I took all the love songs off of my iPod. Anything to do with yearning, romance, sex, jealousy, or booty-ooty-ooty. I had the idea the other day after yoga, I got into my car and was all relaxed and worn out and hell bent on being in the moment. The first song that popped up on my drive home was “Gay Messiah.” Do you know that one? Rufus Wainwright is a fucking artist, and that song is the least-sentimental vision of Christian love my ears have ever had been blessed to hear. It was perfect.
I think there’s some strange primitive function of consciousness that lures us into setting our dreams to pop music. In high school I listened to “Don’t Stand So Close“* and it completely defined the crush I had on my English teacher. When my boyfriend suddenly stopped calling the following summer I spent the entire vacation lowering my heart into a deep-freeze and lying in the dark on my brother’s old waterbed listening to Ronnie Laws over and over on a busted eight-track machine. (Even if your eight-track isn’t busted you listen to everything over and over again until the batteries die. Technology! It’s what the seventies were made of.)
But I’m over it, I’ve napalmed every last vein of fantasy in my still-beating heart, and if I dream of romance it’s thinking about how much pent-up weeping I’ll finally get to do if Jackson ever gets married and has someone play “Day By Day” for their first dance.
So I CLEARED ALL THE LOVE SONGS OFF MY iPOD and was genuinely surprised I had any songs left at all. It reduced inventory by about half, giving me roughly five kinds of music to listen to now:
1. Civil-rights era empowerment R&B;
2. Alt-country poverty sagas
3. Samba (bonus for lyrics in Portuguese)
4. Angry white rap with left-wing overtones
5. And one song written about an Oliver Sacks book
*I would like to state for the record that I never need to hear any more Police songs as long as I live. They have saturated my very consciousness, and that goes for Blondie, Elton John, the Rolling Stones, and DOUBLE for the Beatles. And if anybody tries to play any of that shit at my funeral, my ashes will climb out of my urn and make sure you will need a half-pint of Visine just to get out of bed the next day.
What was the Oliver Sacks song?
Clearing all the love songs off of an iPod is, in my mind, a very bold move. Sure, you’re trying to keep you sanity and your expectations in check; but OMG, I shudder to think what I’d have left…. probably just Prince’s “My name is Prince, and I am Funky”.
Jules
House of Jules
seriously…you’ve got to enlighten us about the oliver sacks song.
Eden you rock my world! Rufus is unbelievable!
Ah, jeez, it’s this Throwing Muses song, “Hook in Her Head”? I read that Kristin Hersch wrote it after reading “The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat” but I have no Google evidence to support that now.
“I’m taking all the love songs/off my iPod” sounds like a lyric its own self. You’re sangin the blues.
I understand wanting to get rid of songs about yearning, but can’t there be love songs that are in the moment? I might try taking any song that isn’t about NOW off my list.
Also, though I love Gay Messiah, I sort of think it’s very much a song about yearning and love. Yet I don’t want you to take it off your iPod.
I therefore conclude that you have to revise your thoughts somewhat on this matter.
also: Anybody at your funeral will need at least half-pint of Visine to get out of bed the next day. I assume that’s because you’ll be dead, but also because clearly they’ll be playing Wainwright’s Hallelujah.
I never knew “Hook in Her Head” was inspired by The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat. Now I have to go listen to that song.
I think if I dumped all the love songs off my iPod, I’d be left with some Public Enemy and maybe The Shagg’s “My Pal Foot Foot,” unless you consider it a love song to a cat.
Oh no….does this mean you have purged Amy Winehouse from your iPod? You love her!
Man, have I ever got four albums’ worth of science songs from the ’50s for you. I mean, now that you’ve got the extra room.
I made a list about music today too! Oops except today isn’t the day you posted this.
I still really enjoyed this post.
Awesome. I don’t think I could get rid of any of my love or longing music, I’m too much a melodramatic drama queen, but I completely get you with the nostalgia. Lately I find an almost professional need to dredge up all that fun roller-coaster-y goodness of teenage angst (I’m doing a project, not regressing, I promise!) and have scowered my old mixed tapes. There’s a really good one from 1997-98.
how very un-devastationalist of you!
i’m inspired.
I Love Rufus! My high school song that was on continuous play on my 45 record player, after Keith Bruck was supposed to call after we made out at the park the night before, and then he didn’t…….torture……was Asia’s – Only Time Will Tell. How do we recover from such tragedy?
I’ve been absolutely obsessed with Rasputina’s “1816: The Year Without a Summer” lately. If you feel short on music, I highly reccommend it. It’s not a love song, plus it’s got history in it. And vast Freemason conspiracies!
Well, one vast Freemason conspiracy. And it turns out it was a volcano’s fault.
Even though you’re purging all love songs and Beatles songs from your consciousness I still think ‘Don’t Let Me Down’ by the Beatles would be the perfect first dance song at a wedding.
Next time.
That ashes in the eyes thing is the sweetest revenge fantasy I’ve read in quite awhile.
I still pine for, and then must listen to, cigarettes and chocolate milk. and that one about the art teacher.
Per the title of your post, I love that song. Or rather I LOVED it. It’s kind of depressing now that I’m not an angsty teen/angsty collegian. As for the Stones, Beatles, Police, Elton John et al… I feel much the same. NO MOARRRRRRRR!
Oh, those Beatles songs. I take them in waves, but I don’t think they’d ever be gone off my iPod for good.
Oh! Visine! NOT Vaseline. God, that makes so much more sense to me now…
fucking new glasses…
I “appreciate” Rufus, but I don’t get him. I admit, I’m a creature of pop culture, and I like my songs to resolve themselves somewhere along the way. And his stuff just doesn’t seem to go anywhere.
And while I love Elton John more than life itself, I too, am over him. And I never thought I’d write those words.