The Ten

 If you were told, for whatever reason, that you could only listen to 10 songs for the rest of your life: what songs would you not give up?

It’s a question I usually ask the people I actually have a conversation with on the dating site I joined is one that I honestly have no reply answer for. It’s not a terribly hard question, there is no right or wrong answer here, but I think it’s fairly revealing. You want songs that you don’t think you’ll grow tired of, songs that are special to you or remind you of certain people or memories…but how do you choose?

I know my list will include a few artists/groups, but narrowing down to even those doesn’t make my choice much clearer. There would be at least one song each from Mumford and Sons, Florence and the Machine, Bruce Springsteen, Sara Bareilles and Blink 182. If I want to ensure that there is variety on my list, I’ll not include more than one song from a single artist or group. 

So we consider 5 spots are taken as follows:

1. Mumford and Sons
2. Florence and The Machine
3. Bruce Springsteen
4. Sara Bareilles
5. Blink 182

We’ll explore these in detail in a moment, this post will probably be long and really wordy. It’s my day off and this question actually has me intrigued in my own answers.

That leaves 5 more spots. Lately I’ve been into The Black Keys and Grace Potter and The Nocturnals, but will I always be? Vampire Weekend has some great songs, as do The Lumineers, TV on the Radio…actually the list of music I’m not liking is probably shorter than the list of music I do like. So how do you choose what songs you’ll tie yourself down to? 

Some songs you choose because of a memory that it brings back for you. Wagon Wheel by Old Crow Medicine Show was shown to me by Mike (second shout out, woot) and it gets an automatic add because when I listen to it I think about how excited I got waiting to trade music. And it’s a great song. There’s a Staind song that gives me chills and can knock the breath from my lungs if it catches me by surprise. It’s not 100% good memories attached to it, but bad ones are important too.

1. Mumford and Sons
2. Florence and The Machine
3. Bruce Springsteen
4. Sara Bareilles
5. Blink 182
6. Wagon Wheel by Old Crow Medicine Show
7. Epiphany by Staind

In a move away from the music you normally get from me, I also want to include a song from one of my favorite musicals. I love stories and music, so musical stories seem like a wonderful combination. It’s hard to pick even one song from a musical, there are so many good choices. But I’m adding Dance of the Robe from Aida. The story itself is about making a choice between the love of a lifetime and the future of Aida’s people. This song is so amazing, it illustrates her internal debate and fear and anger. She’s a powerful character. 

I’ve become a fan of a group called The Vaccines, and they have a number of songs I love, but the one I wouldn’t want to live without is Wetsuit. 

1. Mumford and Sons
2. Florence and The Machine
3. Bruce Springsteen
4. Sara Bareilles
5. Blink 182
6. Wagon Wheel by Old Crow Medicine Show
7. Epiphany by Staind
8. Dance of the Robe from Aida
9. Wetsuit by The Vaccines

So now, down to one last free pick. There are so many choices. I could go with any number of 80’s songs, I have a great love for 80’s music (both pop and rock). Listen to Your Heart by Roxette, I Hate Myself for Loving You by Joan Jett and The Blackhearts, Love is a Battlefield by Pat Benatar. Or I could go with some of the songs that make me feel nostalgic. Electable (Give it Up) by Jimmy Eat World, Brick by Boring Brick by Paramore, Terrible Things by Mayday Parade, Hallelujah by Leonard Cohen.

Another surprising addition to my list could be a Taylor Swift song. Say what you want, but she has some decent lyrics. There are a couple of songs of hers that really make me…feel. The first being White Horse and the second being I Almost Do. But then I find myself comparing these two choices to some Christina Perry songs that I really feel could have been written for me. The Lonely and Jar of Hearts for example. 

But in the end I have to go with a song that always fills me with a strange sense of longing.

1. Mumford and Sons
2. Florence and The Machine
3. <span style="font-family: Ar

ial;”>Bruce Springsteen

Sara Bareilles

Blink 182

Wagon Wheel by Old Crow Medicine Show

Epiphany by Staind

Dance of the Robe from Aida

Wetsuit by The Vaccines

Antonia by Motion City Soundtrack

I want a love like he talks about. Silly and sweet, thick and thin. He sings about silly things that must be inside jokes "she’s the pizza of my eye" but then talks about serious things too. "She fainted on the kitchen floor when her father passed away, our baby girl is due this May, and when the little lady grows up I hope that she will be just like her mother."

Ok, so that covers the 5 randoms. What about 1 – 5? I can’t cheat and list bands, that’s not fair at all.

1. Mumford and Sons

I have loved pretty much everything that I’ve ever heard from this group. Even the little fun album with ethnic singers and old Irish folk songs. When it comes on my ipod at work I get a lot of strange looks, but I love it. White Blank Page is one of my favorites. The opening verse leads this whole balance between the good and the bad of you idea. "Can you lie next to her and give her your love, as well as your body? Can you lie next to her and confess your love as well as your folly?" Slight paraphrasing, but that’s the message of it. You can’t make a relationship work if you don’t give all of yourself to it.

Bable, Awake my Soul, Reminder, The Cave, Hold on to What You Believe and Hopeless Wanderer are all on my list of songs that hit me all the way into my core.

But the one that’s gonna be on my list is Timshel, "And death is at your doorstep. And it will steal your innocence, but it will not steal your substance." Sure I over think things, and I read more into literature and music than might have been intended. But sometimes it’s not about what the author meant to convey but what it makes you feel. I feel like this song is sort of a reminder to live to your fullest. That when you die, the truth of who you are and what you stand for is what you leave behind. You should make it worth leaving behind. 

