The Soundtrack Of My Life

Monday comes much too soon.  Every week.  How does that happen?  Ah well, at least I have Listicles to look forward to!  This week's topic was chosen by one of my personal faves, Bruna from Bees With Honey.  She has asked us to come up with our own personal soundtrack - ten songs that tell our story or remind us of different stages during our lives.

Well, at first I thought this was going to be a really difficult listicle to come up with.  But then I started scrolling through my iTunes music, and the memories came flooding back.  Now it's going to be hard to cut the list down to just ten!

So, without further ado, let's take a walk through my life in songs.  Since I want my soundtrack to be at least slightly cool, I'm skipping the Raffi and Anne Murray stage and heading straight for the teen years, when I started making my own decisions about music.  I'm going to try to do this roughly in chronological order.

1.  U2's "Achtung Baby" was one of the first cassette tapes I owned (alright, alright, the very first was Rap Trax 2, but don't tell anyone, okay?).  I can't actually pick just one song so I'm going to include the entire album in my soundtrack.

2.  James Taylor's "Fire and Rain."  This always brings me back to my days at camp, where I spent ten summers of my life and made some of the best memories of my life.

3.  "I Am a Rock (I Am an Island)" by Simon and Garfunkel took me through some of my angsty-filled early teen days, growing up with two households, two different sets of rules and expectations, and a stepmother who was extremely to get along with.

4.  The Tragically Hip.  What Canadian kid who grew up in the 80s and 90s wouldn't have a Hip song on their soundtrack?  Once again, I can't pick just one song.  My soundtrack is looking more and more like it's going to have to be a box set.

5.  "My Sharona" by The Knack.  This one takes me back to my ski team days.  We girls were pretty obsessed with Reality Bites. Right down to re-enacting this scene (repeatedly) at a gas station in Collingwood, Ontario:

  I swear I am not exaggerating.

6.  "Crash" by the Dave Matthews Band.  This one took me from high school through a couple years of university.

7.  In my second year of university, when my posse of girls merged with the Hubs' posse of guys (and funny enough, this merger took place in the "silent study" area of the university library), my roommate and I were about the only ones not living with our parents, so our house became the place for get-togethers.  Many a night was spent belting out the lyrics to Sublime's "What I Got" and "Santeria," using our reading lamp as a makeshift microphone.  Ah, the good ol' days!

8.  The night I, ahem, "expressed my interest" in the Hubs, it was his 21st birthday and he was three sheets to the wind.  The only things he said to me all night were "Do you like Robbie Williams?" and "Are you going to the library tomorrow?"  He also requested Robbie Williams' "Angels" for us to dance to, though I don't recall the D.J. ever playing it.  I guess he had better taste than the Hubs!  Regardless, that song brings back priceless memories of our early courtship days.

9.  If the Hubs and I were to pick one song as "our song" - though we've had a few throughout the course of our twelve year relationship - it would have to be Ben Harper's "Beloved One," which we danced to at our wedding.  Incidentally, my name means "Beloved" or "she who should be loved" in Latin.  It was mean to be, don't you think?

10.  Ever watched the intro to a UFC fight and wondered what YOUR fight song would be?  Okay, maybe that's more common for guys.  But it's something I always daydreamed about.  And I got to live out this dream when I fought in my first (and only) ring fight in 2008.  My fight song? "Move Bitch" by Ludacris.  Yeah, I was all tough.  Until I got knocked out in the the third round.  For the full story, click here.  But I still listen to this song when I want to get the adrenaline flowing and feel like hitting stuff.  (And of course I envision a different ending to that fight every time I listen to this song.)

I don't yet have just one song that represents motherhood or my time as Lilah's mom.  I think maybe it's that I hear our story in almost every song I listen to.  Or maybe it's just that you don't know what song represents a period of time for you until you are looking back on it.