1. You want to thank her for being amazing… both because she is amazing and because you are with a friend who has a stomachache and you are trying to help them barf.
2. You’ve just been arrested and you want to prove that you love her more than freedom. Also, you forgot your lawyer’s phone number.
3. She gave you her number and then asked you to, maybe?
4. You’re in public and there’s a couple having a fight awkwardly close to you.
5. You’re in a cab and the cabbie asks you “Do you go to school in this neighborhood?” It’s becoming clear this cabbie thinks you are not a grown woman, but a 14-year-old boy.
6. Your girlfriend is Tyrone.
7. Your phone rang, but you couldn’t get to it in time. When you pressed *69 your girlfriend’s number came up. Also, it’s the 1980s.
8. You are London and your girlfriend is the faraway town.
9. You’ve used your other two lifelines and Meredith Vieria is staring at you.
10. Your house is teeming with ghosts, ghouls, and spirits, and your girlfriend is a Ghostbuster.
11. It’s also time that you two “had the talk.” But in this case, “the talk” is about how you need more dish soap, and you’re really sorry that you forgot to put it on the list, but you didn’t think she was going to go to the store straight from work. If she had just called you, first, you could have told her, and now she wouldn’t have to go back to the store, and use the piece of sh-t self-service check out register that ALWAYS tells her that ‘the weight is not correct’ just to f-ck with her mind. Moreover, you wouldn’t need to be having this entire dish soap discussion, which is a disproportionally long time to talk about something that doesn’t even have its own scent, because you insist on buying the creepy unscented kind.
12. You’re changing every “i” in your name with “y.”
13. You’re killing time until your next Google+ meet up.
14. It’s not a call; it’s a call of duty, which means you just stare at the phone for hours punching buttons.
15. Your girlfriend works for 311 and there are loose syringes on your sidewalk again.
16. Your girlfriend is addicted to texting and you don’t want to enable her.
17. You are addicted to your own classic merengue ringtone, so you periodically call her and then hang up.
18. You are in the same room, but you are spies.
19. You are in the same room, but you are bored.
20. You are in the same room, but you are spies who got bored.
21. You want to let her know that you do not plan on having any kind of talk with her any time soon. Robyn can’t push you around. Eff you, Robyn! Just kidding, Robyn, you can hang with me.
22. This is a horror movie, you are deranged, and you’re inside the house!
23. You wanted to let her know that earlier, when she wasn’t there, you just called to say you love her. But you’re not going to say it on this call; this is just the call to inform her of your intentions when you made the first call. This is purely a notification — James Taylor-style.
24. She just paged you. Also, you’re a doctor or a drug dealer in the 1990s.
25. You are a professional football coach on the sidelines and she is the defensive coordinator in the pressbox. Here’s hoping your linebackers manage to drop into pass coverage.
26. Your girlfriend is Debbie Harry.

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1.”Gymnopedie No. 1″ by Erik Satie

It’s important to start your bedtime playlist with a song by an old dead white guy. I first heard this particular Erik Satie song in that Angelina Jolie movie, Gia. Now I’m not sure if it’s because I was on enough muscle relaxers to tranquilize a baby elephant or if this song was really that chill but I recall sleeping like a baby that night. Unfortunately, I forgot all about the song and its amazing sleeping powers until I heard it in a hipster clothing store years later. Having no shame (and, more importantly, no access to Shazam) I went up to the employee and asked him who “sang” this track. He was just like, “What? Don’t talk to me. Just look at the iPod,” and when I found out who it was, I downloaded it right when I got home. It’s earned a permanent spot on every nighttime playlist since.

2. “Blue In Green” by Miles Davis

You know how when some people describe their favorite music, they say weird things like, “It feeds my soul!” and you’re just like, “Excuse me?” Well, Some Kind Of Blue by Miles Davis is a record that feeds my soul. I don’t know how else to explain it. It just transports me to another (happier and mellow) place. I always listen to it after I’ve had a bad day, preferably in the bath or when I’m in bed, and it makes me feel so warm and safe. Even now, listening to it on my headphones at this coffee shop where I’m writing this post, I’m getting chills and it’s super embarrassing.

