Okay, I think the title says it all. Before we get started though, I want to lay down some criteria I used to determine which of my guilty pleasure songs (there are a lot of them) made the top five. Like “Jeopardy,” the criteria are in the form of a question.
- Have I sung this song in the car?
- Have I secretly tried to learn this song on guitar?
- Have I (when drunk) admitted my love for this song to a stranger?
- Do I secretly wish I’d written this song?
- Have I gotten choked up when listening to this song OR have I held my fist in the air when listening to this song?
Okay, here we go with my top five guilty pleasure songs.
5. “Complicated” Avril Lavigne
This song meets three of the five criteria, which isn’t a great percentage, BUT, the video for this song puts it over the edge. Also, the fact that I lay awake at night and think about how great it would be to be married to Avril Lavigne helps too.
Avril was like, 18 or so when this song came out. I was 16 or 17 at the time, and when I first heard the song I tried desperately to hate it, but oh my sweet lord did I love that song. Then, in college, when I began to let my music freak flag fly, I embraced my undying love for all things Avril (even that song “Girlfriend”) and took every opportunity to sing this song at karaoke and had it on my iPod for years. I watched the video a couple of times before writing this, and I believe that that video is what my kids are going to think I was like when I was that age. Of course, Avril would be their mom, ideally, so…I don’t know.
4. “Your Biggest Fan” nevershoutnever
Songs about your first love mistreating you is what I’m all about. I myself have written many songs about that very topic, and every time I come across some 19 or 20 year old guy on YouTube singing about how “she done [him] wrong” I have to watch it. That’s how it went down when I first saw nevershoutnever play “Your Biggest Fan” on the Fearless Music Show thing on YouTube.
There are a number of things I really like about this song, but would otherwise never admit that I liked them. First off, it’s in the key of C, which is the most self-righteous key, therefore it’s perfect for songs about how your first girlfriend destroyed your life. There’s a brief rap portion, which made me laugh out loud the first time I heard it, and the chorus is catchy as hell. Plus, he reminds me what I might have been like in a non-restrictive environment.
3. “You Were Meant for Me” Jewel
This is one of the first songs I remember liking that wasn’t by Alanis Morisette. (My mom had “Jagged Little Pill” in the CD player in the car for a lot of my youth). This song comes on a lot at Taco Bueno, and every time it does, I stay right in my seat and listen to as much of the song as possible.
There are so many great parts to this song, and all of them involve Jewel being awesome. Lyrics. Music. Her voice. Etc. Sadly, admitting my love for this song will cause me to have to turn in my special “Yep, you’re a male Texan” card, but I think I’m okay with that.
I really just want to write the lyrics to the chorus down and use that as my justification, but copyright laws suck. Just go listen to the song. If you don’t feel something YOU’RE MADE OUT OF STONE!
2. “Hey There, Delilah” Plain White T’s
Long distance relationships are horrible, and for a lot of guys in them (myself included), the surefire way to fix anything wrong with the relationship is to write a song for the girl.
Admit it. If you’ve never done that, you’ve thought about it. That’s one of the reasons I love this song so much.
This is another one of those songs that is helped a lot by the video. It has the Mondrian set up with shots of the singer guy fingerpicking and then “Delilah” walking about NYC in those cute little long sock things. (I like long socks. Don’t judge). The whole song is delightfully repetitive, which is essential for a good guilty pleasure song, and the subject matter couldn’t be better. Once again, I want to list lyrics, but I don’t want to get in trouble. Just listen to the bridge. It will change your life.
1. “You Belong with Me” Taylor Swift
If I wanted to, I could have an entire “guilty pleasure” post dedicated to Taylor Swift songs. I love Taylor Swift. There. I said it.
BUT, this is my favorite song of hers by far. Once again, it’s young love at the forefront in the lyrics. This time it’s unrequited girl on boy love, which I really like because I can imagine that Taylor is singing the song to me. I probably have a better shot with Taylor than I do with Avril anyway.
This is the only country song on the list, and it accomplishes a lot as a country song. First, it talks about “this town,” and high school football is predominantly featured in the video. Plus, the video culminates in Prom, which is the ultimate experience for lots of, well, people that listen to country music a lot. I know. I went through a country music phase, and was jolted out of it pretty quick after a very disillusioning Prom experience.
However, if I had gone to Prom with Taylor Swift, it would’ve been incredible, and my life would be a lot different.
