Personal History of Music Category
A Personal History of Music, Day 30: “Lover’s Return,” by Dolly Parton, Linda Ronstadt and Emmylou Harris
Posted on June 30, 2022 10 Comments
In one’s life, one is lucky to get one or two genuinely perfect moments. This song soundtracked one of mine, which I described here on Whatever a couple of years ago: It’s 1999. Krissy and I had our first house. Our daughter was newly born. I had gotten my first book contract, or was about […]
A Personal History of Music, Day 29: “Boys,” by Charli XCX
Posted on June 29, 2022 6 Comments
This one’s appearance on my personal playlist is not complicated: It’s just so delightfully and almost innocently randy that it just makes me laugh and be happy. Whomst amongst us has not been where Charli XCX is in this song: So blissfully wrapped up in thinking about the objects of their affection that everything else […]
A Personal History of Music, Day 28: “Ride the Wind to Me,” by Julie Miller
Posted on June 28, 2022 3 Comments
Julie Miller feels like secret knowledge, and someone who have to know someone else first to meet. She’s a contemporary of musicians like Sam Phillips, Shawn Colvin and Victoria Williams, all of whom had far higher public profiles in their day. She’s written songs for or covered by some hugely prominent country musicians, including Lee […]
A Personal History of Music, Day 27: “Fire Drills,” by Dessa
Posted on June 27, 2022 11 Comments
Dessa is the one musician in this series who I met prior to hearing her music. She and I were guests at John and Hank Green’s NerdCon: Stories convention in 2015, where among other things she and I participated in a team debate event in which we expounded the value of putting on foot attire […]
A Personal History of Music, Day 26: “Cut Your Teeth,” by Kyla La Grange
Posted on June 26, 2022 2 Comments
Because I am a hopeless, story-seeking nerd, I have created a whole backstory to the video to the Kyla La Grange song “Cut Your Teeth,” which is taken from the album of the same name. Very briefly, La Grange and her background singers are in hell, for whatever reason they have found themselves in hell, […]
A Personal History of Music, Day 25: “Bachelorette,” by Bjork
Posted on June 25, 2022 5 Comments
One thing I have long admired about Bjork is how unapologetically weird she is, musically speaking (I don’t know how she is in her personal life, and it’s not my business anyway). The less ambitious version of her could have made a decent career out of being merely quirky, but nothing about Bjork could ever […]
A Personal History of Music, Day 24: “Calling All Angels,” by Jane Siberry
Posted on June 24, 2022 7 Comments
Sometimes you connect with a musician for only one song or one album, but that connection, when it’s made, is a strong one. I feel that way about Jane Siberry; most of her oeuvre is not for me for various reasons, but then there’s When I Was a Boy, an album-length mediation on life and […]
A Personal History of Music, Day 23: “On the Radio,” by Regina Spektor
Posted on June 23, 2022 7 Comments
For this series I’m picking one song per artist to represent them and why they’ve mattered to me. Usually, this isn’t too difficult — sometimes it’s that one particular song that’s resonated for me, and other times there’s usually one song above several other equally worthy songs that I thing be represents what I like […]
A Personal History of Music, Day 22: “Something That You Said,” by The Bangles
Posted on June 22, 2022 11 Comments
There’s a natural progression to the careers of most (successful) bands: The scrappy “new kid” phase, where the band is starting out and struggling, and maybe has a couple of songs passed around by their “first in,” fans; the “rising star” phase, where they get picked up by a major label, get their first Billboard […]
A Personal History of Music, Day 21: “Day After Day,” by The Pretenders
Posted on June 21, 2022 13 Comments
I suspect most people, if you asked them, could tell you who they thought was the coolest person in whatever genre of music they liked the most, or maybe who was the coolest person in all of music. “The Coolest Person” was not necessarily one’s favorite musician, although there was usually a high correlation between […]
