I moved to North Carolina in 1996, attempting to get a fresh start after a career setback that at the time seemed monumental, but now seems silly. This should have been a solo trip, but the guy I was dating at the time accompanied me, also looking for new opportunities. However, after a few months there, he met someone, and I experienced my first broken heart. I was in a strange town, I knew no one, and it was Christmas. Talk about a perfect storm.
One of the hardest parts of the situation was that every other song on the radio reminded me of him, and evoked feelings of sadness, anger, loss, loneliness, and even revenge. “For You I Will” was one of the worst, and turned me against Monica for a short amount of time, even though I genuinely liked her music. The Space Jam soundtrack did not get much play in the music store I managed as a result. Even Christmas music affected me (see “When Love Is Gone”). While those songs stand out to me, the one song that really defined that whole breakup was “Unbreak My Heart”.
Picture it…you’re at a club a couple of months on, and you’re having a good time with a couple of acquaintances. Toni Braxton comes on, and you head to the dancefloor to let your demons go. Suddenly, it’s as if you’re in a music video, with a camera that cuts through the crowd, focusing on two guys dancing slow to the hottest club jam of the moment. It’s your ex and the new guy, and you’re just stunned. Next thing you know, you’re out on the patio, pacing at 80 mph in the February cold, experiencing every emotion available in record time. (My friend Chris must have thought I was Sybil from the way I reacted.)
While the breakup obviously is memorable, it’s in moments like those that I recognize just how much I am touched by music. For me, music acts as a time capsule, storing bits and pieces of memories that a couple of chords can unlock in a matter of moments. So often we hear a song and think “it’s as if someone wrote it just for me”, but I’ve come to the understanding that it says as much about the common feelings and emotions we all experience as it does about a specific event. Music really is a uniter, no matter how much we bicker about who’s got the better b-side or who sold more records last week.
I know I’ve done a few of these video entries lately, but this one goes a little deeper than “oooh, check out this video”. Elliott was my pick all through American Idol Season 5, going all the way back to his Hollywood Week performance of “A Song For You”. This is an example of what can happen when the Idol producers stay out of the mix, letting the music and the performers speak for themselves. While Elliott was eliminated during the Top 3 week, it was the closest margin in the history of the show, with all three (Taylor Hicks and Katherine McPhee being the other two) receiving just over 33% of the vote.
T-minus 10 days until my departure for London, and I am already partially incapacitated with excitement for the trip. England has always been my #1 destination, and now that I’m approaching the next decade of my life, it’s finally going to happen. I’m trying to leave as much of the planning up in the air as possible, but things are starting to firm up. Of course, I scheduled a trip down to Stonehenge on 12 May (have to get into that habit for a week or so), and then found out today that Paolo Nutini will be playing in London that night as I return. Argh. Would love to see some of the new material live.
Adele has released an American version of “Hometown Glory” that currently is only available through VH1.com (WordPress and MTV apparently don’t play well together), but this is actually the third video that I am aware of. Granted, video #1 wasn’t actually official, as it was pulled from the BBC2 show “Sound”, but for many people, this was the first visual they had for Adele (over 4,000,000 views so far).
I’ve been trying to think of a good venue for doing a more personal perspective on music, and the recent addition of Mary Chapin Carpenter’s State of the Heart to my iTunes gives me a good jumping-off point. Even though I haven’t even listened to the full thing start to finish, it’s already triggered several songs in my head, and where I was at when I first heard them.
Carpenter has had a pretty good career for a country artist, even 
So a day after professing 
Nothing like spoiling a memory, right? I went back to Virgin this evening after having seen a new sign advertising that the discounts went up. Grabbed a CD (the full-length on the J-Mac Reloaded), a camera case (for the London trip), and this very cool DC superheroes t-shirt, and headed to the register. Turns out that they were putting the signs up for the next day, and they wouldn’t honor the new percentages. Bastards! On top of that, the t-shirt was less than the “at least” percentage that had been listed prior. So not only are the owners of Virgin getting out of the music business because they can make more money as landlords, they also feel the need to resort to deceptive tactics to get folks in the store. Honestly, if you’re closing the doors in 5 days, you would think the percentages would be higher than they are, but it’s their fire sale.
Stumble It!
Pop Music Notes 