My Life In 35 Songs, Track 10: “Truth Is” by Sister Hazel

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I stole my first kiss underneath her summer sun, how can I leave?

It’s occurred to me in recent years that, had I been born just a couple years earlier, my music taste would likely have been entirely entirely different. Maybe I would have formed a connection with the grunge craze of the early ‘90s, or maybe I would have become infatuated with that decade’s budding indie rock scene. Instead, I came to music listening consciousness when the radio waves were ruled by brightly melodic pop-rock bands, and that has absolutely defined my musical value system ever since.

I broached this subject a little bit in the chapter about Creed, but there’s not much that’s as pure as loving music with absolutely no cynicism. I think that’s why, for most of us, the music we loved when we were young remains the defining music of our lives. As a child or a teenager, you come to songs and albums and artists with enthusiasm and curiosity, but maybe not a lot of knowledge or context. And as a result, you welcome that music into your heart, mind, and soul in a different way than you will in adulthood. I firmly believe that the greatest period in any person’s musical journey comes between “awakening” (the moment that makes you consider music more seriously and deeply than you did before) and “awareness” (the moment where you start letting other people’s opinions or narratives influence how you feel about something).

Sister Hazel, for me, are a strong case-in-point for this argument. Part of the folky, jangle-pop boom of the 1990s, Sister Hazel are either one-hit wonders or mighty close to that often-derogatory status. If you lived in the United States in 1997 or 1998, you almost certainly know “All for You,” the band’s infectious signature song. You might also know “Change Your Mind,” a modestly successful single from the next Sister Hazel album, Fortress, which came out in 2000. There’s a good chance you don’t know any of the band’s other songs, give or take “Your Winter” (also from Fortress), which plays over a scene from the 1999 teen comedy 10 Things I Hate About You.

But I know all the Sister Hazel songs, because for a period in the early 2000s, I became obsessed with developing an encyclopedic knowledge of every band from the ‘90s who’d ever scored a radio hit I liked.

The Wallflowers. Matchbox Twenty. Counting Crows. Third Eye Blind. Oasis. Fastball. Green Day. Sister Hazel. These were the bands I loved in the ‘90s because I heard their hit songs on the radio, or because my brother played their CDs on the boom box. When I really liked an album, I’d have my brother make me a cassette tape copy that I could play on a shitty tape player I had in my bedroom. But for the most part, my listening in the ‘90s was dependent on what other people were playing: my siblings, my parents, the DJs on the radio.

As I became a more conscious music listener in the mid-2000s, one of the first things I wanted to do was go back and rediscover those bands I’d loved as a kid. That meant buying or downloading not just the albums I already knew I loved – Third Eye Blind’s self-titled, for instance, or Fastball’s All the Pain Money Can Buy – but also catching up with the lesser-loved music they’d made since. I’d fallen out of touch with these ‘90s radio rock bands for two reasons: 1) the radio had stopped playing them, and 2) my brother had stopped buying albums, opting for Napster and mixed CDs rather than full artistic statements. As a result, I spent the better part of the decade thinking that The Wallflowers fell off a cliff after Bringing Down the Horse, or that Sister Hazel never made another record after scoring their smash with “All for You.”

Had I been a cynical listener, I might have bought into the well-trodden narrative that the ‘90s were the peak of CD bloat, and that record labels and bands had gotten all too comfortable with releasing mediocre albums where the only good songs were the singles. Better yet, I might have made myself believe that these ‘90s radio rock bands I loved were as uncool – and therefore, unworthy of my attention or time – as most music critics thought they were.

Instead, because I was in that span between musical awakening and musical awareness, I dove back into the music of my ‘90s radio rock heroes like I was an archeologist unearthing lost world wonders. Third Eye Blind’s 2003 breakup opus Out of the Vein; Fastball’s dark post-fame follow-up The Harsh Light of Day; The Wallflowers’ genre-hopping Red Letter Days; Green Day’s folky flop Warning; Counting Crows’ glossy, poppy 2002 masterpiece Hard Candy. These weren’t classic albums according to conventional wisdom, but I adored them and they shaped that crucial period of my musical evolution where my listening was driven totally and exclusively by what sounded good to my ears. Soon, outside voices would puncture that bubble: friends and their music takes, arguments with people about albums on online forums, reviews and lists from critics that set a consensus or canon for me to measure my own musical appreciation against. Those things aren’t necessarily bad; in fact, it’s good to have your conceptions challenged so that you can grow. But I loved that period of early formative listening because it felt like my love for music was at its most pure and unbridled.

One of the albums I loved most during that era of my life was Sister Hazel’s Chasing Daylight. Released in 2003, two albums on from “All for You” and no longer part of the major label galaxy, Chasing Daylight was this glorious explosion of bright, hooky, rootsy pop-rock – somewhere between Tom Petty (who shared Sister Hazel’s hometown of Gainesville, Florida) and Matchbox Twenty (who shared their real estate on the late-‘90s radio dial). To my ears, it was the perfect summertime album. It was all sunny blue skies and wistful looks back at youthful romances, and it made this band that most people had filed away in the ‘90s one-hit wonder bargain bin into one of my very favorite bands in the world. On two occasions in my teens, I unwrapped Sister Hazel albums on birthdays: 2004’s Lift for my 14th and 2006’s Absolutely for my 16th.

This song, “Truth Is,” comes from the latter, but it could have easily been pulled from the heart of Chasing Daylight. Like that album, “Truth Is” sounds like sunshine; just listen to that wash of acoustic guitar strings at the start, or to the big, resplendent chorus that somehow sounds like both a wide-open heart and a wide-open highway at the same time. “The dance on my street was elegant and wild/Her lips were salty sweet, hidden in a flawless smile/How can I leave?” One of the things I always loved about Sister Hazel was that, even as the guys in the band got older, they always retained that ability to capture in their songs how it feels to be young and falling in love for the first time. This song is about that – about standing on the precipice of something new, and taking a step off the edge into the miraculous madness of a romance. That plunge is thrilling no matter how many times you take it, but it’s especially thrilling that first time, and “Truth Is” tells such a tale, literally, about a first kiss.

In my life, the song proved well-timed. I spent the month after my birthday spinning Absolutely on repeat – the same month where a friend and I spun closer and closer until, at a Christmas party, our orbits collided and she became my first girlfriend and my first kiss. That relationship didn’t last long, and it wasn’t “true love” or anything close, but experiencing those intoxicating feelings – the butterflies and the infatuation and the electric charge I felt when we touched or kissed – was exhilarating and unforgettable.

Absolutely ended up being the soundtrack to that whole dizzying chapter, a soundtrack that likely would never have been had I been more self-conscious about my music tastes. But these songs were perfect for that time: yearning and beautiful and full of these big, widescreen emotions. Sure, my romance was playing out against the backdrop of a cold, snowy holiday season, whereas “Truth Is” is a song about a sun-soaked summer love, cooled by a salty ocean breeze. But everything else about the track was perfect, right down to the final line about the wild risk of letting your guard down with another person: “But the devil you know is safer than the risk you take with something new.”

Past Installments:

• Track 1: “One Headlight” by The Wallflowers
• Track 2: “Hanging by a Moment” by Lifehouse
• Track 3: “Hide” by Creed
• Track 4: “Wheel” by John Mayer
• Track 5: “Kill” by Jimmy Eat World
• Track 6: “Fix You” by Coldplay
• Track 7: “Walk On” by U2
• Track 8: “Feeling a Moment” by Feeder
• Track 9: “When Canyons Ruled the City” by Butch Walker

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