My life in songs
23 songs for 23 years.
Me :)
When I was 4 I asked my father to show me what Rock n Roll was. When I was 7 I wanted to be a drummer. When I was 11 I wanted to be a dancer. When I was 12 I wanted to be a producer and have my own record label. When I was 13 I wanted to be a music journalist. I did that one.
My love for music came from many sources. My mother telling me to listen to Moby Dick when she was driving me home from school one day made me appreciate drums in a song. My sister playing her music in the car gave me insight into what the cool, older kids were listening to. Being in ballet classes helped me see music as a moving thing. My weekly piano lessons made me realise how much effort goes in to mastering an instrument.
But one of the most important influences in my music development was my friend in grade 5. I was 10, he was 11. He was new in school and while I did enjoy much of the same music that a lot of my friends did at the time, I also enjoyed some music that they didn’t. Then this friend came along and filled that gap. One day, he wrote a list of songs on a piece of paper and told me to go home and listen to them. So I did.
The next day we talked about it, and I returned the favour and made him a list of songs that his suggestions reminded me of. We would exchange these physical playlists, listen to them at home, discuss them at school the next day, and repeat.
This led to us exchanging CDs and I would listen to them in the car on my way home. He lent me some of his favourites, and I did the same. He exposed me to a whole world of music that I wasn’t aware of, and I’m not sure if I’d be writing this article were it not for him.
So here are some songs that shaped me throughout my life. Some old classics, some new additions.
Velha Infância - Tribalistas
This is one of the first songs I remember recognising. My parents would play it the car and my mother would sing along to it beautifully. I was so young at this point that I don’t remember many details but I do remember that in any car ride, when this song came on, my parents’s faces lit up.
An endearing love song about simply wanting to be around the one you love. Your love being your best friend and being childish with them, in the purest sense of the word.
Heaven Help Us - My Chemical Romance
I thought I was an emo kid because my favourite band was My Chemical Romance. I loved My Chemical Romance. Their breakup was my first experience with heartbreak and I cried for two days. Everyone was messaging me, checking to see if I was okay. I wasn’t. my CD-exchanging friend messaged me saying that System of a Down had also broken up 10 years prior and was doing a reunion tour, so maybe 10 years after MCR’s breakup they would do the same.
Lo and behold, there they were in 2022, performing in Amsterdam. So I invited my emo friend, and we joined the crowd of colourful hair and black clothing. We sang so loud people were moving away from us – we were weeding out the weak ones. She did my makeup in the merch line and we made friends in the crowd. I screamed so much that my voice was gone for about 3 days. I lived my 12-year-old dream.
Anything We Want - Fiona Apple
This wouldn’t be my list if Fiona Apple wasn’t on it. Being a fan of hers is such a massive part of my personality. Her lyrics don’t just offer me comfort and show me how being emotional is not a weakness. It also inspires me as a writer.
When it was lockdown in October 2020 and my roommate was out of town for 3 months, I spent a lot of time by myself. This album was a big soundtrack to those days. One of Fiona Apple’s more experimental albums, it was a nice shift from her other work. Anything We Want is, to me, the heart of this project. The percussion of scissors on a tin and a plastic cup jumping around me, eventually being met with the strong piano—it all just lit up my empty apartment.
The repetitive instruments matched with her deeper vocal timbre were almost hypnotic. She brings innocence to an adult relationship as she does in many of her songs, which I think one of the most important parts of love. Keeping in touch with that childish innocence, the pure love with no ulterior motives.
Sunny Duet - Noname ft. theMIND
Much like Fiona Apple, Noname inspires me with her lyricism. In my last 2 years of high school I started to get a bit into hip-hop, and Noname was one of the artists that opened that door for me. Her instrumentals sound so bubbly and sunny (hence the song’s name), and her flow is so smooth that it’s impossible not to get sucked into it. It sounds like what floating in ocean water on a sunny beach day feels like.
Her dense lyrics filled with internal rhymes and puns made me want to look further into the genre. And this curiosity introduced me to sides of the industry that I most likely wouldn’t have found otherwise: a better understanding of how producers work, the close-knit communities within fanbases, and record labels.
I learned about sampling, the cross-pollination within music, how one genre leads to another. How genres can create whole movements and define a time. It’s such an accessible genre that taught me not just about the practicalities of the industry, but also about the power of music.
My Boy Builds Coffins - Florence + The Machine
Florence + The Machine was constantly playing in my car. My poor mother had to listen to Lungs and Ceremonials so many times, and not once did she complain. She even came to watch Florence + the Machine live with us in 2013.
