1. Admit It (Say Anything)
This song in general just makes me smile. I have come to realize I don’t really like high school at all, and I am really outspoken about my opinions and for some reason people don’t like that sometimes. I often get stereotyped as an emo kid, which I am far from that, but it is high school. ‘Admit It’ Brings out a very good point in ridiculing but the last stanza is my favorite, “And I am done with this/ I wanna taste the breeze of every great city’ I can distinctly remember one of the times my mom let me take her car out and I am all alone with the windows rolled down and this song turned all the way up. At that moment I kind of just let everything melt away and my deep frustration or hatred for everything about high school, this town, and all the drama wasn’t there. It was then I realized that life is good, regardless of how stupid people are and I only have a year left to deal with all of it and until then I’ll have moments like this one to keep me going.
2. Transformer (Gnarls Barkley)
I started to like Gnarls Barkley simply because the things he creates is pure brilliance. This song has sweet beats that are fun to put the bass up really loud and feel them. Around the New Year I started to spend all of my free time with Kenzie, her boyfriend Shane and Rutger, Shane’s friend. We all hit it off really well and always found stupid amusing things to do for amusement; it seemed like the perfect group of friends. I loved every second of the time I spent with them and they taught me to actually have fun in a town I hate. Somehow I also developed an appreciation for hip hop because of Rutger and Shane, hence this song. Even though that group of friends has screeched to a halt every time I listen to this song I thing of Shane going crazy over it and all of the crazy things we’ve done and laugh.
3. The Minstrel’s Prayer (Cartel)
The first time I heard this song I was in the back seat of the van watching Chicago disappear. Whenever I hear this song I can clearly depict every single step I took in that city. Chicago is the one place I have ever felt completely at home at. I got to spend four days there for the spring break of my sophomore year. It was a nice break from the intense feeling of every step I took I would set someone off after breaking up with Matt. In Chicago I took some of my favorite pictures, saw the most amazing paintings, and found out what I wanted to do with my future. Later on I was lucky enough to see Cartel two times, once at Warped Tour ’06 and then with The Early November later on that year, which was the show I got to hear it preformed live. At a concert is one of the places I can truly be happy and hearing that song live was amazing, I closed my eyes and thought of Chicago while feeling the rhythm through the crowd and singing along.
4. Passenger Seat (Death Cab for Cutie)
Of the many times Matt would be driving me home at 4 in the morning I can distinctly remember one on the times I had my feet on the dash and I was looking out the window up at the stars and this song came on. I couldn’t help but smile. And ever since then somehow this song always manages to come on at the perfect time, I cannot listen to this song without thinking about that exact moment. In those few minuets were the safest I have ever felt regardless of all the trouble I could have been in I was unbelievably blissful and never felt less than that during moments like those. It’s times like those where I know I’ll never forget him and somehow I’m always going to look back at the times we had and end up smiling.
5. No Seatbelt Song (Brand New)
This is the single saddest song I have ever listened to. Maybe because of the music or the context I first realized that it was this song, whatever the reason it is one of the only songs that can bring me to tears and did the first times I listened to it. After matt and I broke up he had this in his AIM profile, “It’s only you beautiful, / Or I don’t want anyone. / If I can choose, it’s only you.” It hurt to read that and to think about everything we had went through but it’s still a beautiful song. Because of that this song was played on repeat throughout my summer before my junior year whenever I was sad. I can remember sitting in my house alone and this song playing while I laid on the cool tile or right before I went to bed. Jason ended up not letting me listen to that song because he knew it meant that I was sad. Every time he walked into my house and this song was playing he would change it or stop and hold me and let me cry. Even though it makes me incredibly sad it makes me feel calm at the same time to know people can care for each other that much.
6. Everything is Alright (Motion City Soundtrack)
My sophomore year was probably the most difficult year I have been through so far. I had serious problems with friends and parents. I spent a lot of my time avoiding my house, but at the same time I was constantly grounded so that meant I snuck out a lot. The night of homecoming Matt picked me up and we met Jerry and Maddie at the Pool Hall after the homecoming dance. We picked Jerry up then because he was supposed to go to a party with us. Driving down 9-mile, fast as always, me sitting on Jerry’s lap and Matt in the driver’s seat, Jerry turned this song on. We all were screaming it at the top of our lungs. I’m not sure how they felt but it made me feel invincible. Ironically later that night we got into a wreck, but talking about that night later with Jerry that is the only thing we talk about, is those few minuets during that song.