3. “Like An Ion” by Sciflyer

I first heard this song in 2004 on one of those music samplers you would get for free in a magazine. Most of the bands would suck but occasionally you would find a track by some obscure band that you would obsess over. I was just beginning to really get into shoegaze, a genre of music made most known by bands like My Bloody Valentine and Slowdive, and I was instantly struck by the distant vocals and dreamy guitars in this song. I remember driving back from my college orientation in Orange County with my mom listening to this slice of hazy heaven and being lulled to sleep by it. Have you ever tried to sleep during a car ride with your mom? It’s like really freaking hard.

4.”Blue Motel Room” by Joni Mitchell

I’m convinced that Joni Mitchell was sent to this earth to make me feel things. Her music is better than any therapy session I could conjure, especially the songs on Blue and Hejira. She really wasn’t screwing around, was she? She wanted her listeners to experience all the joy and heartbreak with her. We couldn’t get away with anything. She held up a mirror to our life so perfectly and wouldn’t shy away from exposing painful universal truths.

5.”Asleep” by The Smiths

This is the anthem of sentimental gay boys everywhere. I mean, how could I not include it on the list? If Joni Mitchell is your emotional mom who believes in the healing powers of crystals, Morrissey is totally your closeted father who cries himself to sleep every night.

6.”Little Star” by Stina Nordenstam

I found this song on the life-altering Romeo + Juliet soundtrack and immediately put it in my nighttime rotation. It starts off all delicate, like someone is tickling you with a feather, but then it becomes all jazzy and spiritual?! It’s total Mom Music, which is a genre of music I can wholeheartedly get behind. (Except for Goyte.)

7.”Four Corners” by The Sea And Cake

The Sea And Cake is a shockingly dull band. All the band members must’ve gotten together and been like, “We want to make music that renders people unconscious. How do we do that?” No shade though because what their music lacks in energy, it makes up for in being the perfect band to fall asleep to. Just don’t listen to them any other time, okay? Seriously.

8. “Willie Deadwilder” by Cat Power

When putting together a playlist for bedtime, it’s important to end it with a lengthy song just in case you can’t fall asleep right away. I swear, it’s the worst feeling when the playlist ends and you’re still GODDAMN AWAKE. “Willie Deadwilder” by Cat Power is almost 20 minutes long so if you’re not asleep by the time it ends, you have my permission to screw the playlist and take an Ambien instead. I tried, y’all!

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1. “Freak On A Leash” — Korn

Whenever I hear the word ‘bullet,’ I’m immediately taken back in time to this music video. I see a cartoon bullet traveling through bedrooms, streets, restaurants, etc. That bullet was everywhere. How did it not hit anyone?

2. “The Bum Bum Song” — Tom Green

I celebrated the day Tom Green’s ridiculous faux song beat out TRL’s pop kings and queens for first place. I remember Green coming on the show to say that his song didn’t deserve to be number one, but who could deny ‘I wanna hear the canon!’?

3. “Intergalactic” — Beastie Boys

I always thought the Beastie Boys were super bad ass, so their releasing a song during my youth was awesome. This video was full of transformer/power ranger like robot things. Very futuristic. Very Y2K.

4. “The Real Slim Shady” — Eminem

This song taught me what a clitoris is. I remember watching this video every day and rapping the vulgar lyrics at camp with my friends. I didn’t care that he was sh-tting on my beloved Britney Spears. After this song sparked major controversy, I remember downloading parodies of it on Napster — including a fake Christina Aguilera’s “Will The Real Slim Shady Please Shut Up?” It’s been 12 years now and he hasn’t shut up yet — but Christina has. At least on iTunes.

5. “Oops I Did It Again” — Britney Spears

For a brief time, I made sure I caught TRL every day for the sole purpose of learning the dance Britney and her crew did in this video. I had already learned “Crazy” thanks to Darren’s Dance Grooves, but I was on my own for “Oops.” Other than the spaceship dance, this video was amazing for the rando Titanic reference alone. Why? What does this have to do with space? What does this have to do with ANYTHING?

