Part 1: That’s Fucked Up to Ask Me for My Top 10 Songs (From Childhood)
The Brothers Koren invited us to explore our Musical Cosmology at the beginning of their nine-month Songwriter’s Journey. To co-create a song together, they needed to know which songs got us singing for the first time, which songs formed our love for music, and which songs inspired us to this day. We were expected to provide: 10 favorite songs from our childhood; 10 essential songs from our adulthood; and 5 songs that would go on an EP we wish we created.
This was no easy assignment. Impossible, in fact. It angered me. I mean, COME ON! How’re you gonna ask a sound-obsessed, music worshiping human to whittle down a lifetime of crushes and love affairs with songs into a one-page document? I imagined the feelings of betrayal songs 26 through infinity would feel.
I handed this assignment in late, by about 6-months. I had good reason. Here’s why.
Phase 1
I stubbornly ignored the assignment for as long as possible while subconsciously analyzing the potential of every song I heard. Eventually, I began jotting down notes in random places.
Phase 2
I gathered my notes, which took a while. There were notes stored in my subconscious, scribbled in journals, on my phone, in numerous Word documents, and saved across four Spotify and two YouTube playlists. Then, I entered this data into a spreadsheet.
Phase 3
Next, I created a rubric that I used to score the 100 + songs that I had compiled. It was a set of questions that acted as a flow chart for my editing process. Example questions - Did this song hit me hard upon first listen? If yes, then did it remain a constant companion throughout my life? If yes, then am I unable to turn the song off until it’s completely finished?
Phase 4
I chose my ten songs from childhood (how dare you) and edited that list again, and again, and again. The night before I was to meet for a 1:1 with the Brothers, I accepted defeat, and turned the assignment in.
Of course, it wasn’t just a list of 10 songs. These songs deserved way more than ten lines on a Word document. To have even made it this far, each song went through rigorous interviews, portfolio reviews, and bikini contests. Their stories deserved to be heard, so I began writing a bit about the impact of each song in my life.
Without further ado, I present to you, my motherfucking, goddamn list of Top 10 Songs from My Childhood:
01.
Peter, Paul, and Mary – A Soalin’
Simply, this song embodies the comfort of my mother’s arms. She sang A Soalin’ to me as a baby and young child, holding me in her rocking chair. I loved how ancient the melody sounded and how foreign the words were. I sang this song to my own children as well, learning that souling originated in the British Isles, as a medieval practice of handing out small cakes to beggars on Halloween or All Saints Day, and once eaten, was said to release souls of those trapped in Purgatory. One day, I heard my little five-year-old singing, “Soul cake, Soul cake, sshhhfaaf aaaskaa soul cake.”
02.
Blondie – Rapture
In late 1980/early ‘81, my dad made a mixed tape called “Children’s Music” for our new Reliant K car which had a tape deck, woo hoo! It was eclectic as fuck, partially because he was bipolar, but also because he was super rad. It had some wild music on it - Chick Corea, Joni Mitchell, Yoko Ono, Herbie Hancock, Steely Dan, Kiss, and Blondie. Mixed in were some other songs that were debatably “children’s music” like A Spoonful of Sugar and some Goofy Gold classics like Beep Beep, Yakety Yak and Hello Muddah! Hello Fadduh!
My dad came from a family of piano players and had a broad love for music particularly jazz, soul, and R&B. He was a childhood prodigy on the piano. While other kids were outside playing baseball, he was playing piano for hours each day, for years. At 14, he heard experimental jazz (around 1955) and he says his life changed on the spot and he never played classical piano again.
Rapture remains groundbreaking for me til this day and is perhaps the earliest example of my love of mixing genres with sultry vocals, a dope beat, hip hop, rap, rock and disco.
03.
Dexy’s Midnight Runners –
Come on Eileen
One of my favorite songs of all time. It’s on my Funeral Mix. I have a life goal to learn this song on the banjo. My personal style was highly influenced by their outfits, and I still bring my overall game pretty hard, thanks to them. I was kind of a moody kid. When this song came on the radio, I remember trying so hard to hold onto my crankiness, but eventually the banjo whisked me away and I couldn’t stop my feet from doing some kind of Irish toe tapping and I’d sing my little self into utter joy.
04.