7. The Irony of Dying on Your Birthday (Senses Fail)
The summer before my sophomore year is the summer where I started to really get into music. I had already started to talk to both Matt and Jason on a regular basis and that’s probably one of the main reasons I got so into music. Lyrics were, and still are, our language. I started to listen to Senses Fail because of the Warped Tour playlist and then decided to see them there. Standing in the crowd before their set I met up with Matt and Jason and we all ended up watching the set together. Every time I listen to Let it Enfold You (their album) I always remember that warped tour especially that set. I crowd surfed or moshed the whole time and I remember on top of all those people looking up at the sky I just felt free. The same feeling I felt driving around with Matt and Jason with Senses Fail on the loudest it could go with Jason and I singing it at the top of our lungs then all of us laughing because neither of us can scream. That summer is untouchable, it’s always the time I go back to wishing I could feel and be like that again. Senses Fail always seems to cure me of anything and make me feel at rest despite their vicious screaming and it’s always the band that all three of us go back to and listen to when we are mad or upset about anything.
8. Lily, Rosemary, and the Jack of Hearts (Bob Dylan)
Since before I was born my Uncle Jim on my mom’s side has owned this piece of land that has been known as ‘the hills.’ Ever since I can remember my family would go down there every weekend it’s one of the few ‘traditions’ you can say we had. My mom has never been big on the latest electronics or anything like that so we always had a tape player in the car and not many tapes to choose from. I grew up on artist such as Bob Dylan as my mom and dad used to be huge hippies. Blood on the Tracks was the tape I always begged for my mom to play. When this song came on I always had my mom turn it up loud and I would close my eyes and play out the scene. I still play the same made up scene each time this song comes on, and whenever I listen to Blood on the Tracks I can always smile about my childhood.
9. This is the Day (The The’s)
My sister Sara moved out when I was around five years old or so. It was a big ordeal with lots of screaming and crying and anger. Over the following years I really didn’t see my sister often. When she came home from Germany and got her first apartment is when my brother and I started seeing her on an almost regular basis. Going over to her apartment was the highlight of my week. Sara is my only sister, nine years older than me so of course I am going to look up to her, and being able to be alone with her and her miscellaneous people at her apartment was the coolest thing ever to a ten year old girl. At the apartment was the first time I watched Empire Records which of course made me want to work at a record store and go to art school. This is the Day is the closing song to the movie and I can remember it being over for the first time and I look over and my brother is asleep and my sister is behind me drawing. She looks up and we smile. I can still remember the smell of that apartment: smoke and vanilla. I can remember how it looks and how we would spend hours coloring pictures all the wrong colors. Later on when I found the name of the song and the artist I listened to it over and over again and found out it had meaningful lyrics to me on top of everything it reminded me of.
10. Do You Realize? (The Flaming Lips)
The Flaming Lips is another one of the many bands my sister got me started on. When she lived in Cincinnati she would come home for a weekend or couple days here and there, I used to savor those few days. We would always end up in the kitchen and the table or I would end up laying on the futon watching her do her laundry, and we would just talk. One of the times Sara came home to do laundry she brought Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots for me to listen to. I laid on the futon paging through the album art and listened to the whole CD. The Flaming Lips were honestly the first band I had listened to that sounded like they do. In some weird LSD frame of mind they really do make sense of life in general, and politics. Do You Realize especially, it just puts life in words plain and simple: “You realize the sun doesn’t go down/ It’s just an illusion caused by the world spinning round.” Happiness really does make you cry and every time I listen to this song I can remember the random nights my sister and I spent talking along with all the other people who have made me cry out of sheer happiness.
11. The World at Large (Modest Mouse)
This song can give me goosebumps. Over the years this song has meant many different things, probably with just about every person that is important to me, it has a different meaning too. The summer before eighth grade for my birthday I somehow convinced my mom to let Sara escort me and two of my best friends to Lollapalooza. It was my first serious concert, my first front row, my first experience with that perfect feeling I get at concerts. My favorite part though was when we were all driving home; windows down, music up loud and my sister puts in Modest Mouse. I felt as if my heart would burst, I had just had one of the best days of my life, I thought that life couldn’t get any better than what it was at that point. It wasn’t this exact song but World at Large reminds me of this moment. This song is basically all my feelings expressed in one song. What everything boils down to this song says.
12. Wonderful (Everclear)
I have always loved 90s music and Everclear has always been one of those bands that have stuck with me. They remind me so much of my sister, my family, and my friends. When I started to fight with my parents I always used to dread that I was following in my sister’s footsteps. I never wanted to be the crazy older sister that messes everything up, I never wanted my brother to go through everything I did. I had the album So Much for the Afterglow and I would put it on when I felt ‘crazy’ so to say. This song isn’t even on this album but when it was played on the radio I would always turn it up really loud just to make sure my parents would hear it. Even now I have to listen and smile, I don’t necessarily want to relive my childhood I just want to go back to the mindset of scrapped knees and playing stuffed animals when I thought everything was wonderful.
