An unwieldy title, but the basic question is: What songs have become so associated with a negative event in your life that whenever you hear them, even years later, you can’t help but feel sad?
Mine is “How Do I Live” by Trisha Yearwood/Leann Rimes, from the Con Air soundtrack. The year that movie came out, a classmate of mine died from a gunshot wound to the chest resulting from an accident in making a Coke bottle silencer. They played that song at his funeral. I didn’t know him well, but many others did, and I’m the kind of person that can take on sadness osmotically.
3 doors down Kryptonite… they use to make us work out till we puked to that song in the police academy i was in… if it comes on the radio i immediately change it… still makes me ill lol
My friends wife has a similarly illogical reaction to “takes my breath away” by Berlin… lol
Back n 1965, as a ten year old, I hear the Lover’s Concerto (performed by the Toys, based on a Bach composition) for the first time.
That same day, I saw The Pit and the Pendulum, with Vincent Price.
I’ve always associated the two together; one so enchanting, and the other so gothic and horrifying to my impressionable 5th grade mind.
I don’t know that the song is precisely ruined, but I can’t hear it without seeing that pendulum lowering itself.:eek:
I had a boyfriend in college who was a big fan of Guns n’ Roses. The night he dumped me, I walked away in tears and put on my Walkman to try and calm down. What song comes on the radio as soon as I turn it on? Yup, November Rain by Guns n’ Roses. I still get depressed every time I hear it on the radio.
Also, I can’t listen to the Cure’s * Love Song* anymore since my kid’s father and I split up. Whenever we heard it, we would drop whatever we were doing and start dancing. Now that song is ruined for me. Thanks a lot, guy (yeah, that’s what I call him). He also unintentionally ruined most of Elvis Costello’s songs for me, because we’re both fans and would go see him whenever he was in town and we could afford it.
“Still the One” by Orleans. My first wife and I called it “our song.” When we broke up, I couldn’t listen to it for years (it wasn’t just for that reason, but also because it referred to staying together for many years. We also saw Orleans perform it live). Eventually, though, I got over it when I realized it now applied to my wife now.
And then there is “Singing In The Rain” which has been ruined for me ever since I saw **A Clockwork Orange **in which the main character kicks someone to death while singing the song, delivering an especially hard kick whenever he says “rain.”
“Superman” by R.E.M. It’s a decent song, but then I read a vivid article about how it was playing in the background of a video that Paul Bernardo and Karla Holmolka made while they were torturing and killing one of their victims. Somehow the lyrics “I am Superman/and I can do anything” didn’t sound so uplifting anymore.
Interesting. A friend of mine once said that what made A Clockwork Orange all better for her was hearing “Singin’ in the Rain” over the end credits. She said the song wiped out the bad feeling.
“We Didn’t Start the Fire”, by Billy Joel. I used that on my stereo as an alarm clock for a couple years, and now I associate it with having to get up to go to high school. Yuck.
I can’t listen to Depeche Mode’s “A Pain That I’m Used To” because it reminds me of the time I was a horrible bitch to my roommate and insisted on playing it in the car even though I knew she had a bad headache (it opens with some really obnoxious sounds). Hearing the intro to that song makes me feel really ashamed of myself.
About six months after Snow by Spock’s Beard was released, my cousin’s 22-year-old son died. A month or so later, while listening to the album, the final track really leaped out at me - the lyrics totally stuck me as the way a parent would feel about their child, my cousin in particular. To this day I can’t listen to this song without tearing up… but in a good way, remembering my cousin (who passed away a year later) and his son.
Huh, last Sunday in the supermarket, Sara by Fleetwood Mac was playing in the background and though I THOUGHT I’d become immune to it (after a bad, sad breakup 20 years ago; couldn’t bear to listen to it for years) - after all this time it socked me right in the gut. Teared up right there in the paper goods aisle, I did. Funny, after all that time, to hear it and be taken right back 20 years to heartbreak.
I can’t stand to hear ‘Can’t Fight This Feeling’ by REO Speedwagon. It was an ‘our song’ thing with an ex-boyfriend and now it just gives me the creeps when I hear it start to play. The advantage is that now, 20-odd years later, I realize it’s a crappy song, too, so I don’t regret not listening to it.
A little different…My wife became very fond of the song “Cold and Broken Alleluia,” if I have the name right, and listened to it any number of times over a couple of months. I liked it okay, not as much as she did, but okay – liked the King David reference.
Then I had ear surgery and had a terrible time waking up from the anesthetic. For way too many hours I lay there feeling horrible. (Somebody asked me later, “If you’d been told you’d feel that way for the rest of your life, would you have committed suicide?” My unhesitating answer was YES.) Throughout, THAT SONG was going through my head. I do not EVER wish to listen to it again.