"Our" Song

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

With almost all of my ex-girlfriends, “we” had a song that recalls each of them to mind whenever I hear it. That “we” is inside quotation marks because I’m positive that when they hear the songs, it does nothing for them, not even a memory of me, but for me, it’s a plunge into pathos, nostalgia, and other Grecian concepts.

My first real girlfriend, for example, from the spring of 1975 through the fall of 1976 used to make fun of Toni Tennille by singing along to the refrain of her big hit, “And who’ll be turnin’ you on? Ah weel, ah weel, ah weel,” which I found rather cute at the time, especially because we weren’t very good for each other, and I rendered it as a promise of everlasting torture, not everlasting attachment: “And who’ll be turning you on a wheel, a wheel? I will.”

But there’s no chance that my ex-GF remembers how charming I found her imitation of Toni Tennille 50 years after we last heard that song together.

Or a much later GF who couldn’t believe that I was ignorant of the group that sang a big hit, or the name of that tune, which was Tears for Fears’ “Everybody Wants to Rule the World.” I knew the chorus, but very little more, and I remember her explaining to me in her living room what a great song it was and was I living under a rock or what? So when I hear it now, as I often do, it recalls her to mind, but I’m sure it was just a blip of an event in her memory.

Or the year I was separated from my fiancée, eventually my ex-wife, I listened to the Rolling Stones’ “Miss You,” as I pondered how much I missed her, and also “Beast of Burden” –those songs, that album, made a huge emotional impression on me, and I can’t hear them now without thinking fondly of my ex-, whom I otherwise never think very fondly about.

Other exes, other songs. It feels strange to share a response with so many women who don’t actually share these memories with me. I feel both attached to them through this music and thoroughly detached from them at the same time.

2

Thanks to my ex-GF in college I can no longer listen to any James Taylor songs. And I thank god for that.

3

Thanks to my ex-wife, I cannot listen to any Grateful Dead.

One of the upsides, I guess!

4

Shortly after we started dating, I was at my gf’s house waiting for her to get ready to go out. She suggested I put on a CD.

I started looking through her music and was amazed to see every cd Tom Waits ever put out. I thought I was the only one who had all of Tom’s tunes. I’m pretty sure that’s when I knew I’d found the perfect partner.

“Our Artist”.

5

My first wife and I had “Still the One” by Orleans. We actually saw them in concert because we loved the song.

When we broke up, I had to leave the room. You see, it’s about celebrating a long-term relationship and it only drove home the fact it ended too soon (her decision).

Years later I realized the song fit my second marriage now. I can listen to it whenever it came on.

6

Maybe watching the title sequence to Get Over It (2001), a single take more than two and a half minutes long, will provide fonder memories of “Love Will Keep Us Together.”

Helpful context: Just before the clip starts, he has been unexpectedly dumped by his girlfriend, who handex him the box of his stuff.

7

THAT WAS GREAT! I’m gonna have to watch this just for the cast.

Our song is “Clair de Lune,” which I tell her means “clear the saloon.” I don’t have an “Our Song.”

A comic strip I love has a couple having drinks at a jazz club and the wife says, They’re kinda playing our song! :laughing:

8

My wife (version 2.0, which is a significant upgrade from version 1.0) and I had a song for our wedding dance. I picked it out and it’s a little corny, but it fit the occasion: At The Beginning, from the animated movie Anastasia. But whenever we hear it on the radio, which isn’t often, she doesn’t make the connection. Which is fine with me.

For version 1.0 our wedding dance song was Chicago’s You’re The Inspiration. It was the one and only song on my second wedding’s Do Not Play list.

Going back to high school, my first love and I had our song. She picked it out: Always and Forever by Heatwave. Whenever I hear it now I’m brought back to fond memories from those years, 1978-1979. Her family welcomed me and I enjoyed family dinners, croquet games in their backyard, Red Sox games at Fenway Park, and even summer vacation camping trips. Fond memories indeed. Her siblings and parents were very kind and generous.

