My Life In 35 Songs, Track 1: “One Headlight” by The Wallflowers • Page 2

We did! It was the last one we ever published:

Closer to the Truth and Further From the Sky: My Back Pages, Vol. 12: The Wallflowers - Bringing Down the Horse

 

Something from Rise and Fall

 

As a fellow classmate of 1990, I absolutely love this concept. It gives me High Fidelity and Love is a Mixtape vibes, which are two of my favourite books of all time. Since I was a kid I always defined myself and my life through songs and records and I adore your writing style so much that I always look up to your essays and your eoty lists for new music. This first chapter is no exception. I'm looking forward to read them all, for the songs and the stories.

 

Closer to the Truth further from the sky.

 

With this hint, I am guessing #2 is either What's My Age Again/All The Small Things, or The Middle

 

Ding ding ding! I first saw him live on that tour, it was my first-ever concert experience, and that's what the Butch chapter is going to be about.

Love both of those books! I think I actually got both of them for Christmas the same year. Glad to have you onboard for this!

As I mentioned above, it was almost that. Decided to go a different direction late in the game.

You're right in the correct period of time with both of those guesses, but it's none of those songs. There will of course be a Jimmy Eat World chapter, though.

 

Interesting concept. Don’t think I could do it but it’s making me think about the first song/album/music video I remember seeing and loving.

Definitely distinctly Denver when Oops I Did It Again came out and wearing that album out big time. Same with Millenium by Backstreet Boys.

First music video I remember being blown away by is Fat Lip by Sum 41 and others that were on TRL at that time. Pretty sure What’s My Age Again? was or at least some Blink song.

First punk/pop punk album I fell in love with that shaped my musical tastes now is definitely All Killer, No Filler

 

Since you mentioned backstreet boys and being blown away by a music video, the video for "Everybody" was one that stood out to me a lot when I was young.

That and the video for Men in Black

 

I do remember that one too

 

Shocked it wasnt that one.

 

That song hit pretty much right in between two other songs that are on the list, so I didn't have as much of a distinct story to tell about it, versus other parts of the Butch catalog. That happened a few times, which was one of the challenges of the exercise. In soundtrack terms, it's like having multiple candidates for a song to put over a specific "scene." You can only pick one!

 

Absolutely loved One Headlight and that whole album. Holds a special place in my heart since it just reminds me of good times of my dad driving my brother and I to the beach and him blasting this with the windows open and having no cares in the world.

 

I hear what you are saying.
I"ve just read about how much you adore that song for a decade lol.


Love the idea of this.

 

Haha, I get it. If it makes you feel any better, that song does get namedropped elsewhere in this series.

It's largely going to be chronological, though there are some songs that had a major impact on me at multiple different points in my life, and I play around with the chronology a bit with those parts of the series. Even taking it chronologically, I'm pretty pleased with the bookends working out the way they did.

 

Wow! Honestly have no idea how you even combed through enough songs going back through your life to do this… I feel like I’d miss a fair number of one-off songs. Did you just start with your favorite artists?

Excited for the “23” writeup

 

A year or two ago, I tackled a project kind of similar to this where I made a "Youth" playlist, stretching from when I started to notice music in my childhood to when I graduated college. Went chronologically based on when songs hit me or were most important. I think that thing is 1,200 songs long. Took forever to compile and put in order, and I still find myself adding songs that I missed, but it definitely made this process much easier. I also have an extremely good memory, especially when it comes to music that's been significant to my life, so that helped, too.

There was some "this artist obviously has to be included," and then just picking the song that felt like it made the most sense. But there are definitely a couple more one-off songs on here, where the artist hasn't been one of my go-to acts, but they had a song that was extremely important to me.

 

Great piece, my friend.

Love that you keyed in on the contradictory lyrics. Even at 10, not knowing how cars worked for shit, I loved "I tun the engine but the engine doesn't turn"

This was part of the summer that I discovered pop radio and actively became a music fan. So many killer singles. "Push", "All for You", "Crash into Me", this, "Mmmbop", "Semi-Charmed Life", etc. I'll always have a huge soft spot for them all.

 

Oh man, yes, I get a warm fuzzy feeling just looking at that list of radio singles. Definitely loved that era of popular music.

 

Second chapter went up today!

My Life In 35 Songs, Track 2: “Hanging By A Moment” by Lifehouse