Feeling Lazy Tonight*

*Or, I already thought a lot and typed some stuff, so I’m just going to repost it here.

So my friend Sundie from junior high posted this list on Facebook today that made me kind of sit up and say, ‘Hey, that’s my list!’ (Yeah, I know I was boycotting Facebook, like, a week ago. Shut up.) In lieu of the awkward paraphrase, I’ll just post the actual comments.

Sundie: is wondering... What was your favorite song when you were 5, 10, 15, 20, 25? It's interesting to think about how my music tastes have changed over the years (or have they?) and how the music has changed, or come back around.

Sundie: Here are my answers:
5 (1981) I Love Rock & Roll , Joan Jett
10 (1986) Kiss, Prince
15 (1991) Groove Is in the Heart, Deee-Lite
20 (1996) Who Will Save Your Soul, Jewel
25 (2001) I Try, Macy Gray

[Ed. note: These songs rocked my world! However, in the interest of showing the diversity of those years (or near to those years), I purposely looked for other songs.]

Amy: Man, your list is remarkably close to what I would put. I'm going to have to think and see if I can come up with anything else, but that's dangerously close. :)

Sundie: I had the hardest time with 1986 and 1996. There were so many good artists and good songs those years, but the key for me was to go back in time and remember what I sang along with on the radio the most back then. You and I were always so much alike though. I'm anxious to see what you come up with.

Amy: Ok, here we go.

5 (1980) We Will Rock You (Queen) - we had the 45 record with this and We Are the Champions and because of this, I always still feel funny when I hear the two songs melded into one. In my mind, they're two separate songs that are rarely played together unless you take the time to flip the record. Also listened to a lot of Motown, via my mom.

10 (1985) Girls Just Wanna Have Fun (Cyndi Lauper) and Jump (Van Halen) - tough choice on this one. I remember dancing to both of them tons and tons.

15 (1990) Ice Ice Baby (Vanilla Ice)/Girl You Know (Milli Vanilli) and pretty much anything by New Kids on the Block
1990 was kind of an embarrassing year. Sigh.

20 (1995) Anything by Alanis Morissette or Natalie Merchant - this was early in my angry young female singer phase - good stuff, but in retrospect, a lot of it's pretty whiny. Sigh.

25 (2000) Little Earthquakes (Tori Amos) - this was way past the time this album came out, but I was really obsessed with her for quite a few years there and this was my favorite for a long, long time. Also liked Bjork quite a bit.

30 (2005) Radiohead, Muse, Nine Inch Nails, etc.

Man, that's exhausting. Kind of weird, too, seeing my musical tastes move around so much. A lot of what I listened to over the years was influenced by who I was hanging out with. Now I'm around teenagers, but I refuse to listen to their music. Meh. :)

It’s funny looking at this list. A lot of this music really defined who I was and what was going on in my life at the time. I obviously don’t have everything in there. There was a U2 phase in high school between the 1990 Bad White Guy Rapping obsession and the 1995 Angry White Girl Screaming phase. There’s the very brief country phase I went through when I was very briefly dating a redneck in high school. There’s the Christian Heavy Metal phase I went through (Stryper, anyone?) when I thought I really was holier than, well, everyone else. But it’s interesting to see the strata that are exposed when I do a core test of the bedrock of my musical history.

As a fun side note, it’s always fun to make Robert cringe when I tell him I listened to heavy metal like he did when he was a kid. He’ll be rocking out to some Iron Maiden or something and I’ll say, “Hmm, that sounds kind of like Stryper does.” It’s fun to make his eye twitch. ;p