“Queen of Disco” Donna Summer died today at the way-too-young age of 63 after losing a battle with cancer. The singer — known for hits like “Hot Stuff,” “Bad Girl,” “She Works Hard for the Money,” “On the Radio,” I could probably go on forever or at least another 100 characters — was a five-time Grammy winner, mother, and wife.  I’m sure this weekend will be chock-full of Donna disco-blocks on every radio station, so I thought it might be nice to remember some of her lesser-celebrated accomplishments. Like playing Aunt Oona from Altoona, the dorky-turned-smokin’-hot aunt of none other than Steve Ukrel. Watch, enjoy, remember.

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Is Tunnel of Love Bruce Springsteen’s best album? Maybe not, but the story behind it is the most compelling. It’s about the wilting of one love and the suggestion – just a suggestion at this point — of another. With his previous album, 1984′s Born in the U.S.A., the big break had finally come to Springsteen after nearly 15 years of hard work, but as these things tend to go, the glory, the money, the recognition, was bittersweet, usurping whatever life Springsteen was trying to have offstage.

As for that life, he had wanted a “fairytale,” he once said, as most people do. So, rather impulsively, at least to the people on the outside, he married actress Julianne Phillips in a candlelit ceremony at midnight. “I met a girl and we ran away,” he explains on “Two Faces,” perhaps the linchpin of Tunnel Of Love, and “I swore I’d make her happy every day.” That sounds like a fairytale, or at least the end of a Jane Austen novel. But did he and Phillips even have a story, or time to write one? Once offstage, finished with the Born in the U.S.A. tour, it seemed all Springsteen wanted was to be back onstage, an experience he’s described as “like walking onto a beach.” But he had to write another album to get there.

Tunnel of Love is really the beginning of the rest of Springsteen’s career, the deconstruction of a fairytale, a parent telling a child Santa Claus doesn’t exist, a boy reluctantly becoming a man. The album begins with “Ain’t Got You,” with Springsteen uneasily cataloging all the fortune his career has brought him. Though it’s unlike him, he’s also puffing himself up, as if saying to the woman in question, “If I’m not enough, look at all these people who want a piece of me, look at all I can give you.” His dowry, as it were.

I got a house full of Rembrandt and priceless art
And all the little girls, they wanna tear me apart
When I walk down the street people stop and stare
Well, you think I might be thrilled but baby, I don’t care
’Cause I got more good luck honey than old King Farouk
But the only thing I ain’t got baby, I ain’t got you

It’s tempting to say the “you” is Patti Scialfa, his backup singer and eventually his wife. They had dated in 1984, the year before Springsteen married Phillips, and he and Scialfa had a fondness for sharing a mic, literally cheek to cheek, during the Born in the U.S.A. and Tunnel of Love tours. Their onstage chemistry continued to build, something concertgoers and the media talked about at the time, and which everyone else is now able to experience for themselves thanks to this:

This roleplaying, Scialfa playing the female character in a series of songs about a couple trying to make things work, was, it turns out, more authentic than the couple Springsteen was writing about. Springsteen and Phillips didn’t even seem to know each other that well: there was no foundation, no common ground. Scialfa, meanwhile, was “from one town over,” as Springsteen noted in a 1987 interview. “Brilliant Disguise”:

Well I tried so hard, baby
But I just can’t see
What a woman like you
Is doing with me

Later in “Brilliant Disguise,” Springsteen talks about pretending, about trying to be the characters in the fairytale: the woman “play[s] the loving one” while he “play[s] the faithful man.” But the relationship is too volatile for him to think past the latest truce (“Just don’t look too close / into the palm of my hand”). There’s a lot of talk of trying to predict the future, of betting everything on little signs and superstitions, as the young and impulsive are wont to do: “The gypsy swore our future was right.” Fittingly, the song is deceptively upbeat, like a late-period Roy Orbison track: major key, twinkling pianos, shimmying rhythm. Ignore the lyrics and it’s persistently, defiantly happy, a perfect way of depicting its singer’s inner torment.