Oh well.
Tonight we get a quick taste of what I like to call “Season Whatever, Episode Whatever,” which will be a kind of review of whatever TV shows I feel like. For the first episode, I’ll take a look at the season premiere(s) of “Futurama” on Comedy Central.
“Neutopia”
I liked this one okay. They took the standard stand-up comedy of fare of “What’s the deal with men/women?” and took it to another level where it’s funny instead of head-noddingly amusing. The whole rock monster thing was a bit, I don’t know, lame for lack of a better word, BUT the writers seemed to know that and they handled it well through his dialogue. Some of the jokes when they were without gender were pretty good, but naturally, that couldn’t last because sex is just that great.
I didn’t like the pacing of the episode. It seemed to take too long to get to the point of the episode, which was, to me, seeing the male characters as female and the female characters as male. They hyped that so much in the promos, and for me it worked. I wanted to see it.
Having said that, there is little more disturbing than the female version of Dr. Zoidberg.
Overall, it was good. I laughed out loud a few times, especially at LaBarbara’s Biz Markie reference that I’m sure went over the heads of white people everywhere because it wasn’t in a Heineken commercial.
On a scale of “A Taste of Freedom” to “The Devil’s Hands are Idle Playthings,” I give this episode a solid B.
“Benderama”
The constant outcry to the producers of “Futurama” from my group of friends has always been:
- More Robot Devil
- More Bender
- More Bender
It seems they finally listened, and took it to a fairly insane level. The fact that Bender multiplies (thanks to Farnsworth’s overhead projectory looking thing) so many times that they exist on the molecular level is something that would only happen in the current “Futurama” era, and it worked okay. I really enjoyed how the Benders turned all of Earth’s water to alcohol (causing every drunk-at-a-party joke to come into being), but I hated how they killed Patton Oswalt. I thought they were going to go for some type of lesson, or a parody of a lesson, or something, but instead, we get billions of microscopic Benders eating his character’s flesh, and then “Phew, thank God that’s over!” The ending felt dark and flat and just…I didn’t like it very much, BUT that doesn’t take away from the fact that it was still a pretty funny episode, and when you’re doing comedy, if people aren’t laughing, then no one cares.
So, on a scale of “Striking out with an ugly girl” to “Losing your virginity while watching ‘Lord of the Rings,’” I give this episode a C+.
“Freebird!” some drunk asshole in College Station shouted at me as I sat for a moment on stage thinking about what to play next. It was just an open mic, but still. Shouting “Freebird!” at someone who isn’t Lynyrd Skynyrd isn’t cool at all.
I’ve done so many open mics in my life, both as a musician and a comedian. I don’t really know which I’ve had more success in, but I guess that doesn’t really matter since I don’t do either that much anymore. I haven’t done a comedy open mic in a couple of years, as my last one was pretty jarring, and no one seems to “get” my music when I go to music open mics. It’s not that I don’t enjoy them, I do (for the most part), but it’s difficult to see the point in doing them sometimes. One can only play so many Elliott Smith covers and depressing originals (that all kind of sound the same) at the suburban country bar before it starts to sting.
Here are some of my favorite open mic (music) memories:
Cactus Cafe. Austin, TX. Fall, 2005
This was one of my first open mics, and I was “throw up in the bathroom” nervous about it. At the time, I wanted to be a singer/songwriter, just like Jewel, and I was in a band with two of my friends from high school who happened to also attend UT Austin. The way the open mic there worked was you would write your name down on a slip of paper, and the host would draw the slip out of a jar. The order in which the host drew would determine the order of the open mic. I was somewhere in the middle for this open mic.
There were several extremely talented musicians there. I remember one guy who played a classical guitar style instrumental of “Somewhere over the Rainbow,” and another guy who had a gritty blues song about Hurricane Katrina, which had just happened. I don’t remember everyone who played, but I do remember that I was clearly the least experienced there.
At some point that night, I took the stage and started to play some songs I’d written. I still think one of them wasn’t that bad, but the other one (two song limit) sucked pretty hard in retrospect.
The point of this story is that sometime in the middle of my second song (a fingerpicky affair that was very difficult to play and sing), some jerks in the audience started laughing. I couldn’t see who was laughing, but because I could hear it so clearly (I can still hear it) it had to be the table of musicians that had just played sitting right in front. Every time that I missed a note (which was fairly often), they’d snicker and giggle, and it just got louder. I wanted to die right there on stage, but to my credit, I finished the song and then ran back to my dorm.
