the gist of it was a strong appreciation for the song What's So Funny Bout Peace Love and Understanding. The title intrigued me. I found an Elvis Costello tape at my local record store and wore it out in my walkman. I still had a walkman in the early 90s, I was always cool. Near the end of High School I took an interest in radio. I got a job at a radio station when I was 18 years old and then I heard Elvis Costello sing, Radio Radio. I didn't know it at the time, but that song inspired what has become a lifelong career as a radio professional. Anytime I think about my career, I think about the lyrics, "Radio is a sound salvation, Radio is cleaning up the nation."

It's probably not a pro-radio song, Costello is famous for his irony. It's hard to know which lyrics to take seriously and which are meant to mess with you. For a small part of Generation X, of which I am a member, Elvis Costello is the patron saint of sarcasm. He's also English which adds a secondary level of trolling to Costello. Radio Radio could very well be an ironic takedown of the BBC. But, for me, with my incredibly literal takes on things, I love Radio Radio as a celebration of my chosen profession.

Come Pick Me Up Ryan Adams

In 2005, I fell in love for the first time, for real. A genuine and honest love, a mutual love. We met at a party, but it wasn't until we'd spent time together and she told me about how much she loved the movie Elizabethtown, from director Cameron Crowe, that we truly hit our stride. In my capacity as a film critic I had not loved Elizabethtown. Despite being a Cameron Crowe super-fan, I found the film to be deeply flawed in 2005. This woman forced me to look at it differently. She made me watch it again and it became our movie.

With that came the soundtrack which became our soundtrack. Cameron Crowe is great at soundtracks. He's the king of soundtracks. Cameron Crowe movies always have the best soundtracks and Elizabethtown has an incredible soundtrack. Now, as I have shown repeatedly in this playlist, I love to take songs literally. Thus, our song became Come Pick Me Up by Ryan Adams. It's a gorgeous song, a deeply sad and heartbreaking anthem.

It's about a guy who can't get over a woman. He longs for her to come pick him up, he doesn't care about the past, the minor injustices she may have committed against him, he just wants her back. Our love story was like that. The woman I loved, fell in love with someone else and married him. It broke my heart. But then, every now and then, I would get a text that simply read, Come Pick Me Up. And I would, I always did.

In Elizabethtown there is a scene where Orlando Bloom and Kirsten Dunst, having only just met, spend the entire night on the phone together. That scene is scored by Come Pick Me Up with the song helping along a montage of intimate visual details as these two strangers fall in love with each other's voices over the phone. I feel this scene in my soul. The woman I loved and I had one of these moments. We talked on the phone all night, shared intimate secrets, fell in love over the phone.

When we met for a date the following day, we were nervous and surprisingly awkward, and in the moment of my life that I will never forget, I actually said to this woman, a line from the movie. It's so perfect that I understand if you think I am making this up, but I swear this really happened. As we struggled for a conversation over lunch, I looked this woman in the eye and said "We peaked on the phone." It's the same line Orlando Bloom says to Kirsten Dunst when they've met each other to watch the sunrise after their night long phone call.

Me and this woman have been best friends since that day. We may not have been meant to be as a romantic couple, but we will forever, come pick each other up.