“Tunnel of Love” is a good song that would be great if only it repeated its excellent chorus more than once:

There’s a crazy mirror showing us both in 5-D
I’m laughing at you and you’re laughing at me
There’s a room of shadows that gets so dark, brother
It’s easy for two people to lose each other
In this tunnel of love

On “Tunnel of Love” Springsteen also reintroduces a Janus-type character. He describes being on the ride, “just the three of us / you and me / and all that stuff we’re so scared of.” In “Two Faces,” this third person shows up as “another” man, really a darker, more destructive version of the singer: the guy who wants to flee, who doesn’t want to make things work, who doesn’t want to do as the righteous narrator in “Tunnel of Love” advises and “learn to live with what you can’t rise above.” On first listen this “other man” sounds like someone threatening to take his woman away, when really the singer turns out to be the one with the wandering eyes: he and Scialfa get together when he and Phillips are still married. On paper, there’s something sinister, Poesque, about these lyrics:

At night I get down on my knees and pray
Our love will make that other man go away
But he’ll never say goodbye
Two faces have I

It was clear long before this, with feats like “It’s Hard to Be a Saint in the City,” that Springsteen was a brilliant lyricist, but on Tunnel of Love he leaps far ahead of his own experiences, possessing a wisdom in storytelling that he (clearly regretfully) hadn’t yet mastered in real life. He’s so good at storytelling here that the chorus of “Spare Parts,” a classic Springsteen tale about young love, pulls its weight in the space of three short lines: “Spare parts / and broken hearts / keep the world turning around.”

“Tougher Than the Rest,” the crown jewel of Tunnel of Love, isn’t so straightforward in its message, even if it sounds the most like a hit. Now, it sounds like a classic ’80s rock song, with its thick synths and reverbed drums, but leave aside those period-piece elements (or embrace them, as I do), and it’s just a devastating ballad.

The road is dark
And it’s a thin thin line
But I want you to know
I’ll walk it for you any time
Maybe your other boyfriends
Couldn’t pass the test
Well if you’re rough and ready for love
Honey, I’m tougher than the rest

What does it mean to be “tougher” than the rest? Is this failed husband suddenly swearing that he’ll master commitment the second time around? Or does “tougher” mean the opposite, that the lady in question should watch out?

Perhaps the first, read not literally, but as a cynical eulogy: an old, well-meaning song that wasn’t recorded until after long after its promise had been broken.

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Pierre smiles and nods at me from the place where he works: a black half-circle printed on the floor beneath his feet. An empty guitar case sits beside him. It is sinking in on itself under the weight of a few coins. A stream of blurred faces, shoulders and shoes pass by us. As far as we know, raindrops are still pelting the streets of London outside. But we cannot say for sure. We are standing far below the city’s surface. And Pierre is quietly singing a song.

The trains under London have been running for well over a hundred years. The first one shot off in 1863, around the same time the word “busking” first entered the English language. But the buskers, minstrels, troubadours, organ grinders and those who played without a name, had been performing in the streets of cities for thousands of years before this. The London Underground just gave them a new place to go, a new way to connect. There are more than three million people passing through these tunnels each day and all of them are here for this same reason.

 _____

Pierre is from Côte d’Ivoire. He moved to London by way of France around the age of 17. He doesn’t remember how long he’s been coming down here to perform. Only that it’s been years. Many years.

Tonight Pierre is playing at Charing Cross station. He’s 62 now, has a wife and two kids, a faded black guitar case to catch the money that he makes. He’s wearing a black hat with all the colours of the rainbow printed on it; a dark grey shirt with a black pendant strung around his neck; a busking license on the left leg of his black pants; an acoustic guitar with a Venetian cutaway, and a rose burst finish.

He doesn’t waste a word when he speaks. “Music gives me happiness,” he says. “Music is all right for me. When I play I feel happy. Very happy. Music gives me more life.”

