Itās been what, five months since I talked a big game about how I was going to create the
The Greatest Breakup CD The World Has Ever Known, right? Sorry for taking so long with that. Donāt laugh at me, but itās been a way more involved and personal process than I originally anticipated.
I am not sure I achieved the lofty goal of creating the Greatest Breakup CD The World Had Ever Known, but let me tell you what I am sure of: nothing brings readers out of the woodwork like a call for breakup songs, unless possibly a mention that you are thinking about getting a tattoo. As I suspected, many many people have a lot to say about appropriate breakup songs, and some of those people are kind and sweet and generous enough to send a complete stranger CDs they have made in order to illustrate the excellence of their pet songs. For about two weeks after I wrote that entry I got more email than I think I ever have in my life about breakup songs, and breakups, and exes, and heartache and pain and the healing power of āI Will Surviveā sung at loud volumes at a dive karaoke bar. I thought that was all pretty exciting, until I started receiving the packages. I felt soooo popular, when my housemates would be all āSoā¦people you know fromā¦online? Sent you CDs? Why?ā And all I could say was that breakup music is a unifying force that current technology has not found a way to accurately measure. Itās true.
So then! So then I started shuffling music around iTunes and making lists and reconsidering the first songs Iād put up in that entry and thinking about how they made me feel and how often I cried when I listened to them. I started a thread at MATH+1. For a couple of weeks, I got really into it. It was pretty fun, actually, and quite distracting.
I had things pretty well ironed out and had what I thought was a good mix and was going to write an entry about it, in November or so, when all of a sudden I was unable to listen to it. I found myself fast-forwarding any songs on that mix whenever I had iTunes on shuffle and feeling, somehow, that the mix was dangerous or something, that it would adversely affect me in a way I couldnāt afford. This coincided with my admitting some realities about the breakup and the relationship and so on and so forth and maybe I just couldnāt take it then, as silly as it sounds. I decided not to think about it, not to wallow if I could possibly help it. A lot of the time I could help it, I did help it, and I am pretty proud of that. I just didnāt get into it.
And then it was the holidays and I wore the worldās ugliest scarf-and-hat combo to London and time passed and I got some new CDs and put a couple extra songs on there and took some outā¦but I still didnāt think about it too much. I still was skipping songs on iTunes that were too sad for me, and Iād long decided that I just plain wasnāt going to write an entry about breakup music, like who even really cares, right?
Itās raining today as I write this and I am working on various things and a friend is coming over for dinner tonight and this morning I went to Quaker meeting and nothing is extraordinary about today at allā¦except when I sat down to do some other work on the laptop, it came to me that today is the day I write about the breakup mix. So much has happened in my heart since I asked you all for song recommendations that I could write this journal every day for a year and never tell you the whole story. Youāll be happy to know, Iām sure, that I do not intend to use this journal for this purpose, thanks very muchā¦but if youāre interested, Iāll tell you about the songs on that mix, to which I am listening right now as I write this, and leave you to draw your own conclusions about how things have and havenāt changed.
Set Out Running by Neko Case
I first heard this song on a mix the lovely Hannah made for her journal anniversary. Itās melodramatic and messy and crazy, just like me.
Nothing Better by The Postal Service
This has stayed on the list since September. Hereās what I wrote about it then: This is a song wherein one of the singers says something about making charts and graphs to illustrate why the breakup happened. Man, if I had a nickel… Still true.
Everybody Loves Me But You by Juliana Hatfield
I have been listening to this album (Hey Babe) seriously since high school, and every time I hear this song I have a little sense memory thing of driving home from play practice under the banyan trees, wondering why it was that a lot of people told me I was funny and smart and good at writing, but still, somehow, no boys liked me. I still wonder that.
So Done With You by Dolour
Also from the first entry: Okay, this is a song that was in my mental Breakup Songs list before I ever broke up. The title alone pretty much says it all, as well as the line, ā I would rather die/Than live through this hell again.ā Simple yet effective, donāt you think? Plus the bandās name is Dolour, how great is that. Even though itās just the one guy so really he should just go by his name, but whatever. Also, I won this CD from KEXP during pledge week one year. Excellent. Thanks for helping out, KEXP! Iām feeling a little more in the spirit of this song than I was when I wrote that, isnāt that funny?
