srah blah blah

1. The Ballad of Peter Pumpkinhead - Crash Test Dummies
   I pretty much started this tracklist in 1998 rather than 1997, because I started college in 1998. It seemed like a good beginning point for the CD. This one comes before the next one, because you can't have a song that says "Let's begin" as the second track of a CD. It's a rule.
2. All I Want - Toad the Wet Sprocket
   I loved (and still love) the alliteration in the line "The air outside's so soft, confessing everything." I think this one might date back to high school but the first time it makes an appearance on one of my mix tapes is college.
3. I Love You - Sarah McLachlan
   There are at least two album versions of this song out there. I really like this one and I don't like the other one. I could never remember which one was which, because my roommate had both CDs. So, speaking of Roommate, we must be at least into the 1999-2000 school year by now.
4. Someone To Watch Over Me - Jodi Benson
   This is from the Crazy for You soundtrack, which I first discovered through Bob. This has been one of my favorite songs since that little attempted-homewrecker sang it to Mr Holland. Unfortunately, that version has never been released on CD, that I know of. I went for several years without finding a version I liked as much as that one. This was almost as good. This must also be from somewhere in 1999-2000.
5. Couleur Café - Serge Gainsbourg
   Off I went to France in 2000-01, where I discovered Gainsbourg and all his double entendres and naughty lyrics. He needed some representation on this list, and it probably could have been anything, but this is one of my favorites.
6. Sensualité - Axelle Red
   Sensualité, along with Forever in Blue Jeans, could probably compete for Song That I Have Included on the Most Mix Tapes. Discovered in France in 2000-01, but a perpetual favorite and usually liked even by those who can't understand the lyrics.
7. At the River (Radio Edit) - Groove Armada
   While I was in France, John Hannah's film Pandaemonium came out, in which he played William Wordsworth to Linus Roache's Coleridge. I probably should have become obsessed with Wordsworth, but... his poetry is about daffodils and stuff, whereas Coleridge's is full of exotic and dramatic stuff about Xanadu. So far this has nothing to do with the song, but the truth is, it has nothing to do with the song at all. The first time I heard At the River, I thought the line "If you're fond of sand dunes" was "If you're fond of Xanadu." Which I was. So I went out and bought the single, and then discovered I had the lyrics wrong. But I still like the song and I remember listening to it over and over again when I was in France.
8. Unsent - Alanis Morissette
   Now we're back at Albion for the 2001-02 school year (my senior year in college). I know this, because Unsent was sort of Roommate's and my anthem for the year. That's not to say that the song had anything to do with our lives, but we were just fascinated with the number of syllables that Alanis could shove into one line ("You've been nothing but open-hearted and emotionally available and supportive and nurturing and consummately there for me") and the fact that she used the words "tumultuous" and "muchly" in a pop song. Dear Marco, you rock my world. Who was Marco? I don't even remember, but we used to sing that about him.
9. Female of the Species - Space
   I really don't know why this ended up so far down in the CD, but it did. I first discovered this song in The Matchmaker. I suppose I rediscovered it when it was used in Austin Powers. Except it seems Austin Powers and The Matchmaker both came out in 1997. So I have no idea why I was putting it on mix tapes/CDs in 2001-02, except that maybe it took me a while to obtain the original non-Powersed version of the song.
10. Haunted - Sinead O'Connor & Shane McGowan
    Another song inspired by The Matchmaker! Either I was really into four-year-old movies back then or (and this is probably the case) I had just discovered the world of mp3 sharing. This is more likely. The Matchmaker never had an official soundtrack released, so in 2001-02 I was probably putting together my own through files I had obtained in various nefarious ways. Whee, that rhymes.
11. Karma Police - Radiohead
    I didn't know where to put Karma Police in, because it seems like it has always been my favorite song for singing along with in the car when no one's around. So here it is, plopped into the middle of the list. I'm sure I discovered it somewhere in the last ten years, and even if I discovered it earlier, it's still one of my favorite songs of the last ten years.
12. Comfortable - John Mayer
    I think this is another mp3 discovery. My guess is that it's from 2002 or so. I like the sentiment.
13. Unemployed Boyfriend - Everclear
    

    This is gonna sound a little obsessive...
    
    No kidding.
    
    She hadn't been able to get those words out of her head, not just because of what they had heralded, or even the fact that they were an appropriate commentary on most of her actions and thought processes since. There was something else: they were naggingly familiar, even the way he'd spoken them. He was quoting, she decided, some American movie she must have seen a dozen times, but she was buggered if she could remember which one. Further confusing her, she was sure it was a woman's voice that she could hear speaking when she tried to recall. It would come to her eventually, she reckoned; it was unlikely to be of any great import, but neither would it stop repeating until she'd nailed it.
    
    - The Sacred Art of Stealing, Christopher Brookmyre

    It turns out that what de Xavia is remembering is not a movie, but Everclear's Unemployed Boyfriend. The book has a dedication (debt of inspiration) to Art Alexakis of Everclear, too. So I got caught up in de Xavia's curiosity about the line and had to discover it for myself.
14. The Air That I Breathe - The Hollies
    I don't really have a story for this one. It's just a pretty song.
15. You're My Best Friend - Queen
    Same.
16. Forever in Blue Jeans - Neil Diamond
    I think that my obsession with Neil Diamond stems back to a road trip I took in 2003 where we forgot to bring along any CDs, so we had to choose between the radio or Cheryl's dad's 3-CD Best of Neil Diamond set. We listened to a lot of Neil Diamond on that trip.
17. America - Simon & Garfunkel
    Any time I am out of Michigan (studying/working in France, on a road trip, living in Ohio) this song has an emotional reaction from me, when they sing that "Michigan seems like a dream to me now." On the 2003 road trip, we also tried to count the cars on the New Jersey turnpike, but there were an awful lot of them.
18. Sens - Mathieu Boogaerts
    This is another French (actually Belgian, but in French) song that makes it onto a lot of my mix CDs.
19. Man, It's So Loud In Here - They Might Be Giants
    TMBG probably would have fit in better in the college era of this CD, but I like this song better than anything that came out while I was in college.
20. Time For Livin' - The Association
    Now we're up to 2005, when I complained about how Circuit City didn't have any CDs by The Association and one of my readers/classmates lent me a copy of his. I was previously familiar with Windy, Cherish, Never My Love and Along Comes Mary and it wasn't until I tried out the Greatest Hits CD that I discovered Time for Livin', which has held the position as My Favorite Oldies Song for several years now. I always try to request it when oldies stations open up their request lines, just to see if they have it in their collection. They hardly ever do.
21. Mushaboom (demo) - Feist
    This is also sort of related to my blog, because I sent a question out into the void in early 2006 and it was answered by my readers. And now it's in my tagline.

And that's it! Anything more recent hasn't had time to become a "classic" yet and I don't know which songs I'm listening to right now will have the staying power that these songs have had.

I can't wait for Volume 2!