Pierre started playing guitar when he was still in France. And though he’d come from the cadence of Africa it was the music of England that moved him. He tells me about the middle sixties and the musicians that inspired him. He smiles with the innocence and enthusiasm of a child when he says the words: “The Beatles,” “The Rolling Stones.” He says “Thank you” when he hears a coin drop into his guitar case, every time.

When I ask him what playing in the tunnels has taught him, Pierre grins and strums his strings a little.

“Standing down here, my god, you learn a lot about people,” he says. “You learn a lot of things. You see people happy. You see people stressed. You see people sick. You see a lot of things. You see everything.” He pauses then tells me this this two more times. “You see everything,” he says. “You see everything.”

“But when you are walking you see nothing.”

______

Jamie is standing in his spot above the escalators at Oxford Circus. The half-circle here belongs to him for the next two hours. He is wearing a blue and grey flannel shirt, blue jeans and a black jacket. The guitar he is playing has a hole in it, underneath the bridge. To the left of the hole are the remnants of a sticker, greyed and browned by dirt. The wood of the guitar holds a lot of history, a lot of scratches and dents, a lot of stories and lines. It has a curious past and right now it is giving out a sound that is like gold.

Jamie is singing Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah.”

“Music was always a familial thing for me,” he says between songs. “My grandfather was on the stage. And he was one of those guys who, wherever he was, there was always a laugh, a joke, a fight and a song. I don’t do all of the former. But I enjoy the latter.”

Jamie’s from Birkenhead, in the northwest of England. He started busking when he was young, he says, around 17. When I ask him how old he is now he tells me he’s just passed a landmark age, and then he just smiles and waits politely.

“When you get used to doing something like busking, and the freedom that comes with it,” Jamie says, “the alternative existence begins to seem very remote, and almost impossible to be drawn into.”

He tells me that busking gives him time and space. As he says this he realizes it gives him something more. “Control,” he says. “Control of time and space. We’re restricted in so many ways. By rents and mortgages. By relationships and people. Even by eating. And a full-time job is just one sticking point too many for me.”

Jamie makes his living playing music, but says he’s not critical of the ways others choose to make theirs. “I have my own little purpose,” he says. “So I choose not to be judgmental. There’s something quite comforting about the people that pass by.” To see them all as one lifeless mass, he says, just trudging along and dragging roller bags out into the abyss, would be frivolous, dismissive.

“We all have our own tasks,” he says. “We all have our own purposes.”

_____

When I first spot Will, he is standing in front of a Jack White poster at Bank station. His eyes are hidden under a black cap. His face, under a black beard. He has an acoustic guitar slung across his back and he is playing a harmonica. Bank is a maze of corridors, divided into harshly-lit whites and poorly-lit greys. But when one finds the corner where the harmonica is coming from, the walls of the fortress seem to soften.

Will is from Jamaica, around 50-years-old, he says. He moved to London with his parents when he was young, and he’s been playing in the tunnels for over 10 years now. When he speaks, he speaks slowly, calmly, with a massive heart.

“Survival,” he says. “It’s survival that brings me down here. Music is almost everything to me. I can’t say it’s everything because it’s not life, and life has to be everything. But I think music might be second.”

Will tells me about the time he watched a man strumming a guitar in Jamaica. He can’t remember the man’s name but says the feeling, of being connected to something, never left him. He eventually learned to play the bass. But he now plays many instruments. He tells me about the sound an Irish D whistle makes, but says he prefers to hear the timbre of his guitar, because it sets him free to sing.

When I ask him if he plays for others or for himself, he says he does both. He says music soothes him, but that he plays it because he wants to share that feeling with others. “When you don’t have much money,” he says. “And you don’t have many things. But you still want to give people something … I learned that music was the best thing I could give.”

Will says playing in the tunnels has taught him that things like race and color don’t really matter. Not to him or to others. Not even age matters, he says. “The world is too big. You may be in your thirties. I may be in my fifties. But after we’re gone there will still be 200 years up the road.”

We shake hands and say our goodbyes. A woman in a white jacket moves past us. A man in a black jumper walks the other way. The trains come and go. Will stands still and sings another song.