A Fool For You by Ray Charles
This is off one of the CDs that people sent me, so I love it for that reason, but also: sing it, Ray. I have been a fool. I have been such a fool. Fooly foolish fooly fool, thatās me. Anyone who has had the dubious pleasure of listening to me talk about all this nonsense will agree with Ray: Iām a ridiculous fool. There is a time, I find, for being gentle with yourself and try to self-actualize or whatever, and then there is a time for having it spelled out for you. He doesnāt love you anymore, okay? Gah, get it through your thick head.
I’m Bound to Pack it Up by The White Stripes
Also from that other entry way back then: A little less with the clangy-clangy than many White Stripes songs, and also very sad. The songs just like, āBaby, I still love you but I gots to go and thatās just how it is.ā This song is still like that (all the way since September, can you believe?) and I still love itā¦especially the guitars for some reason.
How Can You Mend A Broken Heart? by Al Green
I donāt know why I didnāt put this on the original list. If A Fool For You is about having your friends read you the riot act and staging interventions on your behalf whenever you wistfully mention some positive quality of your former beloved, then this song is about sitting at the kitchen table with your head in your hands while the rain comes down and you wonder, exactly, what the rest of your life will look like completely alone.
Solitude by Billie Holiday
Also from someone excellent who sent me a CD, this song is wistful and lonely and just perfect when you are in a certain mood, and you know what mood I mean. Donāt give me that look, you know exactly what I mean. Go ahead, put a gardenia behind your ear if you have to.
Involuntary by M. Ward
Here is the story of my life, musically speaking: I hear a song I like on KEXP on my way to the grocery store, and I look it up, and put the CD on my wishlist, where it languishes for two years before I finally buy it for myself. This was the song that prompted me to start the cycle, seriously two years ago, and I just bought it a couple of weeks ago. You know why? For lyrics like this:
Have you ever tried to leave at the right time/but the right time seems to come so slow
And that feeling grows/without control
Also, for M. Wardās lusciously raspy and tender voice. I love this song.
Lazy Eye by Hem
My beautiful Eliza, the woman with whom I ought to have spent seventh grade, suggested this. Clearly she is a genius, because this song sounds like your Great Aunt Emily in 1920, upstairs in her east-facing bedroom, folding her silk chemise into her cedar chest and standing to look out over the Easter picnic thatās happening below. She leans against the windowsill and shades her eyes and looks at the white-clothed children tumbling across the grass, and this song plays briefly in her heart before she goes down to mix up the lemonade and slice the pound cake. As such, it is an unobtrusive and delicate breakup song. Well done, Eliza!
Remember The Mountain Bed by Wilco
Ooh, okay. This is one Iām still skipping on shuffleā¦in fact, it just came on and I only lasted until You smiled when I said the leaves were just the color of your eyes. I canāt explain it, this song still gets me. Will it always? I donāt know.
I Will Dream by Emmylou Harris
Manya sent me a CD last week and I was sitting on the floor importing when this song came on and I started crying right there. I donāt even think I really heard the lyrics that first time, even, it just hit me in the sternum and I let the tears trickle down for a minute and then went to find the cat. I think he bit my arm. Iāve never listened to Emmylou Harris before, but if all her songs are as evocative and devastating as this one, I never will again.
Your Sweet Voice by The Reindeer Section
You remember this one. Still true. Sigh.
Tell Her This by Del Amitri
This one too. I donāt feel at all the way I did when I wrote that poor sad lonely deluded and heartbroken entry, I am happy to report. What I do feel, however, is not as easy to write about.
I Just Don’t Think I’ll Ever Get Over You by Colin Hay
Also from the original mix. I no longer believe that the sentiment of the title is true for me (in fact I heartily endorse the opposite), but itās still a good song for slow rainy introspective days like today.
I really do love all these songs and they have done a pretty good job of getting me through, in their own ways, some difficult times. I wish it were as easy to put out a call for songs that could as accurately capture how Iām feeling now, though.