Category Archives: Songs That Saved Your Life

Dire Straits, “Brothers in Arms”

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200px-ds_brothers_in_arms.jpgBut it’s written in the stars
and every line in your palm…
We’re fools to make war
on our brothers in arms

 

 

My earliest memories that comprise more than a second’s worth of time are of being on the couch in my first apartment, age three, head on my Dad’s stomach while he rubbed my back, watching television. On this particular night, we were watching The Dukes of Hazzard. Even now, when I feel lost and unhappy, I like to lay on my side and watch television – doesn’t matter what, just so long as I can close my eyes and imagine that I’m back in this first place – Winnie the Pooh pyjamas (with feet, of course) on, and my father’s hands keeping me safe and warm. Some nights, this is the only way I can sleep. Over the years, I watched whole series of shows with my dad – Star Trek: The Next Generation, M*A*S*H, Miami Vice – lots of shows. And just as most sane people would feel some trepidation about saying this, Miami Vice really changed my life.

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Nine Inch Nails, “Dead Souls”

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The Crow Soundtrack
someone take these dreams away
that point me to another day
a duel of personalities
that stretch all true reality

 

 

 

 

In the early to mid 1990s, there was a period where the soundtrack album was an excellent way to discover new music. Film directors like Quentin Tarantino, Kevin Smith, and Cameron Crowe were using so much popular music to score their films that there was hardly any traditional score at all. And because of that, the albums that came out to accompany the films were often little slices of musical heaven. The soundtracks to Tarantino’s films in particular, with dialogue from the movies spliced between songs, are albums I remember quite fondly.
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Blind Melon, “Change”

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blindmelonblindmelon.jpg And oh as I fade away,
they’ll all look at me and say,
Hey look at him, and where he is these days…

When life is hard, you have to change.

 

 

Like most people, my first introduction to Blind Melon came from a girl in a bee costume on MTV’s Alternative Nation. And really, looking back on it, the song has all the trappings of a one-hit wonder, doesn’t it? Catchy video? Check. Cutesy melody? Check. Able to simultaneously blend in on college radio and at your nephew’s seventh birthday party? Check. In fact, for most people, this is where Blind Melon remains – a one-hit wonder band from the early nineties. Which is a shame, really, as I think Shannon Hoon was one of the more interesting musicians to come out of the post-grunge explosion of quirky bands. (Far better than those Spin Doctor fellas, at any rate!) Still, this album is one of the fine examples of that bizarre phenomenon of discovering things in your own backyard (so to speak). I received the disc by accident from one of those “cds through the mail” things that were fashionable in the late-eighties/early-nineties, and it remained on my shelf for quite some time. (Beck’s first album did this, as well. Stupidly, I gave that one away without opening it.) It wasn’t until I went away to camp in 1993 that I really got to know and love this disc. And it wasn’t until then that “Change” set up camp in my heart. { In light of the rest of the entry, I realize that this has become an awful pun. I’m going to leave it, though. For those of you who aren’t “irony challenged,” I apologize.}

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Smashing Pumpkins, “Mayonaise”

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smashingpumpkins-siamesedream.jpgFool enough to almost be it
Cool enough to not quite see it

Doomed…

 

 

 

Something Chris wrote about wondering whether contemporary couples still had “their song” started me thinking about just how important songs have been in my life, and in the construction of my own personal identity. And of the complete impossibility of choosing a “favorite song.” A sort of one-size-fits-all for the rest of my life… I have songs for seasons, friends, enemies, places, moods, times, and so on. I can tell you precisely how any one of the thousands of songs I own fits into my life, and precisely how it doesn’t. And so, as you might expect, on most days I am completely unable to describe which is my “favorite.”

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Bryan Adams, “Heaven (Unplugged)”

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bryanadams-unplugged.jpgOh – once in your life you find someone
Who will turn your world around
Bring you up when you’re feeling down

 

 

 

 

“Heaven” is a song that’s found success both as a power ballad ”” the original version, released as a single in 1985, was Bryan Adams’s first number one on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 ”” and as an upbeat dance number ”” DJ Sammy’s cover version reached number one on the U.K. Singles Chart in 2002. But the version I’m most fond of is to be found on Adams’s 1997 Unplugged disc. And there are a couple of reasons for this, one purely musical, and the other purely sentimental.
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