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1.”Another Day (Gotta Get Up)” by Jill Scott

This goes first because it’s a literal ode to getting your lazy bones out of bed. Jill Scott sings, “I – don’t want to – Go to work today – I ‘d rather – Stay home – And play video games- I wanna chill. But I gotta get up. I gotta gotta gotta gotta gotta gotta gotta gotta gotta get up.” That’s basically the entire song—her yelling at you to get up and stop pressing “snooze” on your alarm clock. I played this song a lot when I was in college and had the terrible misfortune of having a class before noon, and it totally worked.

2. “Sympathy For The Devil” by The Rolling Stones

The Rolling Stones may seem like a cliche choice but their music is just so perfect for giving you that kick in the ass you need in the morning. Listening to their music always makes me feel like I’m some very important character in a coming-of-age film. I walk with purpose and there are montages of me sashaying to various places. It belongs to one of my favorite sub-genres of music: “Perfect Songs To Strut To Like You’re In an Opening Scene of a Movie.”

3. “Since U Been Gone” by Kelly CLarkson

In order for you to fully embrace the day, you need to take a shower. Trust me, I know it sounds like a lot of work, but once you get in there, you’ll feel like you’ve been fed an Adderall and drank some “Bring it, bitch!” juice. Listening to “Since U Been Gone” by Kelly Clarkson and singing along to it in the shower will only enhance your energy by giving you the gift of The Perfect Pop Song. That killer beat combined with Kelly’s wail will have you fist pumping in the shower like a damn fool and totally amped to start your day.

4.”Perfect Day” by Hoku

If you feel like you woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning, just blast this Hoku song (LOL) until you feel sufficiently brainwashed to experience optimism. It worked for Elle Woods in Legally Blonde so it can definitely work for you. (Also, was I the only who was obsessed with Hoku back in the day? #NotClearOn her career but obsessed with everything else!)

5.”What The Hell” by Avril Lavigne

This song puts a literal swing in my step. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve walked the streets of New York feeling like some powerhouse diva listening to this song on repeat with my headphones blasting. I used to be embarrassed about liking Avril’s music but now I’m thinking, “What the hell?”

6.”Call Me Maybe” by Carly Rae Jepsen

This song is so infectious, it melts even the coldest of hearts. (Read: Bloggers.) Are you in a fight with someone? Sit down in a room together and play this song. I bet that by the end of it, you will be jumping up and down holding hands and singing along. I’m curious about what makes this song so damn joyful. Is it just a really addictive melody or are we secretly being force-fed some terrifying propaganda?

7. “Queen Of The Night” by Whitney Houston

I had to include Whitney Houston on a playlist of uplifting morning jams. Have you ever tried picking out your outfit for the day while blasting this song? HAVE YOU EVER BEEN A HOMOSEXUAL?

8.”Don’t Tell Me” by Madonna

Okay, now you have to take it down a notch before your brain explodes from a fun overdose before 9am. “Don’t Tell Me” by Madonna is the perfect marriage between upbeat and mellow. It will give you the confidence to finish getting dressed and leave for work without turning you into a jittery psycho. Plus, you can pretend you’re one of the cowboys in the music video and do a weird dance out the door.

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Billboard’s Hot R&B/Hip Hop Songs chart has gone by a variety of questionable names including, “The Harlem Hit Parade” (1942-1945), “Race Records” (1945-1949), and “Hot Black Singles” (not a Craigslist ad – 1982-1990).

Here’s what I imagine other categories were originally titled:

Hot Country Songs

Rockabilly Redneck Tunes

Farmin’ Songs for Y’all

The ‘Bama Blues

Smooth Jazz Songs

The Weird One with the Black People

Skit Skat Songs

Elevator Music

Canadian Hot 100

Good Songs, Eh?

Maple Syrup Rock

Songs to Sing After Hockey Games

Hot Ringtones

Calculator Music

Walkman Music

Video Game Music

Hot Latin Songs

This Reminds Us of Ricky Ricardo

This Reminds Us of Julio Iglesias

Immigrant Songs

Hot Dance Club Songs

Ecstasy Earworms

Leg Movers

Kids These Days

Alternative Songs

Organic Records

Boring Songs

Jingles for Broke People

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I am a massive Coldplay fan. This isn’t meant to be read as a courageous declaration or a humble confession. It simply is a fact; a fact no more significant than other facts about me, such as that I enjoy eating plums and watching Chopped.

