Read about this cool 6 songs of your life idea via NPR about a month ago and have been thinking about it ever since. After several drafts, here are my six…
“Taxi” by Harry Chapin
My parents are big Harry Chapin fans and would play this a lot when I was little. So much that the first sentence I ever said was the paraphrased “I go fly high stoned” lyric from this song. (Allegedly my grandmother was not amused.)
“Back In Time” by Huey Lewis & The News
The first album I ever owned was the Back to the Future soundtrack. BTTF kicked off my lifelong obsession with time travel, but the way this song loosely tied in confused my nine-year old brain. It’s a song about the movie. But they don’t actually go to 1999 so it’s wrong. Did Huey even see the movie? Maybe the movie was based on the song? I still overanalyze little things like this today.
“Even In His Youth” by Nirvana
I knew I needed a Nirvana song for this list. And right when I decided I’d go with Smells Like Teen Spirit instead of a deep cut I realized this was a better choice. It was the first time I learned of the concept of a B-Side. There’s this awesome song. But it’s not on the album. And every band does this?!?!? Teenage mind blown…
“All Night Thing” by Temple of the Dog
In college we used to frequent this awesome restaurant in Syracuse called Mother’s Cupboard. Â They were only open for breakfast, and the hours were (and apparently still are) 6:00am – 1pm. Being up by 1 on a weekend was tough for us college kids, so the only times we’d go to Mother’s Cupboard were when someone had the idea at 1am and we stayed up all night to arrive right when they opened. We’d always listen to this song on the way home.
“Clint Eastwood” by Gorillaz
My first “real” job after moving to California was running a call center for a startup called iNetNow. It was the era before smartphones and our business was looking stuff up on the Internet for people who called in. We had special software for searching, and an interface called “term trail” that let you see what others were searching for in realtime in case they needed help. One night I saw “damon albarn rap song” pop up on term trail and scrambled to monitor the call to learn what this was. The caller ended up being my best friend from high school calling after hearing it on the radio. Even 3000 miles away we were able to discover music together almost simultaneously.
“Farther On Down The Road (You Will Accompany Me)” by Taj Mahal
My wife and I eloped, but we still consider this to be our wedding song. We first heard the Jack Johnson cover version which caused us to seek out the original. We went to see Taj Mahal at the House of Blues and by the end of the set he hadn’t played this. My wife wanted to leave to beat traffic, but I made her stay for the encore just in case. First and only song of the encore was this, and it was magical.