I got the idea to do this post from Pitchfork’s 5-10-15-20 series, where they talk to artists about the music that inspired them, five years at a time, starting when they were 5 years old.
Age 5 – A collection of songs from my Pocket Rockers
Huey Lewis – “Heart of Rock & Roll”
Taylor Dayne – “Tell It To My Heart”
Genesis -“Invisible Touch”
To be fair, it’s hard to say that a 5-year-old ever actually chooses the music they listen to, and apart from my parent’s influences (hair metal and 80s pop), I really had none aside from the Little Mermaid Soundtrack. But I do vividly remember having this little Pocket Rockers tape player and a handful of accompanying mini-cassettes.
This is the first time I remember going off to listen to music on my own, a habit that would later evolve as technology did–from Walkmen to Discmen to iPods to cellphones with Spotify. I’d listen to this on tinny speakers from my wooden swing set in the backyard.
There’s something about only having a few songs and listening to them over and over again to really cement a melody into your head. To this day, I can remember being little and trying to understand what the words meant, even though I’d never been anywhere, or really done anything yet.
How does it hold up?
These songs are synthy 80s gems and I still love them all.
Age 10 – Bryan Adams
I do not remember why it was that I began loving Brian Adams, but I do know it began with the album Waking Up The Neighbours in 1993 when I was 10 years old. It’s the album that I can remember first intently studying the liner notes as I listened, deciphering the lyrics as I went. Most folks know “Summer of ‘69,” but that was never the focus of my Bryan Adams love, catchy as hell though it is.
In 1993, I was in fifth grade at May Howard Elementary School. I loved school, swimming, Star Wars, and rollerblading with my golden retriever, Bear.
As I recently found out, this album was produced by “Mutt” Lange, the multi-platinum producer whose prior credits included huge hit records for AC/DC, Foreigner, and Def Leppard. Raised as I was on hair metal and 80’s rock, it makes sense that I would gravitate toward this sound.
My most vivid Bryan Adams memory is this : Around my 10th birthday, we were driving in town running errands, and had pulled into a drive through. All of a sudden my dad looked in the back seat at me and said ‘Hey, listen.” He changed the radio station and turned it up. A Z102 DJ was chattering away, then said “And this next one goes to out Haley, Happy Birthday!” Then a “Can’t Stop This Thing We Started” started to play. It was incredibly sweet. My entire family knew, it seems, how much I loved Bryan Adams.
Looking back, I’m not sure how many other 10-year-old girls were really into gruff-but-tender Canadian rock. I suppose some, given that “Everything I do ( I do It For You) was the saccharine break-out hit of this album, thanks to the Robin Hood Prince of Thieves soundtrack.
How does it hold up?
I will stand by Bryan Adams. I’ve always been a sucker for emotional ballads, and this album has them in spades. “Do I Have To Say The Words?” and “There Will Never Be Another Tonight” are epic, synth-laden numbers and as I go back and listen to them, still are pretty good songs. But that could be nostalgia talking. No. actually it isn’t. Who am I kidding. I’ve always liked a cheesy ballad and always will.
Age 15 – Marvelous 3
I discovered this album the say way I discovered countless others as I was growing up–taking a chance on a random CD at Wal*Mart. You used to be able scan albums and listen to previews in the electronics department. I did that with 3 and was instantly hooked from the first listen. The single “Freak of the Week” got airtime briefly on MTV, but it largely flew under the radar.
After I got it home I found out that the band, which was fronted by Butch Walker, was from Atlanta (a lifetime away from Savannah, but a Georgia bond nonetheless). I was obsessed with this album when I was 15 years old. I was in 10th grade at Jenkins High School in Savannah. I was incredibly, painfully uncool. I was on the quiz bowl team, and I watched a lot of X-Files.
Most of the people in my high school listened to Dave Matthews Band, Phish, etc. To be fair, I also watched pop-culture staple Total Request Live when I got from home school on MTV every afternoon.
But this album was (relatively) unknown in my suburban high school. I kept the liner notes in my backpack, and would take them out and read them during boring classes, singing the songs in my head. I hoped desperately that the cooler punk kids would take notice and strike up a conversation about this “cool band.” It never happened, sadly. I still loved it though.
How does it hold up?
These songs are still really, really fun. Butch Walker’s always been a good singer with a goofy sense of humor, and the songs on this album are sophomoric and young-at-heart, about high school and vampires and drugs.
I didn’t realize it at the time, but there’s a huge nod to glam rock and Bowie here, which makes sense in retrospect.
