For You
Thought I would do for you as readers - the ultimate act of Gen X love, make you a mixed tape, but since I don’t know you all, have your addresses, know whether or not you use the outmoded Memorex tape, or if the cds I burn for you will play in your player and not be ejected instantly, paper label keeping us forever apart. I will make you a list. I think you can get them on iTunes. This is for you from me. I wish I could play it on a boom box underneath your bedroom window like John Cusack. I hope you like it.
- Sweetness - Jimmy Eat World
The searing emotional cry that begins this song captures my heart in a way that makes me want to smash my 10-speed bike into a night-blooming jasmine bush in Studio City in the middle of the night. I love this band. They came to see me one time when I played Tempe, AZ. We were all just kids then, rock stars in miniature. I wonder if they remember me. I love them. - St. Ides Heaven - Elliott Smith
Could not hear this song after he died because it was the key to my city that he unknowingly held in his back pocket. His softly sad voice on the chorus, “High on amphetamines. the moon is alive. ball breaking. it’ll go around with anyone but it won’t come down for anyone and I won’t come down for anyone.” the chill on your cheeks and you think how deceptively cold the winters here can be and it looks like Christmas lights and cold hands rubbing together waiting for beers at the bar. Everything is glassy and the winter clothes are coming off and the drinks are on us and it seems like for a second it is going to be okay, and it is okay, those elusive moments where alcohol and drugs work to your benefit, that inside the bar, you can see clouds coming from your breath. - Superhero - Garrison Starr
This song wants me to just jump out of my skin and start running, saving babies from burning buildings, returning key loops to the lost and found, breaking up fights in the middle of recess, seeing how large my capacity for oxygen is. I would listen on my player while running through Tompkins Square Park. Sweat would pour from my legs and I was hurting, and I don’t know why, but I could not stop. But in my self destruction, still I felt heroic. My knees were buckling after many decades of abuse, and yet, the song helped me make it to the end and my tears were mixed with my sweat and my love for this song. - Light Bulb Breaking - Elliott Smith
The best song on addiction ever. A siren’s song. Not from a faraway rock, but from stool right next to you, calling you, telling you everything will be fine. “Drink up baby, look at the stars, I’ll kiss you again, between the bars.” The lush sensuality of his voice, the just as alluring sadness pulls you in further.” People you’ve been before that you don’t want around anymore that push shove won’t bend to your will, I’ll keep them still.” Who could resist it? Thank you Elliott, for putting in words what once I could only feel but could never quite articulate. For most artists, there is too much room from the head to the heart to the hand, but with you, it was as if you were all one, playing from all three, head heart hand at once. You are a miracle and a gift to music that will be loved forever. - Don’t Rush Me - Julianna Hatfield
What Gen-X er isn’t in love Julianna? She wants out, just give her a minute. She is mad at her man, and the galling problem of his not wanting her. She is trying to get out without being too dramatic but - “this wound is still bleeding from the promise of more lies.” Don’t write. Don’t call. I am getting over it. I am getting over it. I will let go in good time. - No Myth - Michael Penn
The single most beautiful song ever about Beachwood Canyon. I don’t know that is exactly what it is about, but that is what it feels like it is about. The only Michael Penn song that is inescapable, romantically tragic. The eternal search for the Romeo in black jeans. - A life in the day of Benjamin Andre - Outkkast
The love story of Andre 3000 and Erykah Bayu, so romantic yet pragmatic, like a modern day “Tangled Up in Blue,” some remembrance of a past dalliance, how love changes with chance meetings, the beauty of coincidence, the miracle that we live all in one world. - Funny Honey - Chicago Soundrack
I love this track. I am absolutely devastated by the pixie sexpot played by that Renee Zellewegger. She has such a lovely turn when her Funny Honey disappoints her midsong - and her rage is a multitude of threads, each representing every male disappointing figure in her life. Our poor hubbies, don’t we feel so sorry for them. - Zanzibar - Billy Joel
We went to a place there on Valencia Street when we lived in San Francisco, and I loved Alex then, and he didn’t love me, but I amused him. I loved the dynamic of our relationship. I was his little monkey, crawling all over him, drunk and Lolitified, as I was that young to pull it off. It wasn’t demeaning, or if it was, it hurt him more, as I came off the carnal innocent, surviving only on instinct not knowledge. We did consummate our union much later, several times I believe, but our friendship seemed to be more that we enjoyed. Some bodies don’t fit, no matter how we’d like them to. - Hands Clean - Alanis Morrisette
I love that Alanis. She revisits a painful relationship with clear eyes, clean hands, and he still comes off as an asshole. It is a sad reminder that sometimes love does not choose us, or love does not let us choose who we love, and would we be better off if we had the power to choose? - Roxie’s Suite - Chicago Soundrack
I cannot help myself. There is a transformation from insecure albeit manipulative housewife into a rhinestone fringe flapper dress, rivaled only by the frock worn by Nicole Kidman in “Moulin Rouge.” It is a fantasy sequence, one we all have had in our heads at one point, the dance with the many men in black, hoisting you up, walking on their heads, dripping in diamonds. The permission in the mind given to oneself to be beautiful, a rarity, but a crucial step in becoming a woman.
Wish I was there to sing it to you, to replay a verse missed, to look in your eyes to see how a certain phrase affected you, hold your hands and just listen and love the music. I will make you more in time. This is just the one I made today and it felt good to me and so I wanted to share it with you.