Upon hearing this news though, most people have one of three reactions:

A. “Do you know how you know you’re gay?”
B. “I liked the first two albums. After that, they started to suck.”
C. “Dude, I thought you had good taste in music!”

When it comes to options A and B, I don’t worry about all that. That joke is painfully old and so I can dismiss everything the comedian could say. A reasonable person could make statement B but I respectfully disagree. (I’d agree you that last two albums are collectively better than the first two. But that’s another discussion for another nerdy day.)

C, however, is brutal. I hate it. In almost every way, I revel in my rejection of conformity. I like what I like because I like it. That’s it. But I have spent too many hours reading about music, too much money on albums and concert tickets and too much time learning instruments to have my musical credibility instantly dismissed because of my love for Coldplay.

To defend myself from such sweeping musical rejection from the fraternity of “People with good taste in music,” I have been forced to adopt tactics to prove my musical worth. I’m not proud of this. I wish the world didn’t make me have to conform to their standards. But this is not a post-musical society. I am simply adapting. Therefore, these are bands that I pretend to like a lot more than I do in order to maintain some sort of musical credibility.

Arcade Fire

How to effectively name-drop a bands into conversation is a shameful but important act to perfect. The weight a band can add to your musical credentials depends on varying factors. Many disciplines understand the spread of an idea in a bell curve that is separated in four sections: early adopters, early majority, late majority and laggards. Understanding a band’s popularity in this curve is essential for name-dropping. Doing so too early in their popularity makes you look like a Pitchfork-salivating elitist. Finding a band too late is like wearing Timberland boots at the club. Their time, sadly, has faded. Recognizing this difference is critical.

Here’s an example. There was a time when name-dropping a band like the xx would have been to your musical credit. They were British, minimalistic, and mesmerizing. But after a few Visa commercials and a shaky cover by Shakira, you knew they couldn’t help you anymore. Which isn’t to say their music is no longer great. It’s that too many people agree with you for the xx to be of any benefit in a music conversation.

That’s what makes Arcade Fire so brilliant. Despite a Grammy, band beefs, and other MTV-worthy fodder, their musical credibility has stayed unchanged. I keep the Arcade Fire’s The Suburbs on my iPod strictly to neutralize the shock some might have if their first impression of my musical tastes was Alanis Morissette. Don’t ask me if I’ve listened to it straight through. I haven’t. “Month of May” is a great song though.

John Legend

There is a perception of black people that we blindly follow other esteemed black individuals without the ability to critically assess their strengths and weaknesses. Now, this is one of those statements that might have some truth considering but is usually said with a level of condescension that ultimately renders the idea moot. What is true though is that no reasonable black person, or any person really, could dislike John Legend. He is the Derek Jeter of R&B. His swagger is worth emulating. His style top-tier. With John Legend, a name pun has never been more well-deserved.

But here’s the problem. If you asked me to name five songs by John Legend, I might repeat “Ordinary People” five times. Lost in my love for John Legend is actually taking time to know his discography. I love the idea of John Legend more than the man himself.

Now, obligatory love can have its benefits. I fake-loved Cory Booker for so long I actually started to in reality. What a guy.

Dispatch

Going to school in North Carolina introduced me to a whole new category of music fan. These hairy-chested thrift shoppers enjoyed playing used guitars, occasionally smoking pot, gladly sharing whatever beers they had on hand and filling out their schedule with classes in the sociology department. In a world of pink and popped collars, they were very nice change of pace. Their iPods were filled with old-school O.A.R., Dave Matthews, Phish. Maybe the Grateful Dead. But the most revered of these bands was Dispatch. Again and again, this band popped up in conversations. But I’d never heard of them.