Tears for Fears –
The Working Hour
When I turned 11, I got two albums that changed my life- Songs from the Big Chair and WHAM! Make it Big. I recorded them back-to-back on a cassette tape and learned every lyric, note, and sound while listening at night on my Walkman until I fell asleep. I learned a lot about music from Songs from the Big Chair. The whole album is my favorite song however, The Working Hour just nudges ahead of my next favorite - I Believe>Broken>Head Over Heels/Broken>Listen. Yes, I’m making believe those four songs are one, but I consider it a disservice to humanity to pull one song out of that lineup.
I spend an unusual amount of time thinking about this album. It may have been the first album that dropped me into an altered state. The spaces of silence in this album are gifts, the way negative space in a photograph can create its own unintentional beauty. Did Roland and Curt understand back then how EPIC and IMPORTANT these songs were as they were creating them? How are we so lucky that we get to exist alongside this album in our lifetime?
05.
King Crimson –
Larks’ Tongues in Aspic
The whole album is a work of art. It was a perfect soundtrack for my tweens and early teen years. This song is bonkers in the best way with a great opportunity for headbanging at 3:41. This album wasn’t where I lost my musical virginity, but it was close (see Sonic Youth below).
In middle school, I took Amtrak from NYC to Connecticut by myself (kind of a big journey alone), and this album was on heavy rotation on my CD Walkman. To this day, I remember the excitement of having this soundtrack and Fripp’s voice as my companion. It was fuel for my daydreams as we zoomed through winter forests, and I watched sunlight stream through the trees onto the snow. It was freedom to escape New York City and not something that happened often. What a gift to have so deeply loved this album at that young age, as it informed my definition of genius and heavily influenced what I gravitated to later on like math rock, metal, experimental, etc. This album also gave me an appreciation for mashing up genres, something I would go on to love and eventually strive for in my own music.
06.
The Cure – A Forest
I was a huge Cure fan (until Disintegration album), but I was like, inconsolably in love with them. I saw them with Love and Rockets and Public Image Limited. I jumped the fence into general seating to get closer to the stage, with a cute boy who took my hand as security chased us and Robert Smith sang… great memory of being free and rebellious and fourteen!
07.
King Pleasure – Moody’s Mood for Love
This was my mom and dad’s song. I have fond memories of my mom singing this song. It’s weird when one day, as an adult you hear songs from your childhood that you never listened to on your own, and all the words to every line fall out of your mouth like magic. As you sing every song perfectly, you’re actually saying to yourself, I have no idea what words are going to come out next, yet out they come through no volition of your own! That’s this song. And every Steely Dan song.
08.
Sonic Youth – (She’s in A) Bad Mood / Confusion is Sex (album)
My brother’s best friend, a metalhead named Herbie, handed me this album, shaking his head like, I couldn’t, but you might!
Confusion is Sex changed E V E R Y T H I N G. I went from young, innocent teen to full-fledged seeker of loud, post-punk, experimental and indie noise. Up until that point, I just didn’t know you could do what Sonic Youth was doing. Strip it all down, break it all to hell, get ugly, leave it raw, and somehow still manage beauty in the dissonance! Confusion is Sex was pure beautiful madness, whereas even the punk and hardcore my brother listened to followed a song structure. There was so much freedom in the noise including creative liberation, permission to reject the rules, the masses, the status quo and most of society, which was kind of my thing back then. It was an education, a rite of passage, a revelation, a loss of innocence. Even despite not being a fan of Kim Gordon’s voice, Sonic Youth continued to be a terribly important band for me over their many albums and through the decades.
09.
Jane’s Addiction – Summertime Rolls
These are my dudes. A perfect song on a perfect album. My mom knew the extent of my love for them. I stayed with my mom when I first moved to Kentucky. One evening after midnight, she knocked on the door where her adult daughter and two grandkids were sleeping and whispered in her cute little voice, “Mc Caren, Jane’s Addiction is on the late night show”. Naturally, I woke up and sat on the edge of her bed and we watched them together, as we did when I was in high school.
10.
Sinead – Troy
Troy is simple and powerful. I learned so much singing Sinead’s first album when it came out. There are certain albums I would learn back and front, and if in my key, the songs came with me for a lifetime of singing in empty stairwells, under bridges, echo-y canyons, subway stations and showers.