The reason this is one of my favorite open mic stories is this: I had the best friends in the world. I called one of my friends and told her about the laughing jackasses in the audience. She must’ve heard the tremble in my voice, because when I got back to my dorm, she was there waiting for me with a Dublin Dr Pepper (greatest beverage ever) and a reassuring smile.
Giddy-Ups. Austin, TX. Winter 2007
Remember that scene in “The Blues Brothers” where they play at that country bar in the middle of nowhere? Giddy-Ups in Austin is pretty close to that. It’s the bar that time forgot, and for that reason, it’s a really fun place.
I had for the most part shaken severe stage fright by this point in my career, but the audience at Giddy-Ups that night was still pretty intimidating. I was in my “angry at God” phase, and a lot of my songs reflected that. It seemed like a pretty right-wingy type place, so it was good that no one ever listened to my lyrics there.
There weren’t a ton of musicians there. There was the house band that opened the show, and then the open mic guys came on to play however many songs the host could tolerate. I went on first, right after the house band, and played a shitty version of a pretty good song I’d written. I was singing it so badly one guy in the audience shouted “Diaphragm, man! Diaphragm!” The first song is usually a throw away one anyway, so I didn’t sweat it too much.
My second song went a lot better. It had a fairly steady countryish rhythm to it, so people actually got up and started dancing to it, even though it referenced horrific events like Katrina and 9/11. Once again, I’m grateful certain audiences don’t listen to my lyrics.
I started to play my third song, which was my go-to “angry at God” song, when this guy got up on stage with me with a harmonica case. I was still playing the intro to the song when he asked me what key it was in. With a bit of music theory knowledge gleaned from community college I answered “C# minor.”
He just looked at me, and I kept playing.
Eventually, after trying several harmonicas, he figured out which one to use and played along with me. After I finished, he and several other musicians (and a few members of the audience) congratulated me on a good set. I’m just thankful no one listened to the lyrics.
Kick Butt Coffee. Austin, TX. Winter 2008
This was my favorite place to play in Austin. It’s a martial-arts themed coffee shop, and the people that run it and work there are super nice and open minded about music and other things. The night in question was one of my first times playing there. I was playing my slightly warped Ovation acoustic/electric for convenience. At Kick Butt, you usually got four songs. My songwriting had improved by this point, and I had started to learn a few covers that didn’t suck ruthlessly. My favorite cover song at the time was “The Biggest Lie” by Elliott Smith.
My first song went okay, but not great. The second song I really got into and played it probably the best I’ve ever played it. The third went okay, and then I closed with “The Biggest Lie.”
The Austin coffee shop crowd, unlike the Austin seedy country bar crowd, listens very closely to lyrics. Since my songwriting had gotten better, I was really looking forward to some feedback on my lyrics from people. After I finished my set, I left the stage and sat down at a table and started to put my guitar away. Then, an older white lady came up to me.
“I just want to tell you I really like your lyrics. Did you write those songs yourself?” she asked.
“All but one, yeah,” I answered.
“Well, they were all good, but that last one was spectacular.”
“Thank you,” I said, glowing with excitement about being recognized for my lyrics. She then left the coffee shop, and I realized the song she liked the best was the only one I hadn’t written.
Oh well. I’d come a long way from being laughed off the stage at the Cactus, and nothing was going to bring me down at that moment.
I’ve been feeling a little manic tonight, and what usually happens when I feel that way is I drive around town listening to music. Then, when I get bored of that, I end up at Whataburger or Ihop or Steak n Shake. Tonight, I ended up at the Steak n Shake at Coit and George Bush in Plano.
I didn’t catch their names, but the two guys working at Steak n Shake tonight were awesome. They were nice and informal, which I really like in service people, especially at night. That casual, but still very nice attitude is what I always adopted when I was in the service industry. In fact, as far as common courtesy goes, I’m probably nicer to strangers, service people and customers than I am to people I know. Whatever, I’m nice enough to people I know.
So anyway, I sat there in my little booth at Steak n Shake with my thoughts while bad music played. Eventually, my chili five way arrived in all its awesome awesomeness, and soon I had the check. As I was paying, the manager and I talked about how we both hated the music at the restaurant, and then, I went back out into the night.
