The Favourites

ISSUE #43

Let me pretend it's still my birthday, though it was actually on Wednesday (Feb. 20, for you calendar freaks out there). For a long time I've wanted to send out a playlist of my very favorite songs, unrestricted by any theme except that of self-indulgence. It will help lay some ground-work for the point-of-view I can never fully remove from a project of curation such as this, and I can't think of a better time than now. Also, I wanted to give myself something easy this week [Ed. Note: it wasn't that easy].

Every Earwyrms is obviously biased, filtered through a kaleidoscope of two major colors: songs I know, and songs I like. As much as I posture, I barely know many songs at all; and, though I like many genres, I sprouted from the wreckage of rock-and-roll, so a lot of times I skew towards guitars and drum kits. I wanted to spend some time analyzing my preferences, because I think if you know the make-up of my personal canon, you'll have a few grains of salt to use when I send you, say, Party Songs to Comfortably Cry To (I'm spit-balling here).

Favorite songs change all the time, of course. I have a new version of this playlist every year, and there's a pang of regret every time I have to put another song aside for the moment. Some songs just don't do it for you forever; others hurt too much to listen to now (sorry, "All My Friends"). Some have stuck with me a long time, the oldest being either Elliott Smith's "Angeles" or Death Cab's "Expo '86," both from the mixed-CD days of middle school. The rest line up to when I came of age, a lot of 2009-2015, when my brain was shedding identities so often that what I was listening to usually dictated whether I was feeling more Jekyll or Hyde.

I'm surprised at how many songs still give me shivers—the ones that you feel like you wrote yourself. Listening to them feels like a déjà vu of sorts, a trip into another life that was yours but you're just hearing about for the first time, like your soul was split at birth and the other side wrote a melody to find you again. These are the songs that seem to match the beat of my own heart, and, seeing them all together, my heart must have two modes: either fight-songs or whispered laments; rousing death-anthems or gentle dirges. My personality is less fight-or-die—more freewheel-and-die—but I was still born to think a howling guitar can say something your vocal chords never could (re: "Learned to Surf," "The Fight is Over," "A More Perfect Union," "Everybody Wants to Love You," and on and on and on). I like also 'em long and steady: as much as I love to dance, when it comes to personal listening, I tend to go with a straightforward rhythm, a wall-of-sound I can ride to the end-of-the-line, allowing my mind to wander.

I swore I'd keep this short so I could just enjoy the day, but get me started on something I like and I'm not gonna stop. If you're a long-time listener, you've naturally heard these come up in other playlists. If you end up loving any of them, I'll be over the (killing) moon; now that you know my taste, I'll be taking recommendations for the rest of time. Oh, and thank you so much for listening—having you guys with me every Friday has really been the best part of my year.