2. Florence and The Machine

I can listen to any of her songs, but I do have some favorites. For me, when she’s got it…she knocks it out of the park. The rhythm of The Drumming Song is amazing, she actually pounded it out with her hands on the walls of the studio to figure out how she wanted it to sound. If you ever watch her perform, she’s fully invested in her music. She feels the songs down in her soul, and that depth of passion is something you can feel from her. 

Cosmic Love is brilliant. Hurricane Drunk is the rock bottom you sometimes find yourself in. Her cover of Addicted to Love makes me want to close my eyes and just listen. Only if for a Night, Never Let Me Go, and Breath of Life….I’m not even scratching the surface of what I love from Florence and The Machine.

The choice for what one to put on the list is between Seven Devils, Bedroom Hymns, Shake it Out, and What the Water Gave Me. The thing that’s really impressive about those choices, and all her music in general, is that the songs are so varied. So very different from each other. Each of her songs is clearly her, but they don’t all sound the same.  It’s so different, and that impresses me.

I listened to each of them a couple of times, laying on my bed with my eyes closed. Just feeling. And if I have to pick just one, it would have to be Seven Devils. 

One of the other things I get passionate about is storytelling. I say it in general, but in practice I most often do this through online play by post versions of World of Darkness games. And I got my start with this through a site that really enhanced my knowledge of this system and improved my creative writing skills, but it also gave me some lasting relationships with people who share those interests. 

This song makes me think of one of my favorite character/story lines from that time, and that’s a good memory.

3. Bruce Springsteen

In terms of lyrics and songs that make me feel, or seem like they apply to me, The Boss is…well…The Boss. But how do you pick just one? Man’s Job isn’t the sexist traditional gender rolls song the title might make you think it is, he’s telling the woman that she should expect a mature man. Not a boy. It’s one of those "you deserve better than him." type of songs. But the line that gets me is toward the end where he mentions that getting up the nerve to talk to her is a man’s job. But the song has no ‘happy ending.’ It leaves you assuming, at least it left me assuming, that he didn’t get the up courage. A sort of ‘no one’s perfect’ thing, or a ‘you deserve better than him, and I want to give you all of me but you deserve better than me too.’ Sort of unassuming. 

I overthink things. 

What about Human Touch? I Wanna Marry You? Or how about the verse in A Good Man is Hard to Find, " Well once she had a fella, once she was somebody’s girl, and she gave all she had that one last time, now there’s a little girl asleep in the back room, she’s gonna have to tell about the meanness in thi

s world, and how a good man is so hard to find."

Tell me that isn’t something I can relate to…

"You’re born into this life paying, for the sins of somebody else’s past" From Adam Raised a Cain. "Spend your life waiting, for a moment that just don’t come, , Well, don’t waste your time waiting." from Badlands.

Dancing in the Dark, Darkness at the Edge of Town, Glory Days, I’m Goin Down…

There are so many Springsteen songs I would want to keep, but if the option is to keep one…how do I pick? I guess it comes down to two. Because the Night and I’m on Fire could both play on repeat for me and I wouldnt mind in the least. I’m on Fire wins in the end.

4. Sara Bareilles

The entire Kaleidoscope Heart album kinda played on repeat during a pretty intense time in my life: the title track alone would be enough to make me want to keep her on this list. . Little Voice has some gems on it too. She just has this quality of voice and sincerity in her lyrics that I can’t escape. From earlier albums you get songs like Gravity and Undertow, Many the Miles and Between the Lines (which I quoted in an earlier blog). I think in her entire discography there are two songs I might skip on itunes.

She gives you songs like Breathe Again, where she talks about the pain of ending a relationship. The looking over your shoulder and wondering if you’ve made the right decision. Because even when you have, sometimes it’s like you’ve ripped your own heart out. But she sings a simple chorus that is a hopeful reminder. "Someday I will breathe again." 

She sings about loving, about losing, about starting over and taking chances. She sings about mistakes in judgment, and moving forward. But the song I have to pick, if I only get one, is Let the Rain, a song about the person she wishes she could be but isn’t. A song about how she wants to wash it all away and try again. Start over. Be better. And that’s what a majority of my blog posts seem to boil down to.

5. Blink 182

This one is a much simpler explanation, and a bit of an overshare. I lost my virginity to a boy I can still say that I love on the basement floor of my parents house while listening to Blink 182’s Miss You. The guy in question, who is still one of my best friends, made a CD for me while I was out of the country with my family. And as young relationships often are, we were pretty caught up in each other. I missed him so much, when I got back he didn’t leave my house for a week. Which made my mom all sorts of uncomfortable. 

It was a mix cd that I didn’t stop listening to that whole summer. It’s still in my collection. I like other Blink songs. I actually probably like some of their other songs better than Miss You, but the memory of that summer and that first love (and first heartbreak) are really important in the overall scheme of who I have become. 

1. Timshel by Mumford and Sons
2. Seven Devils by Florence and The Machine
3. I’m on Fire by Bruce Springsteen
4. Let the Rain by Sara Bareilles
5. I Miss You by Blink 182
6. Wagon Wheel by Old Crow Medicine Show
7. Epiphany by Staind
8. Dance of the Robe from Aida
9. Wetsuit by The Vaccines
10. Antonia by Motion City Soundtrack

 So I did it. I spent hours thinking on this, and typing it all up for you. If you made it through the whole post, I’m impressed.

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