Success in college depends entirely on one’s ability to compromise. Compromising with your roommate, compromising your morals, and most of all, your musical sensibilities. If Dispatch was the band North Carolinians by way of Massachusetts enjoyed, I was going to try it out. I went back to Queens and bought a double album by Dispatch called All Points Bulletin from Best Buy.

Was the album really worth $20? Despite some brilliant tracks, probably not. But when I got back, I could sing out “Go now. You are forgiven!” with as much passion as anyone else. Which made it worth it. Dispatch was an important band for me to know about in my assimilation into non-city life. As much as I appreciate their energy and “Two Coins,” their use to me is over.

Death Cab for Cutie

I have “a type.” Saying I have “a type” is either a sign of my youth or a sign of acute self-awareness. Whatever the reason, in a Nobel-worthy discovery, I have recently isolated the common gene that links every woman that I’ve been interested that amazingly were also interested in me. That strand is Benjamin Gibbard.

This discovery should give me a critical advantage in the dating game. This, therefore, has catapulted Death Cab for Cutie from fake love territory to becoming a valued addition to my musical life. Instead of playing an awkward game of 20 Questions upon meeting at coffee shop or in a clinical trial, I simply have to find a way to see a lovely woman’s iTunes. If there’s Death Cab, I know I have a shot. If there’s Death Cab and the Postal Service, I might as well buy a ring-pop afterward. Because we’re heading to the place where soul meets body.

There are two obvious problems with this plan. An iTunes library is a modern journal. More so than one’s sexual or romantic history, one’s musical history says a lot about a person. I might as well be ask to look through their purse. Plus, if a relationship doesn’t have a solid musical foundation, how can it survive? These are issues I’m still working on addressing. But behold, I will not let this discovery go to waste.

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The other day I was Spotifying Def Leppard in search of inspiration for my writing (don’t judge), and a live version of “Pour Some Sugar On Me” began to trickle through my earbuds.  I don’t know what it is about that song, but it gets me going, almost to the point where I’d say, yes, Joe Elliot, even though you look a little like Chad Kroeger, you can be this demolition woman’s man (my man, hoo-uh).

Anyway, as I was listening to the song on repeat, I had a thought: I wish it were socially acceptable to play this song at my wedding. Strange, right? Why did I jump straight to “wedding,” which is possibly the least appropriate venue in which to play that song? I could have just as easily thought, man, I can’t wait to play that at my birthday party this year, or it’d be so hilarious to listen to that song while working out, and by hilarious I mean awesome. At least those options would be a bit more feasible than a wedding (especially considering “Pour Some Sugar On Me” is usually reserved for college bars and strip clubs where underage women get sassy “in the name of love,” if you know what I mean).

Even though weddings are perhaps the paragon of things we do “in the name of love,” I’m confident my mother would have a conniption fit if I told her I wanted Def Leppard on my playlist. This got me thinking. If I were able to musically score my own wedding without social and moral repercussions, what songs would I choose? And so I was inspired to jot down all the songs I’d play at my nuptials if no one was attending but myself. Behold: my socially unacceptable wedding soundtrack.

The song I would walk down the aisle to, backlit by a spotlight and surrounded by fog: “Pour Some Sugar on Me” by Def Leppard — obviously.

The song my wedding party would enter the reception to: “P.Y.T.” by Michael Jackson.

The song my husband and I would enter the reception to: “You Make My Dreams Come True” by Hall and Oates.

Our first dance, which would require a costume change, a chair, and a ballet barre prop: “Love Sex Magic” by Ciara ft. Justin Timberlake.

The teen idol song my father and I would dance to: “As Long As You Love Me” by Backstreet Boys.

The teen idol song the groom and his mother would dance to: “Favorite Girl” by Justin Bieber.

The song during which my husband would go garter-diving: “That’s My B*tch” by Jay-Z and Kanye West.

The song during which I would toss my bouquet and secretly laugh at my single friends: “He Loves Me He Loves You Not” by Dream.

The last dance, choreographed by Kenny Ortega, which the everyone would partake in: “We’re All In This Together” by High School Musical Soundtrack.

How amazing would that wedding be? If only.

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