Life Changers

Can pop songs qualify?

We’ve got houseguests coming in for a few nights, and in light of the panic that’s induced — “We have to change the sheets!” “Eek — I forgot to gas up the car!” “What are we gonna serve them for dinner?!?” etc. — I won’t be able to get back to my 1970s playlist until next week sometime.

In the meantime, here’s a ready-made (long!) playlist, courtesy of a new book by Wilco frontman Jeff Tweedy, with some ruminations about it below:

I came across this selection of tracks indirectly, via this article in The Atlantic. [That’s theoretically a “gift link,” so you shouldn’t need an Atlantic subscription to read it; let me know if any problems, though.] The article is excerpted from Tweedy’s new book, World Within a Song: Music That Changed My Life and Life That Changed My Music… which, predictably, I felt compelled to buy. As it happens, it’s actually Tweedy’s third book; about this one, he says:

This book is the one I probably would have written first if I were more ambitious, and if I had been a little more clear-eyed about what I care most for in this world, and what I’ve thought about the most by far: other people’s songs. And how much they have taught me about how to be human—how to think about myself and others. And how deeply personal and universally vast the experience of listening to almost anything with intent and openness can be. And most importantly, how songs absorb and enhance our own experiences and store our memories….

In it, he’s singled out 50 songs which have “absorbed and enhanced his experiences and stored his memories.” He adds:

I could have easily chosen a thousand other songs to write about. And having finished that book, I would regret the omission of a thousand other songs. These are just the ones that came to me first.

(Aside: the Spotify playlist above includes only 48 songs, not 50; two of the songs his book discusses are not available on Spotify because they were written and recorded by people he’s known personally but whose work — for one reason or another — simply hasn’t hung around long enough to be streamed anywhere. Also note that I’ve had to make some judgment calls, e.g., for older public-domain songs with no readily identifiable “Tweedy’s choice” performer.)

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[Edit to add: the list, as assembled here, has already revealed a major flaw: Tweedy and I don’t necessarily think of the same songs when we hear the same title. Case in point: his “Gloria” (full title: “Gloria: in Excelsis”), by Patti Smith, has nothing at all to do with my “Gloria,” the kicking 1982 hit by Laura Branigan. (Incidentally, neither of them has anything at all to do with Van Morrison’s song of that name.) I assembled the playlist using the Table of Contents from World Within a Song — and only after writing this post did I actually start to, like, read the book. Duh.]

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So the general question stands: can a popular song “change our lives”?

As a professional writer and performer of popular music, Tweedy surely knows much more about the subject than I know, or could ever know. (I’m utterly unfamiliar with a good number of the artists among his selections here.) I imagine he’s got a Rolodex in his head which presents to his mind’s eye the equivalent of sheet music and the contents of a performer’s Wikipedia page just from hearing a stray phrase ineluctably associated — for him — with a particular lyric.

And so do I, kinda — in a much more diluted form. But have any of those songs changed my life? Or is it only that they have all, collectively, done so? Is my skepticism about the impact of individual songs just due to my not being someone who lives music 24x7? I can easily — hellooooo! — come up with a selection of 50 songs which have stuck in my head, and which I associate with specific moments in my life… but does that make any of them life-changers?

Hmmm… Thinking harder about this now…

Maybe — maybe — for me, the theme song for the old Twin Peaks TV series might qualify: The (eventual) Missus and I pretty much romanced each other to that track back in the 1990s, from our separate locations in Florida and Virginia, respectively. Years later, when the time came to choose a few songs for our wedding, this was the one that neither of us hesitated to add to the list:

But somehow this doesn’t feel like the sort of thing Tweedy discusses: this one is important to me because of the life events I associate with it, but without those life events it would be just another beautiful song I remembered years later. It, as a song, didn’t change my life. Or maybe I’m just thinking too hard — imagine that! — about it all.

What about you? Has a song become so deeply ingrained in your psyche that you cannot imagine being you, as you are, without it?