naomikritzer | Song Meme

In the last month or so I've noticed that people have started "tagging" others to respond to memes. I have no idea whether this shift happened ages ago and I just noticed, or if it's a new thing. Anyway, I have been tagged to respond to a song meme by

magentamn, so here goes.

"List five songs that you are currently digging ... it doesn't matter what genre they are from, whether they have words or even if they're any good but they must be songs you're really enjoying right now. Post these instructions, the artist and the song in your blog along with your five songs. Then tag five other people to see what they're listening to."

Now, the interesting thing about this is that this is a meme that I never would have responded to without being tagged, because my tastes in music are embarrassingly pedestrian. How pedestrian? Well, I was disappointed when 104.1 quit being the 80s station. And I've always been kind of a musical loser -- back when I was eleven or so, I went on a Girl Scout campout with another troop and as an after-lights-out getting-to-know-you exercise, the Queen Bee of the other troop announced that we would all give our name, and our favorite band. I desperately wanted to be cool (and even, at that point, listened to the cool-for-my-demographic radio station, Z104, the Madison 80s equivalent of K-Dweeb) but could think of no band names at all. I finally said my favorite band was Starship. Yes, "We Built This City!" Starship. I wish I could pretend that this was because I'd been secretly listening to Jefferson Airplane and was trying to figure out an acceptable-to-80s-teens way of listing them as my favorite band, because that would actually make me cool in a 2005 sort of sense, but no. No, I actually really did like Starship.

Sigh.

Not that I think

magentamn is going to shun me for listing an uncool (or -- worse -- an overly cool) band. Actually, my biggest problem is the same problem I had in 1985 or whenever the campout was -- most of the time, I don't actually know what I'm listening to. At home, I usually let someone else pick the music. In the car, I listen to the radio but I rarely pay all that much attention to what's on. (I've been meaning to write an LJ entry about Molly's discovery of branding, because she's suddenly developed a strong preference for Jack FM -- the new 104 station -- that seems to be based entirely on a fondness for their ads.) Anyway. You can imagine my relief when it occurred to me that my favorite songs lately have almost all been off the Fast Songs for Molly CD that my sister put together as a gift for Molly, which we listen to incessantly because Kiera will start jumping up and down and saying "Oh, Dolly! Oh, Dolly!" whenever she sees any CD, including AOL CDs that I have given her to play with. And this CD was put together by

springbok1, who actually is cool. (She wasn't any cooler than me in the 80s, though -- she was listening to the New Kids on the Block in the 80s. When "Hangin' Tough" got played on the old 104, I will proudly say that I changed the station. I have some standards.)

Er, anyway. On to the meme.

1. New York City by They Might Be Giants.
2. If I Had a Million Dollars by Bare Naked Ladies.
3. Tell My Ma by the Rankin Family.
4. The entire Gladiator soundtrack, which is what I listen to when writing. Over and over and over. Did I forget to mention that particular musical quirk of mine? This is why Ed doesn't try to get me to pick the music more often, he's afraid I'd make him listen to a soundtrack on infinite repeat. My first novel, it was the re-released Jedi soundtrack over and over and over.
5. Separate Ways (Worlds Apart) by Journey (I started out with something else here, then decided that after all that angst I really did need to represent my love for the music I imprinted on as a teen. Even though, bizarrely, I swear I somehow never heard this song until last year or maybe the year before).

Okay, so that's only 3 out of 5 off my sister's custom-made mix.

Now it's my turn to make other people bare their musical souls (though I imagine most of them are probably less neurotic about this whole "my musical tastes are depressingly uncool" thing than me). I tag:

springbok1

probably_lost

malachitefer

joykins1

allochthon