This song would feel so good when listening to it in a moving car, surrounded by the hills and trees on my way home in Brazil. Florence’s weird concept was alien to me at the young age of 9 years (I didn’t know what “coffin” meant in English), but the sounds made me feel like I was floating. She lifted me up in the last line of the chorus only do drop me back to earth in the following verse.
Lovely Sewer - Yves Tumor
A recent favourite, this one found its way to me when I was in somewhat of a dry spell with music. Everything I heard felt like it had been done before.
Then came Yves Tumor with their most recent album in March. I listened to it on a run in a park and it made me feel like I could actually do it.
Yves Tumor blurs the lines between genres and surprises me with every new track. They bring back that initial excitement I had about music as a kid, that mystery and mysticism, that untouchable quality of musicians. It really was a breath of fresh air.
The Adults are Talking - The Strokes
The Strokes’ The New Abnormal was played by me at least twice per day for at least four months. After that it was just once per day for almost a year. I could not get enough. Much like Yves Tumor, it scratched an itch I didn’t know I had.
The album was produced by the one and only Rick Rubin, the man whose approach to creativity and life had inspired musicians and creatives in all industries—and I am no exception.
I got into this album about two years after it came out, but I was so obsessed that I once excused myself from a dinner with friends to go to the bathroom and listen to the last two minutes of Ode To The Mets. It was the soundtrack to one of my favourite summers and one of my least favourite winters. Even after playing it to death, when I hear that opening loop in The Adults Are Talking, I am suddenly in a good mood.
Nude - Radiohead
Ah yes, Nude. My most played song for two years in a row, I’ve listened to it on every bike ride home at night, almost every shower, until I thought “maybe I should branch out”. My poor roommates had to hear Thom Yorke’s beautiful, angelic falsetto hundreds of times. I have talked about this song before when breaking down In Rainbows , but it struck a nerve with me. I was hooked from the first listen, and I couldn’t get enough.
I would play this song on a loop, before I even knew what it was about. It introduced me to Radiohead in general, and started another phase in my life of listening to sad 90s music. Radiohead became such a big part of my personality, almost to an annoying and slightly embarrassing extent. But what was I meant to do when Nude is such a beautiful song? Was I just meant to not listen to it seven times per day? That makes no sense.
I love songs that make me feel like I’m floating, and that pairs perfectly with any mode of transport that is not walking. It is one of my favourite songs of all time.
The Great Gig in the Sky - Pink Floyd
I remember the first moment I heard this song. I went out for dinner with my parents, my friends, and her parents. We got bored and wanted to listen to music, so we went to chat in her mother’s car while they finished eating. I must’ve been around 14 years old, and her boyfriend told me to play this song. Something in me shifted and my life was never the same.
Of course I was aware of Pink Floyd in general, but this was the catalyst to a multi-year obsession with the group. I wrote school assignments about them (one of which ended up being approximately 20k words), I read books about them, watched documentaries, interviews—the list goes on, Watching The Wall alone in my room at night left me feeling some type of way for a week.
This obsession was the one that made me realise I wanted to do this music thing for a living. I would get so excited researching them – not just trivia in terms of their legal battles and everything with Syd Barret, but also how they made their songs.
Knowing that for this song they didn’t put the echo effect after, but recorded it in a massive room with the guitar far away from the mic. Or in this other song they recorded the drums but then reversed it. Although these techniques have been used by other people now, it was my first time learning about all these things, and it was so exhilarating that I realised that this is how I wanted to spend the rest of my life.
Extraordinary Machine - Fiona Apple
Yes, Fiona Apple is on this list twice. Extraordinary Machine is one my favourite albums by her. My other favourites include Tidal, When The Pawn…, The Idler Wheel…, and Fetch The Bolt Cutters. And all her covers and singles. And everything she has ever said or done.
The opening and title track Extraordinary Machine is a testament to her strength. Dainty in instrumentals and vocal delivery but tough in lyrics such as “I still only travel by foot and by foot it’s a slow climb, but I’m good at being uncomfortable so I can’t stop changing all the time”. And of course, the simple chant of self-reliance in the chorus: “be kind to me or treat me mean, I’ll make the most of it, I’m an extraordinary machine”.
If you know me personally, you know I don’t say this often. But this song is genius. A delicate take on unapologetically knowing your own strengths. It makes me feel like I can take on the world without sacrificing my subtlety. Strength does not always have to be loud and threatening. There is great power in whispering it. You are the only person who truly needs to know your own strength.
To listen to my birthday special episode of My Mum Had a Mullet, click here:
