Music that Moves Me

I was inspired by a friend’s blog posting. He listed a Top 10 of the music that was the most emotionally resonant for him. You know, the music that defines a period of your life, or the stuff that you can hear one note of and be carried away with the emotion you felt listening to it at one point or another. I love music, but I have a terrible memory… but I’m gonna take a stab at it anyway. So… here goes, be it album or single, here’s the stuff that has sliced my heart or tugged at my tear ducts…

12. Maybe I’m Amazed – Paul McCartney – Oh god, the first true love break up. This was my college boyfriend’s and my song, and after the million circumstances that broke us up, fate would have it in store for me. I moved into my Mom’s house, into the basement for the summer to make some money. My Dad had just moved away and left his record player and all his records in the basement. Guess what was there. I played it, fell into my bed, cried with tears streaming down my cheeks til the song was over, got up, went over to the record and put the needle back to the start, and cried some more. You know the cycle. I was just so dramatic.

11. Garden State Soundtrack – Really, do I have to say more? You’d have to be a robot not to go through a whole range of emotions after listening to this album. Braff knows him some stuff.

10. Modest Mouse - Good News for People Who Love Bad News – It’s good when the people you love are passionate about things, and Rich is passionate about these guys. It’s a fantastic album, my favorite of theirs. I let him introduce me, and then I tore it up on my own. They rock, and they are off-kilter and artistic and express themselves like no other. Would I have found them on my own? I don’t know, but some of the fun of being together is discovering WHY someone loves something so much.

9. American Beauty – Grateful Dead – This album is just me letting myself be everything sweet and free and beautiful. It reminds me that my spirit is alive, it makes me feel like I belong with other humans on this planet.

8. Les Miserables – I was young (8? 9?), and I don’t know who told me I should listen to this. Or did I see the show first and then get the CD? Doesn’t really matter, point is, it started a whole era of my life. Music had always been Top 40 or my parents’ classic rock, which was fine… but here it was for me. It was triumphant, it was an amazing story told with song, it was gorgeous in that “fairly tale/true love/tragedy” way that I, as an innocent young thing, thought that love would always be. AND there was the fact that you could see it on stage! I wanted to be on stage more than anything, and the character of Cosette, who I realized was my age, I could maybe play! It started a 15 year career in musical theatre for me, not to mention endless more musicals on road trips that my Mom joined along singing with me and my brother wished he had died (and/or killed me).

7. Iron and Wine – The Creek Drank the Cradle – Just for me. I don’t know anyone who loves this sound more than me… most would say it is too morose and somber. But it works for me. Put me anywhere, in any mood, and I will be soothed and at peace listening to this man. Specifically, listening to it watching some ducks swim in an icy stream in the cold in Illinois or somewhere on a work trip. I love that I feel like he’s singing to me, and that nothing in time or space matters really except being here and now.

6. Janet Jackson – Rhythm Nation 1814 – So I love dance and dance music, but it’s harder to feel like my emotional connections lie there. Except for this album. I was teaching dance to kids when this came out, so of course we used it every week. And it was so perfect, so powerful and fun and I feel like it sums up that whole period of time for me. Dance dance dance.

5. If Tha Mood – Esthero – from Wikked Lil’ Girls – Oh God, the sexiness I feel after listening to this song. I had just started learning to hoop with some girls at hoopnotica, and the teacher played this. One of the other girls talked about how much she loved it… and you know when you get a feeling and you just HAVE to go buy an album? I did. I don’t LOVE the whole album… but this song… the horns, the brazen lyrics, the spoken words... I can hoop so well to this song!

4. Sufjan Stevens – C’Mon Feel the Illinoise – Have you ever listened to this album? I don’t know what more there is to say than that… it is so damn smart. I feel alive and engaged listening. And of course, there is Sufjan… oh Sufjan, in your boy scout uniform and huge butterfly wings, you are the most unbelievable unique amazing man.

3. Ani Difranco – Dilate – I am a woman, hear me roar. I love women singers, but more than that I LOVE Ani. I went to see her with my cousins first year in collega and was completely won over. She is so original, so honest, so… she just gets to the heart of it. “Fuck you and your untouchable face and Fuck you for existing in the first place” - Yes, just let her sing it out loud and you’ll feel so much better.

2. OK Computer - Radiohead – College. I had never totally concerned myself with whether I was cool, I was too busy being an actress. But here I was, figuring some things out, and possibly being on the precipice of being cool. I hung out with some guys in a very grungy house, we listened to music all the time, smoked some pot… Then I went home for Christmas and read a Radiohead review that totally intrigued me. They seemed to be where it was at. So I bought it. And I gave it a listen. To be honest, first time I’m not sure how I felt about it. But I brought it back to the boys’ house. And they listened. And HALLELUIAH Radiohead was discovered to us – and they credited ME! I had brought the cool album, the cool sound to us all. I love that album from beginning to end with all my brain and soul, but I let that CD live in their house and get completely trashed, just because I was so happy to have found it and to share and agree.

1. Dark Side of the Moon – Pink Floyd – The first time I knew I was an adult. This album means everything to me. College was over, and I took a solo road trip from Baltimore to Charleston, SC to see my Dad. It was summer, the earth was hot, and I was alive with the fact that THIS WAS LIFE. You drive places. Sometimes by yourself. You’re allowed. And you can have amazing music to guide you. I put that tape into my Chevy Caprice Classic and started driving, and I figured it ALL out