A Personal History of Music, Day 20: “Jennifer,” by Falling Joys
Posted on June 20, 2022 15 Comments
I think everyone has a favorite band that literally no one else they know has ever heard of. Not in the gatekeepery “I’m so unbearably hipster I only listen to bands that broke up even before they recorded their album” sort of way, but in the enthusiastic “I don’t understand why more people haven’t heard […]
A Personal History of Music, Day 19: “Beloved Wife,” by Natalie Merchant
Posted on June 19, 2022 6 Comments
I don’t think most people would make a connection between my military science fiction novel Old Man’s War and the works of the famously earthy-crunchy singer-songwriter Natalie Merchant, but there is one, and it’s pretty significant: her song “Beloved Wife,” which was originally on her 1995 album Tigerlily, but which I first encountered on her […]
A Personal History of Music, Day 18: “Higher,” by The Naked and Famous
Posted on June 18, 2022 3 Comments
My inclusion of this song is pretty simple: Late 2016 was a pretty rough ride, emotionally, and I needed something anthemic to keep my spirits up. “Higher” fit that bill pretty well: Quiet(ish) verses raising up to big fist-pumping choruses, catchy, defiant lyrics, and a spirit of hopefulness that for me acted a bit to […]
A Personal History of Music, Day 17: “Help Me,” by Concrete Blonde
Posted on June 17, 2022 4 Comments
I decided to highlight Concrete Blonde today because today is my and Krissy’s wedding anniversary, and when we met and for a long time afterward, Concrete Blonde was Krissy’s favorite, and still remains high up in her personal musical pantheon. When Krissy entered my life, the amount of Concrete Blonde I listened to went way, […]
A Personal History of Music, Day 16: “Tear In Your Hand,” by Tori Amos
Posted on June 16, 2022 10 Comments
There are any number of reasons why “Tear In Your Hand” has remained in my mix of Highly Significant Songs, but possibly the most important reason is that it’s rooted into a very specific place and time for me: Fresno, California in the early 90s. This is where I had gotten my first job out […]
A Personal History of Music, Day 15: “Coming Up Close,” by Til Tuesday
Posted on June 15, 2022 13 Comments
Specificity is a valuable thing when it comes to popular music, which is a thing that I’m not sure everyone who makes pop music always understands. Popular music, after all, is meant to appeal to a wide number of people, to hit charts and be turned into viral TikToks and so on. One way to […]
A Personal History of Music, Day 14: “Extraordinary Thing,” by k.d. lang
Posted on June 14, 2022 13 Comments
I believe I was slightly behind the rest of my generational cohort in coming to k.d. lang. Most of the people who I know admire her work came on board with it in the Ingenue days, with “Constant Craving” being the Canadian singer’s biggest pop hit, now and then. I thought the song was perfectly […]
A Personal History of Music, Day 13: “The Big Sky,” by Kate Bush
Posted on June 13, 2022 14 Comments
It must be an interesting moment to be Kate Bush. 39 years after her masterwork Hounds of Love came out, it’s back, thanks to a canny placement of its song “Running Up That Hill” in the hit Netflix series Stranger Things. And when I say “it’s back,” it’s actually to say that it’s hitting higher […]
A Personal History of Music, Day 12: “Fast Car,” by Tracy Chapman
Posted on June 12, 2022 22 Comments
A number of years ago, when Hurricane Katrina swamped New Orleans, killing a thousand people who had chosen to stay in the city when the storm hit, there were people who wondered why they didn’t just leave. The answer, I knew, was: because they were poor, and they couldn’t just go. But if I had […]
A Personal History of Music, Day 11: “Ray of Light,” by Madonna
Posted on June 11, 2022 16 Comments
For nearly all Gen-Xers, there are three artists who can reasonably be said to have been universal experiences, i.e., they were in the soundtrack to your life whether you went out of your way to listen to them or not: Michael Jackson, Prince and Madonna. They were everywhere, the musical air that one breathed, there […]
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