Soundtrack of your life

Earlier this week someone I follow on Twitter asked if anyone felt like the music they listen to a lot becomes the soundtrack of their lives. Like if there are specific songs or albums that have very specific memories or feelings or events connected to that music. One or two things popped into my head, but the idea stuck with me this week. I realized that I have lots of examples of this. I am a creature of habit which certainly aids this endeavor. In college I always studied and wrote papers to the same like 5 albums. To this day, those songs bring me back to the library and my favorite study spot. But I've also got some memories that are less to do with repetition but more to do with the a situational thing. Songs, albums, or artists that bring me back to a certain place and time.

• Friend Is a Four-Letter Word--Cake-- This song always bring me back to a stretch of Hwy 30 between Mount Vernon and Cedar Rapids. Gretchen and I did a lot of escaping to CR to go shopping, watch a movie, get ice cream, or whatever our junior and senior years. The 25 minute or so drive down Hwy 30 was usually a time to crank the tunes and sing along. It was usually a Cake mix from her brother, and this one is the one that stuck with me the most.

• Baby Love--Diana Ross/Supremes-- This one is going to sound weird, but here goes. It reminds me of the communal bathroom of my dorm freshman year. More specifically the showers. My friend Sarah loved to serenade people in the mornings. Now I lived on a floor with like 30 girls (a vast majority of them freshmen). You get to know the girls well and with only 3 shower stalls you get to know people's robes and shower caddies pretty quick. Before we bought a radio for the bathroom, Sarah would sing from the sink. Usually a song with one of the girls' name in it. If she didn't know one, she modified it. As you can now guess, Baby Love became Becky Love. :) (This was not Sarah's only lyric mod. She also loved to sing "I'm beautiful" instead of "You're beautiful" in James Blunt's song, a habit I picked up and still do to this day.) 

• Friends in Low Places--Garth Brooks-- This epic takes me all the way back to 2000 and the Grand Hotel cast party with my high school theatre group. This song had become our theme song that year, but the best moment was when someone requested it on the local country station and the whole cast sang it at the party (including the "Live Only" third verse) before talking our way through Happy Gilmore. 

• 5:19--Matt Wertz-- I've been to very few live concerts in my life, but this song will always remind me of the most memorable. Before moving in with Amy, I'd never even heard of Matt, but soon I was a huge fan. There's just something about this song in general that hits me. It will always remind me of this moment watching the concert with my two best friends Gretchen and Amy, super cold but loving every second of it. Every time I catch a clock on 5:19, it makes me think of Amy. That concert also sticks out because Dave Barnes teased us the refrain to Brothers and Sisters...a song he wouldn't release for another 6 months!! (On a similar strain Dave Barnes' Believe will always remind me of his concert when we were just feet from him, singing the harmonies from the album released just weeks earlier and him being amazed we knew them already.)

• The Morning After--Blue Skies-- Even though this song was released a year after the event it's linked to, it always bring back a rush of memories from our first Omaha weekend. Getting together with college friends is always fun, but there was something about that Sunday morning waking up on the couch and realizing that it meant a return to reality that really hit me. The crazy weekend of drinking, singing, playing, and cuddling was compressed into this perfect little weekend and it was then that I realized how much I just wanted to capture that weekend and put it in a bottle. The lyrics describe the scene I saw so perfectly, it's a little eery. Those moments before everyone else woke up are this song for me.

• Most of the rest of Blue Skies songs-- His early and non-officially released stuff (check out his covers here) were the soundtrack of my trip to the UK and Ireland. Being the youngest on the trip by about a decade was a little odd at times. And the not being a super social person caught up with me on that trip. Thankfully I always had my ipod loaded with Dave's music to keep me company (and politely signal I needed alone time). The tour of the Northern Irish coast with Dave singing Londonderry and Only Human were some of my favorite moments on the trip. Or the quiet moments at Inch Abbey when I could close my eyes and hear the strains of some of his acoustic stuff. Even though most of his original stuff came out post my UK-trip, his voice still reminds me of it, though that is slowly being replaced by memories of roadtrips to visit friends as his albums are almost permanently in my car cd player when the trip is more the 30 mins long.

What music reminds you of specific times in your life? These are just a few of mine.  So many more: RENT, Britney's Toxic, and You'll Be in My Heart, Freaky Friday soundtrack are just a few more. (In case you weren't sure I'm totally weird that collection of songs ought to convince you!) Also anyone else as obsessed with an unknown artist as I am with Blue Skies?? If so ... who?