Bright Eyes greeted me when I started my car, and the sky was full of lightning. I drove home, a little bit calmer than before thanks to friendly strangers and chili five way.
Steve Coogan’s character in “Hamlet 2,” when trying to write a play for his drama class, shouts “Writing is so hard!” I both agree and disagree.
Regardless of whether or not you suck at writing, writing can be very difficult. I’ve written all kinds of things. Songs, short stories, stage plays, teleplays, etc., and right now I’m working on a novel. It seems to me that the initial writing isn’t the hard part at all. Rough drafts are relatively easy, because who cares if they suck or not? They’re just rough drafts. Many writers don’t show rough drafts to people. I’m not one of them. I often display my rough drafts in order to get notes from people. Believe it or not, I actually listen to notes people give me (most of the time, that is).
The hard part is the rewrite. You often have to take ideas that you thought were great, and maybe still think are great, and then destroy them for the sake of the larger work. This is torturous for a lot of writers, myself included. Most things I write don’t make it past the rough draft stage, mainly because I can’t bring myself to kill my ideas.
But, the ones that make it to the second draft and beyond are usually the good ones. I’m currently on the second draft of my novel (Hipster Chick) and it’s been a hellish rewrite, mainly because I love the rough draft so much. However, I know that the small changes and corrections I make will contribute to the goodness of the final product. At least, I really hope so.
Great.
“Landed” Ben Folds
The 2005 Songs for Silverman was my grown up (kind of) introduction to Ben Folds. It’s also the soundtrack for my initial descent into depression, and the soundtrack to losing the only woman (girl at the time, I guess) I’ve ever loved. So, it’s an important album.
The first time I heard “Landed,” I was sitting in my dorm at UT Austin trying not to cry from a wicked depression I’d been suffering. A couple of weeks later, my girlfriend broke up with me, and I thought I was going to die. I began to listen to Songs for Silverman incessantly. All the songs meant something to me, but it always came back to track 4, “Landed.” There was something about the lyrics and the music that made me feel that cathartic feeling you get after you’ve been crying in the bathroom for a week.
Really, “Landed” is the one song I think of when I think of what I like to call the “Gina Era,” which consisted of lots of painful things I’d rather not get into here. But, because I survived all of that, to me today, “Landed” is kind of like a victory song.
“Say Yes” Elliott Smith
My love for Elliott Smith’s music is pretty crazy at times, I know, but the most important song, at least, the most important song I can think of tonight, has to be this one.
For someone who’s listened to A LOT of his music, “Say Yes” comes off as one of his most positive songs. I generally like the darkness that is reflected in many of his songs, but in “Say Yes” there’s something even more compelling. If someone like Elliott Smith, who, right or wrong, is known as this depressed individual, can write something so beautiful and optimistic, then he could also experience true joy.
Why is that important? Well, in short, it gives me hope for myself. I’m horribly depressed a lot of the time, and my mind often dwells in darkness more than the light. I’m fine on the outside, but…I don’t know. The point is that if Elliott can feel things that drove him to write and record “Say Yes,” then maybe I can feel those same things one day.
“Say it Aint So” Weezer
I got in the Weezer game way late, but when I did, I feel like I got it right.
My first detailed exposure to Weezer was trying to learn “Island in the Sun” on guitar for my first ill-fated performance with my de facto band at the time. I liked that song, but it wasn’t until getting a borrowed copy of Pinkerton that I really began to love Weezer. Pinkerton is and will always be my favorite Weezer album, but “Say it Aint So” can’t be beat as a song. Not just because it’s a good song, but because of what it represents.
This is another story from the “Gina Era,” but it’s not about her.
I, like thousands of other college freshmen, had a horrible freshman year. But, the one thing that kept me from killing myself was the love I received from my close friends. I don’t remember a lot of what happened that year, as it’s kind of a horrific blur, but I do remember one thing: driving my beat up Toyota Camry down I-35 with all my friends in the car. We were blasting “Say it Aint So,” (this is pre Rock Band, mind you) and singing along and having a great time.
I don’t think I’ll ever forget that. At least, I hope I don’t.
“If I Ever Leave this World Alive” Flogging Molly
I first heard Flogging Molly in a friend’s car in high school. I was going through my country music phase at the time, and consequently I was listening to lots of shit on the radio. But, Flogging Molly was something different. Something more raw and angry and real than the manufactured Nashville country pop that I was listening to.
