Before he returns it to the video store — look away, FBI agent! —My father playfully taped the credits on his empty VHS for me. It’s still a running joke in my family that her 3-year-old, future music critic, asked her parents to “lethal weapon tapes” so she could listen to this Harrison song over and over again. It is a story that he always asked me to play “.
You can learn a lot about a person by asking them about their first favorite song. It’s like looking at someone’s baby picture. And I thought it was only natural that you would hear some of my news since he sent this newsletter to your inbox twice a week.
Read while listening on Spotify.
1. Cat Stevens: “Moonshadow”
I’m sure someone sang this as a lullaby when I was a baby. And even now, the voice of this artist, once known as Cat Stevens, still gives me supernatural solace. Wraps more than even the heaviest blanket can provide. When I was little my parents gave me his CD player (cutting edge technology). I still remember being taught how to put Cat Stevens: Greatest Hits on the tray. very Cueing up track 8 carefully, it was of course my song “Moonshadow.” (listen on youtube)
2. Tom Petty: “Free Fallin'”
I grew up in New Jersey and hadn’t visited the West Coast until I was in my mid-twenties, so when I was younger, the song’s proper names sounded exquisitely exotic to me: Mulholland, Ventura Boulevard, “Resida.” This indescribably charming oasis called “Free Fallin'” might now be on the shortlist for the most overplayed American rock song of the 20th century, but perhaps the reason I can’t imagine getting tired of it is this song. It means that you can still go back to the time when you heard the lyrics of. It sounded charmingly odd to me, and when I believed it might, actual A vampire that haunts Ventura Boulevard. (Petty also co-wrote “Cheer Down,” and Jeff Lynne helped produce both songs. So the Traveling Wilburys influenced my musical tastes from an early age.) It is clear thatlisten on youtube)
3. U2: “Zoo Station”
Ever since this song was released in late 1991, U2’s wry, Grammy ‘Achtung Baby’ has been an absolute staple of my parents’ steel-blue Ford Taurus. I listened to it over and over again in the backseat and it seemed to contain all the mysteries of the adult world beyond my comprehension.All I knew was that there was a sound nice. And a little scary! On “Achtung Baby,” relatively straight-up rock songs are swayed by the mournful, malfunctioning tape loop at the beginning of “Who’s Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses,” and the eerie distortion of “Until the End of the World.” I am haunted by strange, ghostly sounds. Or the numerous ghost noises lurking throughout the tone setting opener Zoo Station. I later realized that much of this weirdness was the result of Edge’s adventurous spirit with his pedals, and even more indescribably Brian’s highly artistic production of his Eno. (I’m ashamed to say that “women need men like fish need bicycles” is not a funny lyric coined by Bono, but an iconic second-wave feminist slogan. I’m ashamed to find out much later.) No matter what U2 does or how they do, many albums are forced onto my iPhone, but “Achtung Baby”, in a good way, keeps me going. It will always have a special place in my heart as one of the first records that surprised me. (listen on youtube)
