Zombie
by the cranberries
George Michael’s Freedom '90. Playing the minute I got back into the car after leaving court as a legally emancipated minor.
All we have to do
Is take these lies and make them true somehow
All we have to see
Is that I don’t belong to you, and you don’t belong to me
Also, in a similar vein, Madonna’s Human Nature.
And I’m not sorry
It’s human nature
And I’m not sorry
I’m not your bitch, don’t hang your shit on me
Both songs helped me be strong through a very difficult time in my life.
XTC’s Dear God, in the 80’s. I also discovered at the same time the earlier Jethro Tull songs Wind Up and My God. We were an a-religious family in a rural conservative region and we’d spent our lives awkwardly deflecting questions about religion, church, etc. Wide access to media didn’t exist for an adolescent kid struggling with finding his moral center, and to find these songs validating my own inner feelings was a revelation. Not only was I no longer alone, but it felt that I had a loud voice in the media, I wasn’t a freak for being an atheist.
At Seventeen by Janis Ian helped me realize that I wasn’t the only one who felt like a weirdo in a world full of “normal” teenagers.
The small-town eyes will gape at you
In mute surprise when payment due
Exceeds accounts received
At seventeen
True when Ms. Ian wrote it, true in the 80s when I was a teen, and no less true now.
My junior year of high school, I became friends with a boy who turned me on to the Smiths. I was so sad to be discovering them as they were breaking up. I became, and continue to be, a fan of the Smiths and of Morrissey, and one of the high points of the past few, crappy years for me was going to see Morrissey at the Palladium. To this day I can’t listen to Suedehead without thinking of Eric. Dude, wherever you are, I hope you’re OK.
Wilco’s How To Fight Loneliness is pretty important to me, because it’s what introduced me to the band. But when I’m feeling really down, hopeless, etc I listen to a song from the same album Nothingsevergonnastandinmyway Again
Great Lake Swimmers Still helps me rally myself, too.