Monday, March 2, 2009

Unruinable.

I can no longer listen to the following:

Devil's Haircut, Beck
The Walk, Imogene Heap
Turtledove, Trip Shakespeare
In Your Wildest Dreams, Reverend Horton Heat
Let's Stay Together, Al Green

All perfectly good songs. All ruined by a tanked relationship, embarrassing memory or, on occasion, the stark realization that it's not that great a song (Which is almost worse than the pains of heart break. I used to love Jonas & Ezekiel by the Indigo Girls...until one lyric hit me the wrong way. It's a ham-fisted line and in one fell swoop, ruined the entire song for me. I tried to muscle through, ignore the final stanza, but to no avail.)

It's a loss when this happens.

But for every post-trauma cast off, there are plenty more that remain untarnished. The following five songs are in the "Unruinable" category. Sure, they have been used to express love or thrall (or some untold reach of my personality), but despite all failed or humiliating outcomes (and bumbling usage in a commercial or movie), they are still, happily, a part of my regular soundtrack.



I Hope that I Don't Fall in Love With You is the one here...but No One Knows I'm Gone is great too...






4 comments:

Anonymous said...

It's because the bird imagery goes just a little too far in Turtledove, isn't it? I just want to say, Pull back, Wankery-90s-Dudes, pull back.

"She has slept alone for days, and she knows I travel for pay." It feels like he's casting himself as some modern day sailor in love with touring college towns while his Brandy stays home pining. I got to the point where I wanted to sock him in the mouth.

I did love me that song when I was 20, though.

I am not Jerry.

rebar said...

Oddly enough, I was just watching "Little Miss Sunshine" the other day and the Sufjan Stevens song came on.

I'm not sure how many films/tv shows have used that song - I immediately think of the trailer to "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind."

It's such a great song...but it seems so oversaturated (at least in the stuff I see), that I keep expecting to get sick of it...and while I still really like it, I am immediately aware of it (more than other cuts in a soundtrack.)

I'm just getting tired of it being the go-to track for indie films.

The man has other songs, folks.
Pretty good ones at that.

sigh.

Jerry said...

I always assumed the narrator of "Turtledove" was a trucker. Could be wrong, though.

Although I think "Toolmaster of Brainerd" is my new favorite Trip Shakespeare song, if only because it helped provide the title of MST3K's "Toolmaster Jef Maynard."

I am not Anonymous.

Tina said...

I just played "I hope that I don't fall in love with you" while I rocked my son to sleep. It doesn't get much better than that.
That song is the essence of my 20 year old self and what I dreamed of my life being... full of heartbreak and beautiful loneliness. Funny that my life has not turned out like that at all, and is actually quite happy, and listening to that song makes me a little sad for that...

 
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