“Hey man, can I borrow this CD?” I was talking about “Drunken Lullabies”
“I’ll burn you a copy.”
He did, and I played the crap out of it, much to the dismay of my Dixie Chicks loving girlfriend. She couldn’t stand Dave King’s voice, but to me, it was incredible.
Fast forward three or four years. I was living in Austin with that same friend who first introduced me to Flogging Molly, and my birthday was coming up. I read in the Austin Chronicle or somewhere that Flogging Molly was coming to Stubb’s to promote their new (at the time) album Float. My roommate and friend got us tickets to go see the show, and we invited several people to come with us.
It was a cold November night, and the big group we’d gotten together met down at Stubb’s. There were a ton of people there. Many of them were “normal” looking like us, some were all punked out and some were just straight up weird looking. But, as soon as the band came out on stage, it didn’t matter what dumb little clique we belonged to.
Okay, on to the actual song in question. They played the hits, they played new songs, they played everything. It felt like the show (which was really intense at times) was winding down. Then, Dave King started strumming out the all too familiar D chord that starts “If I Ever Leave this World Alive.”
Their performance of that song was one of the most beautiful performances of any song I’ve ever seen. And then, at the end when Dave shouted, “Hey Austin! It’s gonna be alright!” I almost cried.
It’s going to be alright after all.
“Trouble Hunters” Astronautalis
The first time I heard Astronautalis was a YouTube video of him freestyling. My friend shot it during a concert at our school. Astro’s ability to rap about anything the crowd suggested (dumpster diving, Carl Sagan, etc.) astounded me when I first saw this video, and then, when I saw him live at SXSW 2011, I was totally blown away. The first song I heard of his (besides this freestyle) was “Trouble Hunters.” I found the video for it on YouTube (thank God for YouTube) and just…wow. BUT, the story really begins at SXSW when I got to see him and his band live.
I was in town to visit some friends, and going to shows was pretty far from my mind, to be honest. Shows at SXSW can be a tremendous hassle sometimes, especially when you’re broke and impatient. But, I heard about a free Astronautalis show at High Ball on South Lamar, and a couple of friends and I decided we had to go.
So, we showed up at the High Ball pretty early thinking there would be the usual gaggle of irritating South By out of towners gumming up the venue. One of the first things I saw after walking in the bar was Astronautalis himself sitting at one of the tables just kind of chilling. He was wearing thick rimmed glasses, a white shirt and suspenders, which kind of threw me for some reason. I’d never seen him, or visualized him, in suspenders before. Bleubird was on stage doing his thing, so we went over and watched him for a while.
Then, it was time for the Astronautalis show.
He and his band took the stage. By now, the hipsters were out in full force, but I didn’t care. I was too excited.
I don’t remember how he started the show. It might have been with “The Wondersmith and His Sons,” but like I said. I don’t completely remember. The show as a whole was amazing. He played every one of my favorite songs except one (“Down and Out in the Bold New City of the South”), and the energy he put out on stage was infectious. He did his freestyle, which was awesome and funny as usual. He started to talk for a while while the band started to play “Oceanwalk” (another of my favorite songs) and I thought that was the end of the show.
He talked about the merch booth and a few other things, and then…after he said “This is the ‘Trouble Hunters,’” shit went nuts.
1 2 3 4!
Great way to close a show. I’ll never forget it.
She’s married to a good guy now, and it kills you inside. Not just because you still think about her, but because he’s a good guy. You wish that he’d be an asshole, but he’s not. He’s a lot like you, actually. Maybe that’s why she found him so attractive? He’s just a better version of you. More profitable. More up to date.
It hurts so bad when you talk about her. Your therapist doesn’t think she’s that important, but to you, she’s everything. Timing has a lot to do with that, it’s true, but still.
It’s torture to think about her with this other guy, this better guy, but maybe the worst part is knowing that she’s not nearly as evil as you make her out to be. In your mind and in your stories, she’s a witch that tore your heart out and ate it in front of you, but in reality, she was a nineteen year old girl with a whole new world in front of her. You were the past. You are the past.
She doesn’t think of you. She’s got a whole new life for herself while you’re still trying to pick up the pieces, and no matter what happens, you’ll never forget her. Maybe that’s the worst part, or maybe the worst part is that she’s forgotten you.