Always and Forever by Heatwave — good times.

9

:notes: Sedaka is back! :musical_note:

10

“Beautiful” by Gordon Lightfoot. And we’ve been married 50 years.

11

“You’re My Favorite Waste of Time”, Marshall. Crenshaw.

12

To fit the theme of “it reminds me of them, but it’s one-sided” …

I had a boyfriend one time that I wasn’t totally into. He had asked me to be his girlfriend and I had told him no, but he talked me into it and I stuck around for a few months while it was the path of least resistance and then left. (I was young, in case it wasn’t obvious from that whole storyline.) John Mayer’s song “Half of My Heart” came out during that time, and it encapsulated my half-hearted attitude towards the relationship so well that it’s always been “our” song.

13

I don’t know if we really have an “Our Song”. But there are songs that have some meaning to our relationship. I first saw my now husband at a dance that a radio station sponsored a week before school started (1976). It would be my first year (sophomore) of high school and his senior year. I asked him to dance. The song was none other than Stairway to Heaven. Which is great for slow dancing in the the beginning but then gets kind of awkward. But we persevered. We didn’t have any contact again until the following spring when we started dating. That summer The Marshall Tucker Band’s Heard it in a Love Song was always on the radio. It was never my favorite song but when I hear it I am always transported in time to summer days at the beach and riding in his GTO. On a certain weekday, one of the dance clubs would have Dry Nights for the teens to go dance. We went to a lot of them and Johnny Rivers’ Slow Dancing was one of our songs to dance to.

14

There are a few songs that my then-girlfriend liked, only some of which I also enjoyed. She really liked Pharell’s “Happy.” I thought it was a crappy song then, and I like it even less ever since we broke up a number of years ago.

15

It’s not really a love song or a happy song but Concrete Blonde’s “Joey” reminds me of my boyfriend and makes me tear up a little bit (yes we’re still together). It’s about loving an alcoholic. Definitely secretly our song.

16

I always think about my husband when I hear the album American Idiot, and its titular song, because we once got into a comically big argument in which he incomprehensibly refused to acknowledge it was about the war in Iraq, specifically, as opposed to war in general. We had that argument in… Oh, 2008 I think.

Ten years later… ten years, I shit you not, he tells me out of the blue, “You know, I’ve been thinking about it and I wanted to say you were right about American Idiot. I have no idea what I was thinking.”

I like to use that story as an illustration of how stubborn he is.

(As for “Our Song” we have three playlists worth, each referencing a specific time in our relationship, but our #1 is Stand By Me.)

17

Chopper: sic balls!

Dammit, my wife wouldn’t let me name our dog Chopper.

18

Our song is, ‘In Spite Of Ourselves’, by John Prine (with Iris DeMent.)

19

The year one of my friends first went off to college (mid-eighties) Bill Withers’ “Ain’t No Sunshine” had a strange resurgence on the radio. I kept having to pull off the road and around corners so people wouldn’t see me crying. He will never know that’s his song, but it always will be.

20

I don’t think you mean an actual “our song” that was special to both of you at the time, one would have been played at your wedding , right? You’re mostly talking about songs that when you hear the song it makes you think of them , possibly for reasons that have little to do with the song itself. You remember one because she made fun of it , another because she explained it to you.

I’m actually wondering how you can be so sure that they hear the song and feel nothing , not even a thought of you. I just heard a song a couple of weeks ago that not only made me think of my 1978 boyfriend, it felt like I was transported back to that time and the place I most often heard it. But the song was nothing special to either of us at the time. It wasn’t my favorite or his favorite or a song that was special to us as a couple. Neither of us made fun of it , we never even had a conversation about it as far as I know. It was just a song that was on the radio all the time for a month or two. But it wouldn’t surprise me at all if he remembered me when he heard that song or most of the other songs that make me think of him. There are some that would surprise me if hearing them made him think of me - but those are the songs I associate with the break-up, not the relationship.