Close second: Better Than Ezra, Everclear
Age 20 – Rufus Wainwright
My senior year of high school saw my tastes begin to expand exponentially with my access to Napster. I discovered Ani Difranco, Veruca Salt, and Sleater-Kinney, and they opened the door to a whole new world of kick-ass women in music–one that would soon explode as I got to UGA and joined the radio station after seeing a flyer for the show Odd Man Out (which i would eventually on to host in 2003).I’ve already written a history/love letter to Sleater-Kinney before on this blog, and you can read it here, so I’ll skip it for now.
Instead, I will dive into my other favorite from this time period. Without a doubt, it’s Rufus Wainwright’s Want One. This is one of the first albums I can remember that didn’t leave my car for several months in a row, and the times and places I drove listening to it are embedded into my memory. I can remember clear as a day driving from my apartment in Athens to the intramural fields parking lot to catch my daily UGA bus. There was a lake by the IM fields, and it was always sparkling when I pulled up to park. I also saw Rufus Wainright live at the Tate Student Center that same year, just him and a piano. It was incredible.
In 2003 I was a junior in college, majoring in English and French. I was a DJ at the radio station, about to become programming director. I did not have much figured out, but I knew that I loved learning, and I loved music. The summer before I had worked at an independent pharmacy back home in Savannah. There’s a quote by Zora Neale Hurston, “There are years that ask questions, and years that answer.”
For me, 2003 was definitely a year that asked questions. I visited New York City for the first time when I was 20, and fell in love with it. This was the same year that I got my first cell phone, a dark gray Nokia brick. This new technology was interesting, and on Want One, there’s a song called “Vibrate,” and Rufus laments “My phones on vibrate for you / but still I never, ever feel from you.” I thought it was so clever how he incorporated this new phenomenon of ring-less notification into romantic longing.
Why do I love Rufus Wainwright? I’m not sure if I can articulate it, exactly. He’s a superb lyricist, and an emotive singer. His songs has the pizazz of Broadway with the cheekiness of comedic theater. He is gay as hell. But there’s also an incredible emotional depth that he plumbs that I’ve always adored.
How does it hold up?
I still love Rufus. I saw him perform solo in Atlanta in 2015 and he’s still got it.
Close second: Decemberists, my discovery of David Bowie, Hedwig and the Angry Inch soundtrack
25 – The xx
When I was 25, I was in my third year of law school at UGA. It was 2008, and I was taking a full load of classes, interning at the Public Defender’s office 20 hours a week, and working part-time as a bartender at Transmetropolitan. My life was incredibly busy, but for the first time in my adult life, I felt like I was preparing for something–namely graduation, and moving away from Athens.
I recall that fall being unusually crisp, and as I traversed north campus to downtown and back again over and over, the debut album by the XX was a constant companion on my iPod, as I wondered about where I’d be in the coming months, what I’d be doing and who I’d be with.
The XX produce albums that are sparse, beautiful, and introspective. I described them to a friend once as “aural Xanax.” There’s an organic chilliness to their sound that lends itself well to cold, sunny fall days. I cannot separate my memories of that semester from the soundtrack their debut album provided.
How does it hold up?
Well, fantastically. I am currently listening to their third album, I See You, in heavy rotation eight years later. They clearly weren’t a fluke in my musical development.
Close second: The Kills
30 – Neko Case
I’ve listened to Neko Case for most of my adult life, but in 2013 she released The Worse Things Get, The Harder I Fight, The Harder I Fight The More I Love You. I turned 30 that year. I was still doing document review for a large law firm in Atlanta, about to begin my career shift to a writer/editor a few months later. I was living on North Avenue with Jenny and Jim.
My girlfriend at the time and I drove to Athens that summer to see Neko live, and it was the best concert I’d ever seen her perform (she has the tendency to be a bit grumpy live). She was positively radiant.
I love Neko Case because of her storytelling. She creates characters in her songs that resonate emotionally with me, and I never tire of listening to many of her creations. They have a sentimentality to them that I adore, and a wistfulness that can make you think. Also, she sings like a damn angel.
How does it hold up?
100%. Speaking of, she needs to release a new album, and soon. Last year’s Case/Lang/Veirs was delightful, but I kept wanting every song to be a Neko song.
Today, 33
I listen to a lot of David Bowie these days, especially after his death last year. I love St. Vincent. In 2016, the two albums I played the most were Lydia Loveless’ Real and Beyonce’s Lemonade.
This year so far, I’m loving the new XX record, the new Ryan Adams, and Priests’ new one.
If you want to listen to all of these old gems: