Mother’s Day is complicated for me. Many of you know I was raised by two mothers, fabulous pioneers of queer parenting in the 90s and early 2000s. Fewer of you know that I have one mother who is my favorite person in the world and one mother I am not in contact with.

I understand people who call their mom every day. I also understand people who haven’t called their mom in years. I understand people who see their mom as a hero. I also understand people who see their mom as a stranger — or worse, an adversary.

If there’s one thing I know for sure, it’s that my life is full of music because of my mom Laura. For most of my youth, she was a beloved guitar teacher at our community music store and a folk singer who became a three-time finalist in the Kerrville Folk Festival New Folk competition after returning to songwriting well into her 40s. Our house was a frequent crash pad for traveling musicians; some nights I’d fall asleep to the sound of my mom and her friends playing folk songs by crackling firelight around the chiminea in our backyard.

Everything I love about music, I love because of my mom. She’s the one who came into my elementary school class and sang a duet with me to “More Love” by the (Dixie) Chicks. She’s the one who taught me guitar in middle school, patiently walking me through every note of the intro to Jesse McCartney’s “Beautiful Soul.” She’s the one who first played me my all-time favorite album, Living With Ghosts by Patty Griffin. She’s the one who introduced me to James Taylor, Bonnie Raitt, The Indigo Girls. (She’s the one who told me that’s Michael Stipe singing the background vocals on “Galileo”).

And my favorite part of seeing the world through music with my mom is that it hasn’t stopped. Every week, we’re sending each other new songs — “This one will make you cry” / “You’ll like the lyrics in this one” / “What does this song remind us of?” Music is sewn into our routines, from dancing in the kitchen to “Smoke From a Distant Fire” to singing along to The Story’s “So Much Mine” to playing “Woke Up From a Dream” by the Paper Kites whenever she drives me to the airport (we cry every time).

Perhaps more uniquely, our memories are also sewn into her music. I still weep when I listen to her brilliant song “Objects In the Mirror,” which tells the story of the slow, painful breakdown of my parents’ relationship. I cherish every single second I spend with my mom, and I feel incredibly lucky to have been raised by her. But as we often tell each other, “Even when we’re not together, I love you all the time.” Even when we’re not together, as long as I have music in my life, I will have a piece of her here with me. To me, that is the greatest gift she could ever give me.

For this month’s cue sheet, I asked my followers:

“Will you tell me a song that reminds you of your mom?”

For the sake of transparency, this is how I actually asked:

And of course, you guys delivered. As expected, the playlist is chock-full of certified Mom Hits, from Sheryl Crow classics to Celine Dion to several mentions of Seal’s “Kiss From a Rose” and Dido’s “White Flag.” Your moms have taste, but they also have personality — they’re funny, they’re empathetic, they’re brave. These songs offered me dozens of windows into different childhoods, family dynamics, and parent-child relationships. The majority of the songs stemmed from childhood memories, offering a bittersweet reminder that so much of our quality time with our parents happens when we’re too young to really appreciate it. Some songs didn’t come from shared memories at all, but rather lyrics that spoke to complicated feelings. Some of the moms in these stories still live nearby. Some are far away. Some are no longer with us.

But in some way, shape, or form, all of these mothers made us the people we are, and through these songs, they will always be here to remind us.

The rules: I gather responses via my Instagram (@gadzucks), where I post a story asking for songs + context. The story runs for 24-48 hours, so all these responses were collected within a maximum 2-day window. For this cue sheet, I also sent out a note to current subscribers. Not all responses are selected, and all selected responses are posted anonymously. These are people of all ages from around the world. I know some of them personally; some are strangers to me.

Cue Sheet: Moms

SONG: “You’ll Be In My Heart” - Phil Collins

“I really latched onto Tarzan as a kid and have pretty vivid memories of watching it with her on a sick day from school. I had strep throat and can really picture and taste the mint chocolate chip ice cream she gave me. In a very motherly way, she knew to leave the ice cream out in the kitchen for a little bit to let it melt slightly, I liked it that way. Anyway, ‘You’ll Be In My Heart’ is the song from the perspective of Tarzan’s gorilla mom, and I remember it making her cry. Now as an adult, I’ll send the song to her every now and then as a small way of saying hi love ya.”

SONG: “Into the Mystic” - Van Morrison

“One of her favorite songs, and I remember her playing it for me when I was younger and starting to get into older music, one of those ‘you need to know this song’ kind of things. One year on her birthday, she was driving to work and was so excited because a recording came on the radio of the Allman Brothers playing it live in Boston (she grew up there), and it lasted exactly the length of her drive. It became one of my favorite songs too: soothing, ethereal, dare I say mystical. (Incidentally, it was the last song I ever heard Phil Lesh play live on this earth.) In the thick of the pandemic in November 2020, I was living at home, and she and I went to see Warren Haynes play a socially distanced concert a couple hours’ drive from us, on a big hillside on a farm in Connecticut. There was inclement weather, and he said he was going to pack in as much music as he could; the rain was starting to fall as he kicked into a cover of Into the Mystic. It’ll always be associated with Mom.”

SONG: “Heaven Help My Heart” - Wynonna

“I don’t remember exactly which store it was specifically, but my mom loved (and still loves) to buy shit that she doesn’t need, especially in the discount aisle and the small knickknacks right before the cash register. In the mid 2000s (I must have been about six years old, close to when my family had come back home from visiting my aunt in Arizona), there was a whole rack of CD compilations for sale, and my mom saw this Wynonna compilation (she went by Wynonna Judd at the time) and said ‘I have to get this.’ I had never heard of this woman before, but I loved Shania Twain (the closet was glass growing up) and Little Big Town growing up. I had this portable CD player and I would go into my mom’s CD collection and then sit in my backyard and listen to her CDs all the time. I think I went to this album specifically because Wynonna looked so cunty with her red hair and big 90s hair, but it’s my mom’s taste in music to a T.”

SONG: “Coconuts” - Kim Petras

“It unironically became her favorite song in like 2021, but she would never admit that.”

SONG: “Kiss From a Rose” - Seal

“My mom used to drive us kids up to the beach during the summers for beach days, and a Seal CD was one of the only CDs in the car! But we only liked ‘Kiss From a Rose,’ so we sort of listened to that on repeat lol.”

SONG: “Fuck Tha Police” - NWA

“My mom got a new iPhone back in the day and was asking me to help transfer her data, and that song was quite literally the ONLY song in her iTunes. She said she ‘likes driving around town to it.’ Mind you, she lives in Orange County hahahaha.”

SONG: “Wishin and Hopin” - Ani DiFranco

“At some point in my life, my mom’s favorite movie was My Best Friend’s Wedding, and that meant we listened to the soundtrack on a loop for at least a year every time we were in the car. Her favorite song was far and away Ani DiFranco’s cover of ‘Wishin and Hopin.’ Even though I haven’t heard it in at least 10-15 years, I still have it pop into my head — especially her singing along with it.”

SONG: “Too Many Dicks (On the Dancefloor)” - Flight of the Conchords

“My mom worked at my high school, so for the first two years, I rode in the van with her. This was in the heyday of burning CDs, and her birthday was coming up. I was probably 15, so I had absolutely no money and an inflated ego about my music taste at the time (as I’m writing this in my Godspeed You Black Emperor shirt…). So I made her a CD with Sufjan Stevens, Modest Mouse, etc., but I wanted to put a funny song on there and I threw that on. Her birthday came and I gave it to her, and she was thrilled. So one day we were listening to it and that song came on and she scream-laughed, “ARE THEY SAYING DICKS!?” That CD is still on heavy rotation in her van.”

SONG: “White Flag” - Dido

“It was on the radio too often in 2004, and I was in the backseat of my mom’s car doing errands too often.”

SONG: “White Flag” - Dido

“My mom loved to put it on in the car (late 2000s, London). First song I fell in love with, still love it. Maybe that’s more something that reminds me of my memories in music, but it’s important to me that my mom is the one that kickstarted that journey, so I always think of her.”

SONG: “Breakeven” - The Script

“I have a distinct memory of driving around with her when that song was on the radio, and out of nowhere she scoffed and started talking about how she didn’t like the line ‘Praying to a god that I don’t believe in’ because she’s Christian and I guess just thinks it’s sacrilege to ‘fake pray.’”

SONG: “Misty” - Johnny Mathis

“My mom always lit up when she heard this song for as long as I could remember. In the typical Midwestern, repetitive carbon copy response, sharing the same ‘Oooh I love this song’ as if she’d never told me 28 times previously in the exact same way. That is how it got communicated until my college years and beyond, when she shared that the last ‘boy’ she dated before marrying my dad used to play the song on his guitar. I still think of her every time I hear it — whether it’s the Errol Garner version (my favorite), Sarah Vaughan/Quincy, Count Basie, Ella, etc.”

SONG: “I Love You Always Forever” - Donna Lewis

“When I was a baby, she’d hum this to get me to go to sleep. I remember her always changing the lyric from ‘You’ve got the most unbelievable blue eyes’ to ‘green eyes,’ and it made me feel like the most special boy in the world. I still love the song so much to this day.”

SONG: “Sign of the Times” - Harry Styles

“The song came out right around the time my parents got their first Amazon Alexa, and all day long my mom would yell ‘Alexa, play Sign of the Times by Harry Styles.’ I was a senior in high school and my dad was working in Chicago, my sister was already off at college, so it was just my mom and me at home together. This song is all I can remember hearing during that period. And we were both smoking so much weed. Hotboxing the living room and screaming ‘ALEXA, PLAY SIGN OF THE TIMES BY HARRY STYLES.’ My mom would say he reminded her of David Bowie.”

SONG: “The Sign” - Ace of Base / “Radar Love” - Golden Earring / “Some Kind of Wonderful” - Grand Funk Railroad

“One of my mom’s absolute favorites. She used to listen to it after breakups, which is like okay queen go off. She also used to call the radio station I worked at and request ‘Radar Love’ by Golden Earring, so that song makes me think of her. And then whenever Grand Funk Railroad’s ‘Some Kind of Wonderful’ would play on the radio, my mom always said ‘This was always my favorite song your dad did,’ because he played in a cover band with her best friend’s boyfriend before they dated and whatever.”

SONG: “Car Wheels On a Gravel Road” - Lucinda Williams

“Mama loves all things folk/Americana, and we drove around alllll the time for her second job.”

SONG: “Take On Me” - A-ha

“I was 15 and at the wedding of an older cousin. Me and my cousin were outside milling around when this song came on, and for a reason I no longer remember, it moved us both to dead sprint back into the reception and dance for the rest of the night. My mam remembers this and loves it. I was a very awkward and unhappy little kid who had been fresh out of a poor time of it with lockdown. When restrictions tightened again and I would stay in bed for fear of facing anything, I’d hear this song being blasted up from the kitchen to reach my room. We’re 6 years out of that time now, and she still plays it most every time I’m home, and we still give it socks every time we dance.”

SONG: “I Say A Little Prayer” - Dionne Warwick

“When I was young, my mom worked full time and traveled regularly. I’d have a really hard time when she’d leave, so she started singing me this song in the morning.”

SONG: “Less of a Stranger” - Julia Jacklin

“Pretty obvious, this song is about wishing your mother were less of a stranger to you. I found this song a little bit after I got the talk most kids get when they turn 18. You know the one: ‘Here’s all the family drama I’ve been neglecting to inform you of.’ I guess I started to realize that a lot of my issues I didn’t understand came from her, and I wonder if I felt like I knew her a little better if I’d have come to terms with more of them. I love my mom, but I think we all wish we could understand our parents a little better.”

SONG: “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You” - Frankie Valli

“My mother used to sing it to me as a small child. I would get all embarrassed and tell her to stop. She’d just say ‘Oh baby, you’re gonna miss these times one day, I just want you to remember how special you are to me.’ Of course, I didn’t get it back then. She passed away in June 2024, and that song makes me tear up whenever I hear it. I do love the big BA-DA-BA-DA part, it gets all loud and chorus-y and it’s just fun musically. I am glad I made her think of such a touching song. I miss her greatly, especially this time of year.”

SONG: “Under Pressure” - Queen & David Bowie

“My mom is one of the biggest Queen fans so every Queen song reminds me of her, but this one has a special place. Every party big or small we go to and we hear the start of the song, we assemble (whole family shabang) and start dancing and we belt out the first ‘pressure’ and sing along. Dancing is non-negotiable. We perform the whole damn song.”

SONG: “It’s My Life” - Bon Jovi

“My mom got me ‘Crush’ for my birthday one year, and I loved it so much that I accidentally ended up reigniting her obsession with her 80s rock star crush. We all made fun of her for it, but I was at least happy to have something we could both enjoy together, even after I got into heavy metal that gave her the ‘screaming meemies,’ as she put it. Years later, she said I could have her record collection as long as I digitized it for her, and in the process I realized how friggin sick her taste in music is. Her copy of Dark Side of the Moon (WITH POSTERS AND STICKERS STILL IN THE RECORD SLEEVE!) is maybe my most prized possession.”

SONG: “Seventeen” - Sharon Van Etten

“Growing up, my mum had this massive photo album of pictures of her and her family when she was younger, and it always seemed mysterious and intriguing to me because she never let me and my sister look at it. It was always a ‘you’ll see it when you’re older’ thing. A few months after my 15th birthday, she finally let me look through. One of the first few times I looked through it, I was listening to this song, wondering how my mum would’ve been at my age, if I’d look back at me now when I grow up and think we’re the same.”

SONG: “Maggie May” - Rod Stewart

“Growing up, my mom and I never really shared the same taste in music. Our radios lived on different planets. But when I was about 19 or 20, we were driving somewhere together when Rod Stewart’s song ‘Maggie May’ came on the radio. We both started singing along at the exact same time. We immediately looked at each other in complete confusion, then burst out laughing.

It turned out she had always loved the song. I knew it from the movie Lords of Dogtown, specifically the scene where Heath Ledger is singing along to it while sanding down a surfboard. After that car ride, I showed my mom the movie, and the song became ours. A few weeks later, her pet mini-goat gave birth to twin girls. Naturally, we named them Maggie and May. It still makes me smile that a song neither of us expected to share created some of my favorite memories with her.”

SONG: “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)” - Eurythmics/Annie Lennox

“Fleetwood Mac was the band for mothers of the 70s-80s, but my mom always reacted strongly to Annie Lennox. Great song and incredible voice; Annie was pretty out there for the 80s suburban moms. She only had two tapes in her car: a Best of Harry Belafonte compilation and the Yentl soundtrack 🤷🏻‍♂️😂.”

SONG: “Class of 2013 - Audiotree Live Version” - Mitski

“My mom often talks about how after recovering from cancer, we (my siblings) were the only things she could name as her success. She always knew what she wanted and this life was never part of it. As a kid, I loved her more than anything. Her love was always domineering. As a teenager, I feared a fate like hers happening to me. Her dreams for me were suffocating. Now, when I see more of myself in her, I can’t help but wonder if she sees herself in me too. I don’t think I can ever like my mother as a person, yet my existence is tethered to her validation. She probably feels the same. Despite all the resentment, my biggest fear has always been my mom dying before I do, because I’m too afraid to know a life without her.”

SONG: “Josie” - Steely Dan

“Growing up, I practiced the drums at least 3 hours a day, every day, for nearly 9 years. At one point, when the drums were in the living room and my mother was sick of hearing whatever 90s rock I had on, she asked me to learn the Steely Dan song, ‘Josie’ off Aja. Apparently I liked playing that one, because she still reminds me 30 years later about the time I thanked her for requesting Josie.”

SONG: “Hound Dog” - Elvis Presley

“When I was a little kid, I hated getting out of the bath and being wet and cold. She would wrap the towel around me and dry me off as fast as possible while singing it. I had no idea what a hound dog was. I thought it was some type of hot dog. 🌭”

SONG: “Wild Mountain Thyme” - The Chieftains

“She used to sing it to me as a kid. It reminds me of being Irish, and we would be out in nature a lot, and I sort of associate the song with all these fundamentals of life, like family, rhythm of day and season, and emotional cycles like sadness into happiness and the life cycle of death and rebirth. It’s a lot in one song.”

SONG: “Orinoco Flow” - Enya

“I remember my mom spinning me around in the living room of our old house to this song. It’s a core memory of pure joy.”

SONG: “Dude (Looks Like a Lady)” - Aerosmith

“Imagine this. It’s 1980s Chicago. I’m a teenager, riding as a passenger with my mother at the wheel. A local rock station is on, and my mother rolls down the windows and turns it up. It’s the latest Aerosmith hit. Then she starts singing along to the chorus, shouting above Steven Tyler’s shriek.

‘DO ME FUNKY LADY!’ … ‘DO ME FUNKY LADY!’ It was almost as bad having to tell her that the actual words were ‘Dude looks like a lady.’”

SONG: “White Rabbit” - Jefferson Airplane

“My mom and sister and I sing this song together (more the two of them because they have incredible singing voices). I love how much my mom loves this song. I think it channels something wild and powerful in her. Watching her belt out ‘remembaaaaah what the dormouse said!! Feed your HEADDDDDD! Feed your HEADDDD!!!’ always fills me with joy. I listen to it when I miss her witchy spirit.”

SONG: “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman” - Carole King

“She loved Carole King. When she died, I inherited a huge stack of her records, and the first one on the stack was Carole King’s. Always felt a lot of emotions when listening to Tapestry.”

SONG: “Bridge Over Troubled Water” - Simon and Garfunkel

“Her dad died when she was 9 and this song reminded her of him, and it reminds me of her.”

SONG: “(They Long To Be) Close to You” - The Carpenters

“As we all know from watching the miniseries in the 80s, Richard Carpenter was addicted to quaaludes. And my mom, who has never done drugs to my knowledge, always said the solution for everything was to ‘take a quaaludes and calm down.’ To which I would always reply, ‘Mom, they haven’t made quaaludes since Richard Carpenter got addicted to them in the 70s.’ She would just shrug her shoulders and say, ‘Well. Anyway.’ 🤣”

SONG: “In My Life” - The Beatles

“I sang this song for a theater camp recital (lol) when I was in elementary school, and it was my first time ever hearing it. My mom told me it was her favorite Beatles song from her favorite Beatles album, and as I got older and into music, I realized Rubber Soul is my favorite Beatles album too. I’ll always think of her every time I hear it, and that makes me very happy.”

SONG: “It’s All Coming Back to Me Now” - Celine Dion

“My mom LOVED all the female power vocalists, but I particularly remember her wearing out her Celine Dion CDs on road trips. Mom died three and a half years ago from early-onset Alzheimer’s, so the memory aspect of this song hits extra hard, too. Heard this song in public recently and burst into tears. I miss her.”

SONG: “What a Fool Believes” - The Doobie Brothers

“I’ve always thought of ‘What a Fool Believes’ by the Doobie Brothers as my mom’s song. She lovessss to dance and has always had impeccable taste. During the pandemic, I had a few precious months at home with my whole family, and we threw weekly parties in our kitchen (we can all dance, and we can all drink). For Mother’s Day we made a playlist of all my mom’s favorite songs to dance to, kicked off by ‘What A Fool Believes.’ We danced our asses off in the kitchen (following a few tequila shots) and after she says, ‘Oh I love this! This is my sister’s song!’ Turns out, ‘What A Fool Believes’ is the song that makes my mom think of her sister, who passed away 9 years ago. Florence also loved to dance to this song. So now when I hear this song I get to think of my mom and of my aunt.”

SONG: “Into the Mystic” - Van Morrison

“My mom specifically requested it be played at her funeral. And it was. Forever entwined.”

SONG: “Me and Bobby McGee” - Janis Joplin

“When I was ten, my mom finally bought herself her dream car: a convertible Mustang. She had three CDs in it, but my favorite was Janis Joplin’s greatest hits. I remember so many drives down the highway with the top down blasting ‘Me and Bobby McGee’ and yelling along to it together. My mom and I have a complicated relationship, but those times were when I felt the most like we were just being girls together.”

SONG: “Coming Around Again” - Carly Simon

“She used to listen to this song in the car a lot when I was a kid. Anytime I hear it, I think of her.”

SONG: “Everybody Plays the Fool” - Aaron Neville

“‘Everybody Plays The Fool’ by The Main Ingredient, as covered by Aaron Neville. Growing up, it would play on the radio when I was in the car with my mom, and we misheard the lyrics as ‘Everybody plays the flute.’ We’d joke about it so often that it’s become the inverse where thinking about my mom reminds me of the song. We still joke about it to this day, even though I haven’t heard the song in possibly over a decade. We say ‘Everybody plays the flute’ like it’s some kind of proverb.”

SONG: “12:51” - The Strokes

“It’s 2003, and my mother bought the Room on Fire CD because she liked the artwork.

I was 8 years old. We played the album every morning on the way to school that year.

I vividly remember asking which song was her favourite, and she said track 4.

I used to say ‘Play your favourite one last time’ just before getting to school. The whole album is incredible, but whenever I hear 12:51 I’m always transported back to those morning car rides with my mother.”

SONG: “In Bloom” - Nirvana

“She went to college in San Francisco in the 90s and went to tons of grunge shows. When I got into high school and had my own grunge phase (dyed my hair bright red, smudgy eyeliner, etc.), her and her college friends made me a playlist of their favorite 90s grunge and rock to culture me with some real music. Obviously there was so much Nirvana, but ‘In Bloom’ is her favorite. Now I go to college in Seattle, where Kurt Cobain used to live. On her last visit up here, we shared headphones and listened to our favorite Nirvana songs while we wandered around Kurt Cobain’s memorial park, near his old house in Seattle. I felt like I was seeing a little bit of her younger self then.”

SONG: “Soak Up the Sun” - Sheryl Crow

“It reminds me of my mom, very cool with her bob and sunglasses driving us around to theater rehearsals and after-school activities in our hunter green mini-van. It’s funny now because I live in LA, but this song will always make me think of her and Houston humidity.”

SONG: “Wanting Memories” - Sweet Honey In the Rock

“I believe it’s about post-death grief for a parent, but mine is semi-estranged and this song allows me to feel a softer, sadder grief instead of frustration and resentment and confusion.”

SONG: “Right Here Waiting” - Richard Marx

“She’d sing it to me all the time starting when I was a baby, to the point where as I got older if it ever came on the radio in the car, I’d turn the volume up and sing it with her. Even when I became a jaded teen, I’d still belt it out if she was in the car. The song is corny as hell, but as an even more jaded adult, I still love it because I always think of her when I hear it.”

SONG: “In Between Days” - The Cure

“For the entirety of my childhood, my mom’s ringtone was ‘In Between Days’ by the Cure. In her 40s, she was a stay-at-home mom very serious about her family and serious in general, but when the Cure came on, or the English Beat, or Depeche Mode, you couldn’t stop her and my dad from talking about seeing them in 1980 for $15 downtown and how much they used to love punk and new wave. I used to beg her to let the phone ring as long as possible so we could dance to it. I feel like I’ve learned the most about my parents through talking to them about music. Whenever I hear it now, I can’t stop myself from frantically looking around for my mother’s cellphone to answer. I think we need to bring back ringtones.”

SONG: “The River of Dreams” - Billy Joel

“My first memory is listening to Billy Joel’s ‘River of Dreams’ with my mom in our Dodge Caravan. Wood paneling, of course.”

SONG: “Boyish” - Hippo Campus

“This song goes ‘Daddy’s coming home but Mama’s looking guilty.’ One month in the summer, my mother started coming home late and I assumed she was out with other men. I knew she was lying when I’d ask where she was, but turns out she was looking at apartments and eventually found a place, separated from my father, and moved out. She was always the one to instigate arguments with my father, and every day under their shared roof felt like walking on eggshells. I coped with the tension at home by going to a lot of concerts and idolizing way too many musicians! The lyrics ‘Wolf child’s heavy with the weight of the world / Storing all his love in an adolescent girl’ perfectly describe escapism.

SONG: “I’m the Only One” - Melissa Etheridge

“She always preferred audiobooks or talk radio to music, but she absolutely loved singing this song.”

SONG: “We Are the Battery Human” - Stornoway / “First Time” - Hozier

“The first because it was one of my first ever favourite songs, and in the pre-lyric-site days, my mum dutifully listened to the concert recording we had and wrote out the lyrics so that I could learn the words. The second because of the line ‘Some days I think I owe my life to flowers that were left there by my mother / Ain’t that like them, gifting life to ya again.’ This song came to me in a really emotionally volatile and difficult time and reminded me to reach out to my mum. It encouraged me to go home for a mental health break, which quite possibly saved my life.”

SONG: “I’ll Be Seeing You” - Cat Power

“I listened to this cover on repeat the summer after my mom passed away. ‘I’ll be seeing you / In every lovely summer’s day / In everything that’s light and gay / I’ll always think of you that way / I’ll find you in the morning sun / And when the night is new / I’ll be looking at the moon / But I’ll be seeing you.’

Hers was the brightest smile, and I always think of her as the sun. This song perfectly encapsulates how my mom taught me joy and love and is reflected back to me every time I see something beautiful that makes me happy.”

SONG: “Follow your Arrow” - Kasey Musgraves

“When I was little, she didn’t know how to make playlists, so this song was one of two. I remember loving watching her dance along and sing the ‘heys.’ I can’t hear it without doing her signature rock at the hips and looking up to the side all coy. I must’ve heard it a hundred times, but like a person I love, I just can’t get sick of it. I’ll never get sick of her and her ‘heys.’”

SONG: “Paradise By the Dashboard Light” - Meat Loaf

“She told me as a kid I had to learn the female part to partake in the back-and-forth line-up at wedding receptions (I’ve never seen anyone else do this outside of my family). Now I’m the only one of my friends who knows this whole song???”

SONG: “Is There Life Out There?” - Reba McEntire

“The song is about a woman who wants more out of her life than being a wife/mother, and my mom used to talk about how she felt similarly to the subject of the song (especially in the music video, where Reba was the star). She barely graduated high school in a small town in Louisiana and joined the military to get out and see the world. She only ever got to see Louisiana and Florida in her 18-year military career — not much of the world. I grew up, went off to college, studied abroad, have moved all over for my job (and traveled a bunch, including taking her to some of her “bucket list” locations), and after having a kid myself, I deeply understand her desire to have more of a sense of self than just ‘mom.’ It’s heartbreaking and makes me want to hug her and give her the chance to do life again, this time putting herself first.”

SONG: “Kiss From a Rose” - Seal

“Whenever it comes on the oldies station, I don’t just think of my mom (who loved the song), I think of a specific moment when I was 10. Mom had picked me up from school and we had just pulled into a parking space on the main street of the town I grew up in to run an errand, and the song came on just as she was about to shut the engine off. We sat in the car for another four minutes so she could listen to the full thing. No disrespect to Seal, but I didn’t get why she was so obsessed with it and was like ‘What is this even about.’ Now and forever, ‘Kiss From a Rose’ reminds me of my mom and that moment as a confused nine-year-old trapped in the car listening to it with her.”

SONG: “Dreams” - Fleetwood Mac

“My parents (former jazz musicians) played weddings while I was in high school. My bedroom was above their practice area, so I heard them rehearse every day. Consequently, I knew the lyrics to a lot of boomer hits, but the one I remember most is my parents rehearsing ‘Dreams’ by Fleetwood Mac. Me, doing my calculus homework and listening to my mom sing Stevie’s part. Good shit.”

SONG: “Love Today” - MIKA

“When it came out in 2007, my mom LOVEEEED this album. She was working part-time and was home every Wednesday (which is a day off from school here in France), and she would just BLAST the song at 8:30 in the morning while I was trying to sleep because she was cleaning the house on her day off. I remember her vividly dancing around with her broom and just singing that song at the top of her lungs, and while it wasn’t funny to not be able to sleep in, I’ve always loved how happy and full of life my mom is. She loves singing and dancing anywhere and anytime. She is the life of the party! She is the best!”

SONG: “Dreams” - The Cranberries

“It was my parents’ first dance song during their wedding, so they request it at every wedding I’ve been to with them and it’s so cute.”

SONG: “What’s Up?” - 4 Non Blondes

“My parents were together for ten years, broke up for six months, then got back together, got married and had me and my sister. When they were on their break, my mum went travelling to see her sister who lived in Hong Kong and said she listened to this all the time.”

SONG: “Me and My Arrow” - Harry Nilsson

“The Point was one of my mom’s favorite albums. Growing up, we listened to it countless times. I always felt I was her Arrow — that we were a duo up against the rest of the world.”

SONG: “25 or 6 to 4” - Chicago

“My mom was a music teacher but still managed to have pretty bad taste in music. With the exception of Chicago, of course. She enjoyed the brass big band sound.”

SONG: “Hoy puede ser un gran dia” - Joan Manuel Serrat

“Whenever I had a big event (exam, contest, competition, etc) my mom would wake me up playing “Hoy puede ser un gran día” (Today might be a great day) by Joan Manuel Serrat. It’s still the greatest song to cheer me up.”

SONG: “Loose Lucy” - Grateful Dead

“My childhood was full of pretty much constant low-level domestic disputes between my mother and my father (many of which stemmed from my father’s alcoholism and crazy work hours, but certainly not all of them). One of the most memorable ones was when I was 6 or 7 and my father, a huge Deadhead, was getting hammered every weekend morning that summer so he could spend dawn until dusk each day building a wooden deck at our house. He was playing a Grateful Dead live show album and ‘Loose Lucy’ came on and my mother — who was really upset that he was spending the whole weekend drunk and disconnected from his family building a deck — came out onto the half-constructed deck and asked him to explain the lyrics and why they’re calling her Loose Lucy. he was like ‘I don’t know, I guess they’re saying Loose Lucy is a lady who likes to party.’

My mother lost it. She turned to me and said ‘It’s a sexist song. You don’t even think critically about the fucking lyrics. They’re saying that her VAGINA is loose because she has sex with lots of MEN. It’s a sexist song and you’re playing it in front of your SON and now I have to explain to your SON that when women have sex, it doesn’t LOOSEN THEIR VAGINAS.’ I was no older than seven. I think fondly of that afternoon every now and then — I’m very grateful for my feminist and media-critical mother, I’m grateful that she exposed me to all these ideas when I was small and never tried to shelter me. It has extra poignance now because my father is slowly dying from complications of his alcoholism in his early 50s, and after his liver started to deteriorate, my mother got much softer and more forgiving with him, and he made more of an effort to listen and not be boorish. My mother has not lived an easy life.”

SONG: “Heroes” - David Bowie

“My parents kept a constant flow of music in our house from the 60s to the 90s growing up, but David Bowie was one my mom kept returning to over and over. She would drop me off at school as a kid, roll the windows down and blast ‘Space Oddity’ to embarrass me. Or she’d groove to ‘Fashion’ while cleaning the house. I absolutely didn’t appreciate it as a 13 year old (unfortunately)! As an adult, I spent a few years in college as a DJ for my university’s radio station. Every week, without fail, she would call into my show and request ‘Heroes.’ And every week, without fail, I would close the show with it to let her know I was thinking of her.”

SONG: “Against the Wind” - Bob Seger

“Every Saturday morning when I was in high school, my mom would BLAST Bob Seger’s greatest hits and that was when I knew it was time to clean. But it would wake me up and it made me so mad. I now have that greatest hits album on vinyl and put it on when I clean.”

SONG: “You Are My Sunshine” - Elizabeth Mitchell

“She used to sing it to me when I was a baby. I still go right back to childhood when I hear it. I remember her running her hand through my hair.”

SONG: “Tainted Love” - Soft Cell

“My mother is a real Connecticut mom. She’s very Fairfield county, always done up nice and a proper member of the community blah blah blah. Well. I went to France with her and she got drunk and randomly blurted out that her favorite song in the whole world was Tainted Love by Soft Cell and I have genuinely never gotten over it. It is an absolutely bizarre pick for this woman and there is no explanation. My friends who know her now send me and my mother videos of them dancing to Tainted Love whenever it comes on at a bar. It’s just become a whole thing, really. I made my wedding band play it for her. So now, even if that was just a drunken statement with no meaning, it’s too late — she’s stuck with being the Tainted Love woman forever.”

SONG: “Sometimes You Can’t Make It On Your Own” - U2

“When I was growing up, my mom would buy tapes, then CDs of new music of artists she liked. She loves U2 and would buy the albums when they came out, so rather than growing up with Joshua Tree I grew up with the albums All That You Can’t Leave Behind and How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb. One line from the song ‘Sometimes You Can’t Make It On Your Own’ resonated with me: ‘If we weren’t so alike, you’d like me a whole lot more.’

In my adult years, I discovered Bono wrote this about his late father — my mom is very much alive, so it’s not a perfect parallel, but it has some great lines about how the mirror we have with our parents is what makes the relationship difficult (out of similarities, not differences).”

SONG: “Lucy” - Mt. Joy

“The song is about a friend of the band that got cancer (I think brain cancer). She lived this enviable life of adventure and love and happiness and didn’t want to be a shell of the person she was so decided against aggressive cancer treatment. All she wanted was one last jam and to go out a beautiful memory. My mom was often like that, and I have lots of unresolved trauma about the torture we put her through when we urged her to aggressively fight her brain cancer. She died almost three years ago, and this song makes me feel close to her again. I miss her every day.”

SONG: “Gotta Kill Captain Stupid” - Suicidal Tendencies

“It was the first song I’d heard by them, and also the reason I was now googling ‘suicidal tendencies’ on the family computer aged 12. My mum found this and suddenly started acting even more nice to me and really sweet, and after a while I asked what was going on and she explained and we both got to have a big very relieved laugh when I explained it was just the name of a band I’d discovered. It always reminds me of how gently and carefully she approached what must have been an incredibly terrifying situation for her, and that just really sums up the woman she is.”

SONG: “Sacrifice” - Elton John

“Was born in 1990, and Mum heard it on the radio constantly during her pregnancy. Not just occasionally. Getting in the car to go to a check up? Sacrifice. Get in the car for birth? Sacrifice. And then later on, I loved Elton John and she’d hear it and say ‘That’s our song!’ Now whenever I hear it, I think of her.”

SONG: “Gracias a La Vida” - Mercedes Sosa

“Did you see Bad Bunny’s Halftime show? Did you catch the kid that BB catches sleeping on some chairs? Well, here is my contribution:

How come they’re getting louder as the neighborhood gets quieter? This couch is hard. Hmm, the rum bottles look emptier. I wish we went back home already! I want to sleep in my own bed. Dammit! The half-drunk sing-along of Mercedes Sosa’s ‘Gracias a la Vida’ is on. Two more hours before my mom and her friends decide to end the party.

SONG: “Those Three Days” - Lucinda Williams

“When I was seven, my mother, brother, and I played hearts on the floor. We had never done this before, and we would never do it again. My mother in a blue Kimono, swaying to Lucinda Williams, the extra fabric pendulous under outstretched arms. A sun salutation that grieved a marriage. It was the first time I saw freedom up close — the adult kind with sharp, interesting edges. This song always reminds me of those moments after my parents’ divorce when she drank too much wine and I didn’t know enough to be disturbed. We just yelled ‘Scorpions crawled across my brains’ into each other’s ears and I had a ball.”

SONG: “Love Is a Wonderful Thing” - Michael Bolton

“I grew up listening to Michael Bolton because he was my mom’s favorite, and I’m unashamed that I still love all his 90s music. 😆 When he appeared on The Masked Singer, I knew it was him the moment he started to sing and yelled to my husband, who was not on my level (and rarely is, though he supports my level). He was supposed to have a show in my home state the day after my 40th birthday and I absolutely would have attended with a sign, but unfortunately he was too sick to tour. When this song starts with him vocalizing, my mom would sometimes say, ‘Sing it, Michael!’ to the delight of my sister and I.

SONG: “Consejos de una madre” - Dueto America

“The title translates to ‘advice from a mother,’ and the song is about a mother giving advice to her drunkard son who lives a life of sin. Over and over tells him there’s still time to change, but in the end he dies in a bar. My mom always loved listening to this stuff! Sad corridos of poor wailing moms and their stubborn sons, haha. Makes me cry and laugh a little because it’s so dramatic, but that’s what Mom likes!”

SONG: “tolerate it” - Taylor Swift

“When Taylor Swift surprise dropped evermore in December of 2020, track 5 ‘tolerate it’ elicited a lot of debate: Is it about a girlfriend begging her boyfriend to care? Is it about a father who cannot express love to his daughter? Is it about an age-gap relationship? But when I first heard ‘I know my love should be celebrated / but you tolerate it,’ I immediately thought of my mother.

I came out to my mom in 2017, and it didn’t go great. Could’ve gone worse, of course, but she sobbed and didn’t speak to me above a whisper for a few months. (For context, she was raised very conservative, took me to pro-life marches growing up, voted Trump in 2016, etc.) For years to come, she would divert conversations about my dating life, tearing up, leaving the room, or not-so-smoothly changing the subject. For about five years, I felt like I was begging my own mother to stop just tolerating me. She was doing everything in her power to hide it and constantly denied that it was an issue at all. I was left wondering if I was being crazy and oversensitive (‘If it’s all in my head tell me now / tell me I’ve got it wrong somehow’). But I always knew, felt, and was acutely aware of how much my authentic self devastated her.

I would fantasize about the day I could ‘break free and leave us in ruins / take this dagger in me and remove it / gain the weight of [her] and lose it.’ Somehow, in a song about a distant partner (or father figure, who knows), Taylor Swift managed to perfectly capture the child-like devastation, self-doubt, and anger I was navigating during these years.

In ‘tolerate it,’ Taylor bottled up one of the most universal queer experiences: what it feels like to beg someone you love to love you back, without them having to try.

*Just a little hopecore to round this one out on Mother’s Day. My mom has since made a complete 180. I don’t know if it was COVID, Trump’s ever-devolving shitshow, or just time, but she sent me a ‘Love Wins’ Valentine’s Day card this year. She points out women we pass on the street, asking if they are my type. Now, when I listen to ‘tolerate it,’ my feelings are much more layered; I re-experience the pain and heartbreak of those years, but I also feel such a strong sense of gratitude for the mom I have now.”

The next call for cue sheet responses is now LIVE on my Instagram story (@gadzucks)!

It looks like this:

If the spirit moves you, submit a song by DMing me on Instagram! That’s where I collect responses right now, but if you don’t have Instagram, you can get in contact with me some other way and we’ll work it out.

As a reminder, I won’t use your response if you just tell me the name of a song. I’ll need context, storytelling, and detail — help me understand the story of this song in your life and why it means what it means to you!

The story will run for 24-48 hours depending on how many responses I get, so act fast if you’re interested in sharing!

And as always, thank you for reading.

Crushes lend themselves to music. Love lends itself to music. Heartbreak lends itself to music. Why not combine all three? There’s no scrap of self-mythology quite as potent as the tale of the “One Who Got Away.”

Was it a missed connection on the train? The right person at the wrong time? A devastating instance of unrequited love? The people we don’t end up with live like poltergeists in the corners of our memory, and sometimes all it takes is a song to unleash them upon our fragile hearts.

For this month’s cue sheet, I asked my followers:

“Will you tell me a song that reminds you of the one who got away?”

For the sake of transparency, this is how I actually asked:

To be honest, the results blew me away. I was expecting heart-wrenching stories, tales of long-lamented fumbles and childhood sweethearts lost to the winds of time. What I wasn’t expecting was a huge gender discrepancy.

Without compromising too much anonymity here, I want to be clear: Out of more than 60 total responses, the VAST majority of them came from men. Like, to the point where I had to post again to stress that I wanted more responses from women.

These men were passionate, tortured even. I received multi-paragraph sagas about lost loves, numerous admissions that they still think about these people all the time. Hell, I received pictures: old black-and-white yearbook photos, photos of hand-drawn mixtape cover art.

Meanwhile, while a number of women did respond, many said some version of this:

Perhaps I shouldn’t admit this, but I was gobsmacked. I may be biased as a sentimental woman who was raised by two sentimental women and surrounds herself mostly with sentimental women, but I’ve never once considered that men might have any kind of monopoly on tender nostalgia in any domain.

My sample size may have been small, but the discrepancy was conspicuous. Instagram wouldn’t let me view a total gender breakdown of my Instagram following, but it would tell me the gender breakdown of interactions with my profile over the last 30 days:

Perhaps more importantly, my past cue sheet questions all seem to have received a relatively even ratio of male:female responses. So this month’s results realistically begged the question: Why are men more likely to have a One Who Got Away?

I’m no sociologist, but it got me thinking. Love and yearning are arguably pretty equal-opportunity sports, so what was it about the One Who Got Away that resonated so deeply with men in particular?

My best guess is this. Despite our many trials and tribulations in this world, women do have the luxury of being taught how to feel and process our emotions from a young age. I’d argue most men aren’t given the same education; in fact, many are given an insidiously antithetical education whereby their emotions must be hidden or outright buried in service of “strength” or “manhood.” To me, this makes men more likely to do three things:

1. Expedite the downfall of their own relationships as a result of their limited emotional toolkit

2. Not know how to healthily process and heal from the ends of these relationships

3. Only permit themselves limited windows or circumstances in which they can feel the full weight of their emotions (for instance, while listening to a song)

This brief interlude of armchair psychology isn’t meant as a dig. I’m proud of men for loving, losing, learning, etc. But I do think it invites an interesting conversation on the way we process our more uncomfortable emotions — and how important music can be when words or emotional intelligence or even therapy fails.

So here they are: 47 memories of lost love and the songs that hold them.

The rules: I gather responses via my Instagram (@gadzucks), where I post a story asking for songs + context. The story runs for 24-48 hours, so all these responses were collected within a maximum 2-day window. Not all responses are selected, and all selected responses are posted anonymously. These are people of all ages from around the world. I know some of them personally; some are strangers to me.

Cue Sheet: The Ones Who Got Away

SONG: “No One Dies From Love” - Tove Lo

“No song has resonated more deeply with me than ‘No One Dies From Love’ by Tove Lo. It came out right as I was going through the most difficult breakup of my life to that point. That girlfriend and I met on an app during the pandemic, both aware from the beginning that she’d be moving across the country for grad school in a few months. But we had an immediate strong connection and decided to give it a go anyway and see what happened. What happened was that I fell completely head over heels for her fast, and felt so many things I’d never felt for anyone else before. Her feelings didn’t develop as much as mine, and she decided we shouldn’t try to pursue a long-distance relationship. So she left, and our relationship ended with absolutely nothing wrong except for the time and place. She’ll forever be the one who got away.

In the song, Tove Lo sings, “No one dies from love / Guess I’ll be the first.” The pain was so difficult for me that I did feel I could die from it, with the naiveté that your heartbreak is so much worse than anyone else’s. I listened to that song (and music video) over and over after she left and resonated with every word.”

SONG: “Always Something There To Remind Me” - Naked Eyes

“I had a huge crush on this girl that sat next to me in math in 7th grade. It felt mutual, but 7th grade. Neither of us ever said anything to the other about it. After that semester, I didn’t see her again for years. In college, I walked into a record store a few towns south of mine and she was working the counter. I was excited but just acted mellow and asked if she remembered me. She said no.”

SONG: “The Kill” - Jimmy Eat World

“Throughout high school, I was madly and secretly in love with the girlfriend of my best friend (who is still my best friend 20 years later). At one point senior year, I had been listening to that song ad infinitum and it spurred me to finally write a long, sprawling confession of presumably unrequited love. Sealed the letter, went to drop it off, turned around and came back. To this day, it sits in the top dresser in my childhood room. Everyone is still none the wiser. I stumbled upon that song very recently for the first time in years, and all of those ancient feelings I thought were dead came flooding back. Music really is a beautiful match to the emotional powder keg.”

SONG: “Ship Song” - Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds

“So, this is like 1998/1999. I met a girl and we started dating. Her senior year of high-school (I had gotten my GED at 17). Summer kid stuff, very 90s. We break up, she goes to college at Rutgers, I visit, we fall back in love (that young love everyone should have appreciated more when they were young). We stay together long-distance a couple more years, break up but are still intimate. Finally, I join the army and she graduates and moves out midwest.

We emailed for a while, Myspaced. I saw her once on leave from my first tour in Iraq. She was involved with someone, but… well, we weren’t good people that weekend. Then I never heard from her again. She introduced me to Nick Cave, made me a mixtape with a custom cover that I still have to this day. That song always felt like our song, and I guess it really was.”

SONG: “Jealous” - Labrinth

“We dated for years. She lost a close relative. Went to Hawaii for a short-term thing that turned into a long-term thing. Realized she wanted to be single. I thought I was respecting her space and she’d eventually come back. Obviously not, lol. Of course I came across this song shortly after it ended. I get nostalgic for the time I spent with her — she was my first love.”

SONG: “A Thousand Miles” - Vanessa Carlton

“Might be too fleeting to really fit the theme, but I’d just graduated college, moved to the city, was several months single after the most serious relationship I’ve ever been in, and was generally depressed. One night, my roommates and some old college friends decided to go to a bar for karaoke, and despite my protest, they managed to drag me along. I drank and dodged questions from old classmates about employment for much of the night until my blood alcohol level reached the tipping point that brought out the bolder me.

I forget what song I went up to sing, I just remember seeing a group of girls but only really noticing her. There are some people whose unique energy and personality you can just see in how they carry themselves, and I was immediately enamored. With my general self-esteem, I wrote off having a chance, and with my drunkenness, I said screw it and absolutely belted whatever track I picked. Our groups weren’t seated too far apart, so I kept catching her gaze over the next hour, and when I got up to get a drink from the bar she came up and asked me to sing a song with her. I don’t remember what we picked, but I remember how close and in sync we felt and how much fun the moment was.

After, we got talking and kissing and back to talking. We decided to go for a walk, and eventually I walked her to her subway stop where we would part ways since she had to get up in the morning. We kissed some more and she took my number, but fatally I think I gave her the wrong area code since I had recently switched numbers. Never heard from her again.

I tried to find her on social media over the next couple days, but to no avail. On our walk to the subway station, we danced in the street singing ‘A Thousand Miles’ by Vanessa Carlton, and it’s stuck with me ever since — for the longest time as a sad memory, but now I feel lucky to have at least had that spontaneous night.”

SONG: “Where Are You Going” - Dave Matthews Band

“First summer camp love. 💗 I still keep in contact with him! Married though.”

SONG: “When You’re Smiling and Astride Me” - Father John Misty

“To the woman I thought was my one and only, couldn’t believe I found her and now three years since the last time we talked. Guess she’s happy with someone else, but man I loved her.”

SONG: “Midnight Blue” - Alkaline Trio

“A little on the nose for a 22-year-old experiencing his first adult breakup, but that’s where I was in 2017. She is married now. Happy for her. I think when you’re 22, especially if you grow up in a hypermasculine culture, it’s when you really start learning how to healthily process emotions for the first time? And when you care about someone — someone you hate to lose but want to see happy — and you’re learning to confront the mess while still living with yourself as a wreck…. it fits the vibe.”

SONG: “Lost Love Response Call - Po’ Folks” - Nappy Roots

“This is a song I put on a mixtape CD for a close high-school friend of mine I had a crush on. I like recommending music to people, and it was a style of hip-hop she had never been introduced to that she really liked so it was double validation for me. I always think about her reaction to it now when I hear the song. We stayed close after high school through college, but the last time I saw her was at my Christmas party about five years ago where she introduced me to her new boyfriend, now husband. Even though we still live in the same city, I never hear from her even if I reach out (we didn’t have a falling out or anything. A genuine friendship ghosting). My mom will occasionally still ask about her and refers to her as her daughter-in-law.”

SONG: “Family Affair” - Mary J Blige

“She and I had been close for years but never single at the same time. The same week that I conclusively ended the relationship I had been in, I accepted a new job 2,000 miles away. A couple days later, several of us were hanging around in the bakery she owned after closing, and music was blasting while the staff cleaned. She had always loved Mary J and was playing a mix. When the lines ‘I told you leave your situations at the door / So grab somebody and get your ass on the dance floor’ from ‘Family Affair’ came on, we somehow ended up dancing on the counter. We were never sure who instigated. The rest was history. Except it wasn’t. She had deep roots and a growing business that kept her anchored there. I had my new firm and my own roots in the town I moved to. We tried to make it work long-distance for four years. Now we each have our own families. And that song.”

SONG: “A Thousand Kisses Shy” - Laura Zucker

“I had just emerged from a pretty brutal 20-year relationship and felt pretty much dead inside. A couple years later, I sat next to someone on a flight who kindled the spark inside me — gave me hope that I could love again. We lived 500 miles apart. I emailed her a couple of times after that, but nothing ever came of it. But it inspired this song, and opened me up to the possibility of finding love again.”

SONG: “16, Maybe Less” - Calexico, Iron & Wine

“I made a playlist called ‘idwtdtwyc’ for the person I loved (and still love) more than anything in the world. When we dated, we discovered that we could send each other long acronyms and decode them using context, and it was a game we liked to play. The title of this playlist might look like gibberish, but it says ‘I don’t want to do this without you Claire,’ and I would bet anything she would know that instantly. Every time I hear a song that puts some shape to my grief of losing her, I add it.”

SONG: “Suzanne” - Judy Collins

“I was 13/14 years old, Episcopalian boarding school in Boca Raton. She stole my bike to get my attention. I was a boarder and she was a day student. First true love, used to make out by the chapel in a secluded grotto, unaware that it was visible from many angles. The next year, I ended up getting kicked out for stealing liquor out of my dorm master’s apartment, so our paths went separate ways. She gave me this album as a gift. It was 1974 when this all happened — 50 years ago — but I can close my eyes and I’m back in time, my first kiss, the pay phone calls at night, I still have letters she sent me over that summer break.”

SONG: “Out of Time” - The Weeknd

“My ex was my high-school sweetheart, my first everything pretty much. First kiss, first time, first apartment, first real try at life with someone. The peak of it was our second apartment. Everything felt locked in and we were both getting promoted at the same time, taking trips, just fully in sync, which is when that song came out. We played that album so many times — it felt like a reminder to not take things for granted, which is what we ended up doing.

Things didn’t fall apart all at once. It was this slow thing with dumb fights turning into bigger ones, weird distance even when we were next to each other, and mistakes on both sides. Those last months hit a point where we both knew it wasn’t the same, but neither of us had it in us to walk away yet. One of the worst feelings. The lyrics are exactly what it felt like: loving someone fully but still losing them anyway. She’s in New York now and I’m still in Cali. No contact, and everything blocked except messages.

When I hear it now, it’s this wave of nostalgia and acceptance at the same time. I understand why it had to happen for us to grow, but at the same time I know I’ll probably never have something exactly like that again. Not because it was perfect, but because you only get one person you grow up with like that.”

SONG: “I Just Wanted to See You So Bad” - Lucinda Williams

“Put it on a playlist for a girl I was seeing and she told me it reminded her of the time she drove home from LA (4 hours away) in the middle of the night instead of staying in her hotel room because she missed me.”

SONG: “What I Know” - Parachute

“When I was a freshman in college, I met this girl a year older than me in geology and we got paired together for a semester-long project. I was immediately smitten. Eventually we ended up watching The Notebook on my bed in my tiny shared dorm room, and I was so sure we had something, but after that we stopped seeing each other as much. Eventually, the summer came and we went to our respective hometowns.

The next year started and I knew she was going to Europe for a semester abroad, so I burned her two albums by Parachute. I had been listening to these albums nonstop all summer thinking about her, and they were perfect for this kind of young white-boy yearning that is hard to describe. She said thank you, went to Europe, but didn’t really keep in touch much. When she got back, she started dating a guy I hadn’t heard her talk about before and I just let her go, assumed it just wasn’t meant to be. One Friday a couple years later, she calls me out of the blue. “What are you doing on Sunday night? We’re going on an adventure.”

She won’t tell me what’s happening, just says she’ll come pick me up on Sunday at 5. When she shows up at my apartment on Sunday, I jump in her car and she’s listening to the Parachute album I had burned for her almost 2 years prior. We stop to get some tacos, get back in the car, and the album ends. She says, ‘Hey, can you reach in the passenger door and get the other album you burned me?’ So I find the little jewel case with this burned CD in it, open it, and inside are TICKETS TO SEE PARACHUTE THAT NIGHT. Still one of the most thoughtful and romantic things anyone has ever done for me. She drove us into the city, we saw this show, and it was probably one of the best nights of my young life.

We went out for milkshakes after, and I asked her if she would want to hang out more. She said no. She was too busy, she was just happy that she got to do this one thing for me. I was so confused, our vibes were off the charts, unmatched, she had just made this huge gesture, and she still said she wasn’t interested.

Having never completely given up hope, months later I let her know about another concert happening at the music school if she was interested in going. She came out and we once again had an amazing night. She drove me home and told me in my driveway that she needed to talk to me — that she had had conflicting feelings for forever, but sometimes she just wanted to kiss me. I told her she should. We had this incredibly intense connection and were together all the time for the next week, at my place, at parties, going on dates, it felt perfect. Until the day I was leaving for spring break came, and at dinner she basically told me she went on a date with someone else and she was picking him. I was absolutely heartbroken, I had no idea what to say, so I just went back home. I drove my six hours down the Texas highway, doing 85 with the windows down, these fuckin’ Parachute songs blasting out of my Jetta. Spring break sucked.

I stopped listening to Parachute for a long time. I knew the music was kind of corny and earnest anyway, but it was actually a loss. It’s been over 10 years, but that story is just burned into my brain. The concert tickets and the milkshakes and everything. All good now, we did actually make peace with each other years later. She’s married and I’m very happy with my partner and we don’t talk and that feels just fine. But Parachute still does it to me, and it’s 2014 again.”

SONG: “Souk Eye” - Gorillaz

“It was the summer that song came out and the lyrics just make too much sense to think of it any other way. We hit it off on a study abroad trip (tale as old as time), and when we got back I turned the hours of videos the two of us had taken into a cute little video diary/short film deal complete with needledrops and everything. That song was the one I used at the end, and I can still see all the images that it played over in my head when I hear it. I should text her lol”

SONG: “Midnight City” - M83

“The first night we slept together, I was woken up at 5am by her alarm going off to that song — it was the first time I’d ever heard it, and it made me feel so happy I felt like I was vibrating. When I hear that song, even today, almost 15 years later, I’m transported back to being 19 in her dorm room twin bed. I can feel her arms wrapped around me, smell the cream on her skin, hear the joy of birds on that spring morning. I was euphoric. I have never felt the height of that feeling again. She was the first woman I fell in love with, the first woman I slept with, the only person I’ve ever really deeply loved. She inspired me deeply, and in those years we were together we grew up so much. We were on and off for a little over 10 years. Almost two years ago, out of nowhere, she stopped talking to me. When I googled her to make sure she was okay and nothing bad had happened to her, her marriage announcement came up. She’d married a man in the Bay Area. She stopped answering just after they got married. When I hear the song I still think of her, and I still feel the blooming of that euphoria in my chest, but around the edges of that feeling there’s also sadness, a feeling of missing her, and involuntary tears well up in my eyes.”

SONG: “Loro” - Pinback

“He was my first love, I was 20. He was teaching me how to drive stick shift and it started to snow, the first snowfall of the year. I had just met him and this song was playing in his car as he tried to show me how to shift gears in an empty school parking lot at night, the lights beaming down in the snowflakes. We dated for six years after that, he was probably my first and only real love. Every time I hear this song, I think of that memory with him.

He moved to California some years ago to try to get me back, but he and I had fundamentally changed. We broke up, I became more of who I am now, (liberal, queer), and he met a girl at his church and married her six months after we tried again. He named his firstborn daughter with his wife after me. His mom called me crying after his wedding and said he married the wrong girl and it should have been me.”

SONG: “Time (You and I)” - Khruangbin

“I met her when I still lived in San Francisco and was struggling with working in the music industry after the venue I worked for closed. As we navigated dating in quarantine/reopening, I recall having this sense of what it meant to feel free around her because she prioritized life over work, which was so profound to me after constructing my whole identity around what I did only to feel so lost when it evaporated. We shared a ton about music, biking, being outdoors, and artists we liked to see, which is when she showed me Khruangbin.

I remember feeling heartbroken when things ended, but I understood that’s what she needed so I supported her decision. Even now, this song makes me feel the California breeze and sunshine, which she embodied so naturally. Although it was a fleeting connection, it was a formative time in my life I’m grateful I ever experienced. I hope she’s out there experiencing the world as unabashedly as I remember.”

SONG: “Up Against The Wall” - Peter Bjorn and John

“I worked for a National Community Service program for a couple years in my early 20s. During that time I met a beautiful woman — smart, headstrong, and just a cool person in general. Way outta my league, which made her exactly my type. I fell for her pretty hard, we ended up hitting it off and having a fling. It was great, but then the program ended and we went our separate ways. For the next few years, we managed to meet up from time to time. Each time we met up, we would just pick up where we left off, and it felt like not that much time had really passed at all.

We had strong feelings for each other but were on two very different paths in life. She was driven in her career and motivated to be successful, and I could never ask her to step away from that. At the time, I was a backpacking guide and never imagined myself doing anything different, so I eventually broke it off when I met someone else. I wish it could have worked out, but deep down I knew it never could. She eventually met someone new, is successful and seems to be happy. I truly wish her all the best in life, she deserves it.

‘Up Against The Wall’ was one of the songs that came up on my shuffle when I was laying in my bunk after we had hung out together for the first time, watching some show on her laptop in the hallway of campus, leaning up against the wall. Every time I hear that song, I feel happy to have gotten the time together that we did and sad at what could have been.”

SONG: “What We’ve Got” (SOL Remix) - Manatee Commune & Flint Eastwood

“I resist calling him ‘the one who got away,’ that kind of pining can stay in 2017, but he was my greatest love. We were together for two years, and our foundation truly was music. I left for a two-week solo trip to Europe, and when I came back, something had shifted. A week later, he ended it. In the messy aftermath, me foolishly trying to change his mind, us disentangling a shared life, he sent me this song. Bold move, considering the chorus is basically ‘No one’s gonna love me like you do.’ Exactly. The truth is, I think I loved him more than he loved me. He was my greatest love; I’m not sure I was his, despite what he once wrote on a sticky note I still carry. Yes, I know.

But when I hear this song now, I don’t think about the ending. I think about the sweet, quiet part of relationships, the slow dancing in the kitchen, the warmth and beauty of the setting sun on top of a ferris wheel. He’s still in San Francisco. After eight years, we’ve found our way into something like friendship. It’s good, I think. I just hope we both find someone who loves us the way we deserve. Me first, though.”

SONG: “Unknown / Nth” - Hozier

“Every line of this song perfectly describes the experience I had with her. She and I were getting along great, and there was a profound electricity between us, but we both moved to different countries soon after meeting. We kept in touch, but long-distance wasn’t the vibe and we drifted apart. She remains in some distant other land today. I sang this song for her on her birthday two years ago via an unlisted Youtube video, which she greatly enjoyed. The line ‘I thought you were like an angel to me’ stings remarkably, by virtue of her name itself being Angel.”

SONG: “Transatlanticism” - Death Cab for Cutie

“I would drive out of town to meet her for the end of her serving shift, and we’d drive around talking and listening to music. It was the happiest I’ve ever felt. Why didn’t it work out? Because I was a young and immature idiot. She lives about 10 minutes away now. I bumped into her months ago, and some of the feelings are definitely still there.”

SONG: “Help I’m Alive” - Metric

“I met the one that got away while doing comedy in Toronto. For a few years, I had been splitting my time between the US and Canada. I’d spend half of my week working in the states and the other half up there, writing/performing shows with friends and making art. I heard ‘Help I’m Alive’ at least once on every drive into or out of Ontario. Hundreds of times. It’s the first song that comes to mind, because it was a guarantee that if I had seen her on any given day, I had heard that song too.

She was smart and silly and pretty and maybe the sweetest person I had ever met. She had kind of a Gilda Radner vibe. Just phenomenally talented. We were always drawn to each other, but it never progressed past a mutual crush and good friendship. At the time, I was fresh out of a relationship where I’d been cheated on, and my confidence/self-esteem were pretty low, so I never went for it. I regret it, but that’s the way it goes sometimes. Eventually I moved to NY and we sort of lost touch, but I know she’s happily married with kids now. I don’t hear the song often anymore, but listening now is nice. I’m glad to say it’s not a bittersweet feeling, it’s just sweet. Nostalgia for a fun and formative couple of years where I was fortunate to have someone like her in my life for a while.”

SONG: “Romeo and Juliet” - Dire Straits

“I listened to it on repeat the day I wrote my friend’s friend a letter telling him I wish I’d picked him 10 years ago. When he and I first met, I had JUST started dating the guy who I ended up marrying, cheated on me a bunch, divorced. At the time I sent the letter, One Who Got Away was one-ish year into a relationship so I ‘they ain’t married’ justified shooting my shot. He never talked to me again. ‘When you gonna realize it was just that the time was wrong?’”

SONG: “Guaranteed” - Eddie Vedder

“An incredible guy I always felt was slipping through my fingers. The closer I got, the more he slipped away. No idea where he is now, but I think of him often and what my life would be like if he didn’t always slip out the back door.”

SONG: “Sons and Daughters” - Allman Brown and Liz Lawrence

“Summer 2016, I was 17 years old and hopelessly in love with my friend A, who was a year older than me. She was going off to school in the fall, and she had a very unpleasant home life so she stayed at my house in coastal Massachusetts as often as she could. We spent the whole summer just getting hammered in my backyard 4 or 5 afternoons a week, and we’d stumble down to the beach and talk about politics and our families. I switched career paths because I looked up to her so much. That summer, I listened to Allman Brown and Liz Lawrence ‘Sons and Daughters’ over and over again and thought about her. I wanted to grow old with her and have children with her and spend every summer for the rest of our lives like we spent that summer. Then, she went off to school and we never saw each other again.

To this day, when that song comes on and they sing ‘All those evenings out in the garden / Red, red wine, these quiet hours turn into years,’ I’m reminded that our quiet hours did NOT turn into years, and that nothing I ever had afterward was quite like that. We haven’t spoken in years. I would have been so much happier if I had married her.”

SONG: “Crush” - Dave Matthews Band

“She’s still one of my dearest friends, and I recently made her a mixtape for her birthday. (We’re in our 40s — yes, it was an actual cassette.) I gave it to her in front of her abusive fiancé — knowing how much that sack of shit hates me is almost as good as seeing her face when the song ‘Crush’ came on. I can’t imagine either of us willingly listening to Dave Matthews Band ever again, but that song will always be Ours.”

SONG: “Piano Man” - Billy Joel

“My ex and I connected over the song ‘Piano Man’ by Billy Joel. We were listening to it on a drive home from somewhere, and I said I had been planning to sing it at karaoke. We sang it together as we parked, and we got to the part where he sings ‘Now Paul is a real estate novelist …’ We both stopped and wondered what that meant, ultimately deciding it was a wry joke about a guy doing a job to pay the bills while working on what he really wants to do: writing novels. My ex is a real estate agent who has always wanted to be in a writer’s room for a comedy show — she couldn’t believe I’d made that connection, it was like it clarified her sense of self in a tangible way that’s always been there in this super popular song. For her birthday, I enrolled her in a TV Writing 101 class at a local writer’s workshop, and I helped her workshop bits for her first handful of open mics. Her ex of 9 years stifled her passions in a lot of ways and made her feel cringe for trying things like this. Now she’s moving overseas because she needs to be alone, something I knew was a likely outcome but moved forward with the relationship anyway. I was going to move with her, but she told me she needed to go alone, even though we both want to end up together. We can’t predict what will happen, but we’ll always love each other.”

SONG: “Objects in Space” - La Dispute

“We were really good at breaking up and really bad at staying broken up. She had a way of calming my anxiety just by being there. She had a calm acceptance of my faults and insecurities that eventually got in my own way. I allowed myself to sabotage my own happiness. We never had loud fights followed the next day by passionate words of love. This song isn’t grand, it isn’t extreme, it isn’t one that will turn my eyes to waterfalls. It’s quiet, it’s somber, it’s a realistic portrait of what I felt realizing it was officially over. Putting things away that made up that part of my life. Things that I slowly let go of over time, allowing me to see how it’s better now.

I’m not sure where exactly she is and I don’t know what it would be like to see her again or if I even want to. Not in a malicious way, just in a way that it is over. Or is it? I don’t know and I don’t know if I want to find out.”

SONG: “pick up the phone” - Travis Scott and Young Thug

“She was a Young Thug fan and one of the funniest women I ever dated. Great taste in movies and TV. I love rap but don’t care at all about Thugger, but I’ll still send her the article whenever he’s in the news.”

SONG: “Waving At You” - The Mountain Goats

“I started seeing a newly single coworker who had been my friend. First night we hooked up. I told her I had a crush on her. She says it was mutual but that my timing was bad because her other friend had already asked her on a date. Fast forward six months, we’ve been on vacation together but she’s still seeing this guy. We’re on our way to a work party and she tells me the other guy is another coworker who I’m friends with and see all the time and who had no idea about us. Work party was an absolute nightmare. Shortly after I said we were done, we continued hooking up, then I said we’d be friends and that didn’t work either. This song became the anthem of we’re done done and dividing whatever was left between us and going our separate ways. Even though from time to time I forget and think we’re still friends.”

SONG: “Always Alright” - Alabama Shakes

“2011 classic. There’s something about this track that’s wistful, hopeful and assuring all at once. I went to their concert in 2016 in Forest Hills, and hearing it live was special. I went with my ex-boyfriend (lol), but they capture so many emotions in that track. Listening to it brings me back to late September, starting college in a new city, and holding on to what you know and letting go of things that don’t serve you. The takeaway being that everything is going to be ‘alright.’ It’s funny how songs hold on to memories from years ago.”

SONG: “Higher” - Rammor

“It’s not so much a ‘got away’ song as it was about my life with my then-wife. I would listen to it on repeat. This was before our separation and divorce. She is in Florida now, I live in Virginia. I do miss her, I don’t miss that life.”

SONG: “Crazy” - Gnarls Barkley

“The one who got away 21 years ago. Love of my life. That song was EVERYWHERE. 11 years ago we reunited and are now married and he is PERFECT. ♥️

[The first time], we just fizzled out — both too young and lived far away from each other. I went on to get married, and when that ended, he happened to reactivate his Facebook. I popped up, so he sent me a message (11 years ago this week), and the rest is history! We were long-distance for 18 months then ran away into the sunset together. We got married in September 2024 and he’s a glorious human being!”

SONG: “Good Fortune” - PJ Harvey

“It’s a list of all the things I wish I had continued experiencing with her. Also a reminder that she never got away. She was my best friend, but contrary to what everyone in the dorms thought, she was never here with me. It was I who was there with her. All because of something I misheard.

After weeks of spending every day together exploring our first big city, indie cinema, museums, international food, and comparing class notes from our different fields, I asked her how her Spanish was so good. ‘I had a boyfriend that speaks Spanish,’ I thought she said, in my second language. Chemistry kept bonding us. Day by day. Night by night. Then one day, she mentioned her boyfriend was spending Christmas break with her at the dorm. ESL be damned. She didn’t say “I had a boyfriend who speaks Spanish.” She said “I have…” And the future I thought I was about to have was never there. Months later, I had to tell her how I truly felt. We tried to continue spending time together as friends, but I had to distance myself because the more time I spent with her, the more I fell for her. I was too immature.

PJ Harvey’s ‘Good Fortune’ is about the great times the main character has with a man. It’s impossible for me not to skip the gender of the song’s subject and just think of “la little cute white girl” who I thought would just engage in small talk for a while and forget we ever met. Even after I told her I could not continue our friendship, we were always, ALWAYS, there for each other. Until I graduated. Then I think I saw her once at a party, and would get news about her from conversations I had with her roommate, who was a mutual friend. She got married. Last thing I heard, she moved back to the Midwest and became a teacher. And here I am writing about her as the Santa Monica breeze hugs these memories I clearly haven’t let go of.”

SONG: “All I Want” - Joni Mitchell

“Living in Hawaii. Her father didn’t like his daughter with a US Sailor who dabbled a little in the devil’s lettuce. Cannot remember her name but I hope she had a good life.”

SONG: “June Hymn” - The Decemberists

“I hesitate to call him the one that got away, because I let him go when I finally came to terms with the fact that he was never going to commit to me in the way I needed him to. But he was my first love, and it was very fun and very intense in equal parts. We were long-distance toward the end, and one of his visits coincided with a Decemberists show. We went together, and when they played ‘June Hymn’ (as I so hoped they would), we put our arms around each other and sang along. He’d be flying home the next day, and I already missed him so much it hurt, but for that moment I just closed my eyes and felt his closeness. A few months later I ended things over the phone. I knew it was the right thing, but it was so hard. I couldn’t listen to The Decemberists for a long time after.

But I healed, went to therapy and learned why that relationship was so appealing to me, and met my husband (not necessarily in that order). My ex is also married now. I saw him and met his wife at a mutual friend’s wedding a few years ago. It was warmer and less weird than I thought it would be. We text sometimes now. Revisiting old Decemberists songs doesn’t sting anymore. Even ‘June Hymn.’ My husband loves that album and it makes me think of him now.”

SONG: “I’d Lie” - Taylor Swift

“Being 15 and in love with a boy who was also my best friend and he happened to love the colour green and be born on the 17th??? Come ON. One day [Taylor will] release this for real, and even 17 years later, I’ll never hear it and not think of him.”

SONG: “The One That Got Away” - Katy Perry

“Cheesy and basic as hellllll but literally the Katy Perry song ‘The One That Got Away’ because it came out the summer after I was a few months out from the first most devastating breakup in college and I lived alone that summer and just spiraled dancing around my apartment. All the lyrics felt like they applied so well to it at the time. I’ve since grown and evolved and don’t think he’s truly ‘the one that got away’ anymore, but I do think of him when I hear that song.”

SONG: “Happy Ending (LA Version)” - MIKA

“The guy in question introduced me to this song, he had the ‘no love no glory no happy ending’ part tattooed. It was a right-person-wrong-time situation (for me at least), and I fought hard to keep him but he didn’t want the same things with me. We had a fling, and it was intense and wrecked me completely, and I vividly remember him saying that I was juggling myself to justify having him in my life. So I stopped.

He taught me what sex could feel like if you really love who you’re having it with, he was the first guy to treat me like a princess without me doubting if I deserved it. The conversation faded, then seven months later on Brazilian Valentine’s Day he texted me and I was a wreck all over again, but I didn’t see him. Then another nine months passed and this time he came over and it was like no time had passed. But I grew so much in the meantime, and he looked so much older and tired and smaller... and I missed not witnessing all this time passing, but I understood that I didn’t because he didn’t want me to. Every time I hear this song, I remember him because it’s almost like a self-fulfilled prophecy. ‘I guess I wish you well / A little bit of heaven, a little bit of hell.’ It’s a reminder of how much I loved him and had to grow without him, only for him to resurface and make all the growth go to shit. It’s been over a year now and I wouldn’t text him back if he reached out. He’s better in hindsight.”

SONG: “Jens Lekman’s Farewell Song to Rocky Dennis” - Jens Lekman

“I met D* on MySpace, senior year of high school. He was my age, emo, and played guitar in a local ska band. I posted idiotic synth rap songs with my Girl Scout troop on MySpace (a story for another day). He thought our songs were funny, so he invited me to his birthday party, which was also a punk show and a Kony 2012 fundraiser. (Because this was 2007, lol.)

We were instantly smitten. He taught me how to play drums, and we made our own silly music together in private. But I decided to go to art college in NYC and he decided to stay in Florida. We dated through the summer, up until the night before my flight. That’s when we swapped mixtapes; the Jens Lekman song was on his tape for me, and it still crushes me to this day. He’s a successful neurobiologist now, married to a woman who kind of looks like me. I do wonder if we would have made the distance or hated each other in the end.”

SONG: “The Dirt” - Tor Miller

“Dating someone who was the closest person I’ve been to where everything just clicked. Went to different colleges and decided to go back to being friends as she did her residency in the college state. She ended up meeting someone, they got married and are happy with a family. I’m happy that she found her person, but it does feel like I got robbed of something because of the way life played out. My circumstances didn’t let me keep up with her at the time, and I just hope the person she’s with treats her well and makes her as happy as she made me.”

SONG: “Distant Lover” - Marvin Gaye

“This song reminds me of my ex from college who dumped me and said she was out of love with me for most of our relationship. Despite all of this, I loved her so much and I still would’ve begged her to take me back at the time. Now I have a little self-respect, I think.”

SONG: “Good to Love” - FKA Twigs

“There was this guy. He’s Dutch, but originally came from my country. Moved to the Netherlands when he was a kid, changed citizenship and all. Back in 2019 he came back to my country for six months to work remotely and try to get back to his roots, he said. We matched on Tinder. I was not in a good headspace for a relationship, so we decided to keep it casual. After a few months, both of us developed feelings and he started talking about applying for longer remote work permits from his office so he could come back and be here with me. I wasn’t ready yet, so I said we could talk when he managed to get back here and see if we still felt just as strong.

In January 2020, he went back to his country. We still texted and video called each other every day. He applied for the longer remote work, bought the ticket back here for April 2020, and then the pandemic hit. At first, we were still hopeful. Still planning for a lot of things. Then July came and we realized probably we didn’t have a future together with the world like that, so we ended things.

Of course the song reminds of him, but just like Twigs said, ‘It’s not your fault that I’m loved to my limit’ at the time because that was my truth. We haven’t been in contact since 2020, but last year I accidentally ran into him in a coffee shop with who I assumed was his wife and child. He gave me a tiny wave when his wife was looking away, but that’s it. Do I think about what could have been? I did. But then again, if I’m being reasonable, that’s just an idealized version in my head. I probably wouldn’t be as happy as I am now, also already married and my husband is fantastic.”

When I started planning this month’s Cue Sheet, it was 25 degrees and snowing. Winter loves to overstay its welcome in the Northeast, and I was desperate for a moment of sunny escapism. As I’m writing this now, New York is finally experiencing the first timid gasps of springtime — and everyone I know is more than ready to shed their coats (if not set them on fire).

As we thaw out from a long winter, I think we could all use a little vacation. So for this month’s question, I asked my followers:

“Is there a song that will always remind you of the best summer of your life?”

For the sake of transparency, this is how I actually asked:

In terms of the actual songs people delivered, this might be my favorite Cue Sheet yet. So many throwbacks on summer camp dance floors, anthems to aimless drives with old friends, and soundtracks to young love. Who among us hasn’t had an amazing summer to the tune of “Time to Pretend” by MGMT?

These answers also turned me on to some absolute heavy hitters I never would have known about otherwise. For one, I’ve been obsessively listening to the criminally under-the-radar Largo album (Levon Helm?? Cyndi Lauper???) ever since my friend’s mom submitted “Gimme a Stone.”

I’m a shameless former summer camp kid, so the season holds a very special place in my heart. Summer is arguably the season when you’re most likely to find yourself somewhere strange and beautiful — away from school on summer break, away from the city on a beach getaway, away from work on a much-needed vacation. These respites from “normal” life are the perfect backdrop for distinct musical moments that complete the time capsule. There are countless songs I can’t really play without being transported back to a moment in time; “The Mother We Share” by CHVRCHES will always remind me of driving down the mountain in Yosemite with my camp friends, “With Arms Outstretched” by Rilo Kiley brings me back to the summer I worked on a farm in Washington with my friend Cameron. “Heartbreak Weather” by Niall Horan will always remind me of the first summer of COVID, driving around Los Angeles with my roommate Kaitlyn as we tried to find any small reason not to go insane.

I wanted a peek inside everyone else’s summer time capsules, and I got one. Now I’m giving it to you! As always, thanks for reading — and if you’re not featured below, feel free to share your summer song in the comments.

The rules: I gather responses via my Instagram (@gadzucks), where I post a story asking for songs + context. The story runs for 24-48 hours, so all these responses were collected within a maximum 2-day window. For this one, I also posted on Twitter + asked some friends of mine via text. :) Not all responses are selected, and all selected responses are posted anonymously. These are people of all ages from around the world. I know some of them personally; some are strangers to me.

Cue Sheet: Best Summer Ever

SONG: “Heaven Sent” - Best Coast

“Summer after I graduated college: I moved back home, got a job at a plant nursery working outside all day, got a car and went on road trips, reconnected with friends. We hung out all the time and non-stop listened to Best Coast’s ‘Heaven Sent’ off their album California Nights. It’s the most freedom I’ve experienced yet, and it was a glorious summer of adventure.”

SONG: “All Summer” - Kid Cudi & Best Coast

“Summer 2011 was an all-timer for me, and ‘All Summer’ by Kid Cudi and Best Coast takes me right back to it. I was living on my own in NYC for the first time, just before my junior year of college, and the independence was intoxicating. I don’t remember how I found the song, but I listened to it all the time as I explored different neighborhoods, met up with friends to drink in parks and dive bars, or even just sat in my room reveling in the fact that for this moment I had a little piece of Manhattan to call mine. It sounded as joyful and optimistic as I felt.”

SONG: “Roses” - The Chainsmokers

“Summer 2015. Last summer before fascism, always played late at night on weekends by DJ before closing at favorite local bar The Den on Sunset. Usually pretty tipsy by this time, making eyes at opposite sex, chatting with friends and house parties to follow after the bar, pure peak LA in my 20s, last innocent-feeling summer in America. That song still gets me going to this day… never even really liked the band, but they just made a perfect summer song.”

SONG: “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” - Deep Blue Something

“I went to a summer camp meant for gifted kids to take college courses for enrichment, and that obviously ended up pulling a lot of people who were (whether or not they knew it at the time) queer, neurodivergent, or both. I didn’t grow up accepting these things about myself, or in a place that would’ve been accepting of those things either, and it was the first place I felt inexplicable belonging and unconditional acceptance. We had three ‘dances’ during this camp, and a few traditional songs that would always be played. This was my favorite of them.”

SONG: “One More Time” - Daft Punk

“When I was 16 the summer before my senior year of high school, I did a five-week intensive journalism camp at a university where I was away from home and family for the first time and met other students who were just as smart and nerdy and ambitious as I was. I felt like I truly belonged for the first time as we learned and reported, explored the city, and stayed up late in the dorm playing very competitive Bananagrams. On the last night we had a dance party, and I remember many songs, but the one that stuck with me most is ‘One More Time’ by Daft Punk. It was the first time I heard the song, and as I realized what the lyrics were I got super emotional as it sunk in that it was our last time celebrating together. I spent the next year reminiscing about that summer and luckily got into the university so I could return and relive those experiences Many More Times.”

SONG: “Oxbow” - Waxahatchee

“Summer 2021. It was the first summer the Burlington, Vermont music scene felt vibrant for me and my group of friends after floundering for a year and a half of COVID. Nightshade music festival was still happening and we had partied all night at our friend’s farm. On the drive back home, ‘Oxbow’ played and no one even minded being so hungover, we were getting bagels.

SONG: “Best Worst Year” - Strabe

“I found this during the first summer of the pandemic, summer 2020. All my friends and I were back living in our childhood homes, unemployed and actually enjoying it. I blasted this when we took a long road trip up the coast to Maine where my friend group ‘bubble’ rented an Airbnb and got to feel like kids again. It was the worst year, but it was also the best worst year.”

SONG: “Dog Days Are Over” - Florence and the Machine

“When Florence and the Machine came out with ‘Dog Days,’ I was listening in the car with my girlfriend and sparks were raging between us and I realized at that moment that I was falling batshit crazy in love. This song felt like expectation and magic and expansiveness. We’ve since had a beautiful relationship and marriage and falling out and breakup, but that song always brings me right back to that cinematic lifeslice.”

SONG: “Juice” - Lizzo

“ONE OF the best summers happened when I was just about 60! On a beach vacation with my best old friends of similar age. We were feeling the years, for sure, but also feeling the freedom that those years had given us in terms of how many fucks we actually had to give. ‘Ya ya eee’ was our rallying cry.”

SONG: “Naranja” - Superaquello

“The last ride on cobblestones until who knows when. The last late night in front of the Caribbean sea with my soon-to-be ‘friends back home.’ The piña coladas are extra special tonight, but not sticky enough to keep my friends from splitting into smaller and smaller groups as the weeks pass by. My last summer as a resident of Puerto Rico. My summer before starting the rest of my life on the continent.

But before all these ends, let’s go see Superaquello play their super important gig in Old San Juan. I hear Madonna’s A&R people from her label, Maverick, will be there. Finally, our music scene will be heard globally. Maybe we are the Seattle of the new millennium. 2002 was such a special year for me. So many changes. The song title is ‘Naranja’ off Superaquello’s Mupsiquita. A classic in the Puerto Rican underground alternative scene. 🎵 ‘BBQ, Q-Tip, Pitipois, Gongolí’🎵 They didn’t get signed, though.”

SONG: “We Are Young” - Fun

“In summer 2012, my friends and I spent as many waking moments as possible on the lake, making the hour drive back into the city in the morning to go to work and back to the lake house in the evening to spend every night and weekend. The popularity of this song in that time means it was on the radio for approximately 100% of those drives, and we belted it with our whole hearts every time. This song sounds like old friends, driving down country roads, staring up at starry skies, hot tubs, bunk beds, boat rides, barbecues, drinking way too many beers, bonfires, kissing crushes, dancing across the lawn, fireworks, the most movie-montage summer of my life soundtracked so perfectly.”

SONG: “Summersong” - The Decemberists

“I used to really like to go to the beach in the summer, so ‘Summersong’ by The Decemberists is very apropos for me. After I suffered brain cancer (as of this January, 5 years in remission though!), it got harder to go and enjoy it. I always worry about being in the waves and getting knocked over. I have to walk carefully on sandy beaches. I don’t want to trip and fall. So it’s a song of the past, I guess.”

SONG: “Ribs” - Lorde

“19 years old, summer between college, hanging out with my hometown friends, we all had part-time jobs and free rent. I spent all of my free time writing songs and driving around LA with them going to concerts, smoking weed, and shopping at Urban Outfitters. 🤣 The last summer of youth with no responsibilities, felt like the world was our oyster.”

SONG: “Roll My Stone” - Arcy Drive

“Last summer on repeat as I felt my community in London (a new city) finally really come together. This was the soundtrack for every adventure / late night.”

SONG: “Heroine” - SUNMI

“Specifically, this song is perfect for summer nights in the city. I lived in Seoul for a year, and this song was released while I was there. The song has dated a bit now, as overly commercialised songs do, but the almost hyperpop nature of the synths blended with the really open, wet vocals is unique and so perfect for a cool summer evening.

Summertime evenings are so special to me. I have kids now, and [my summer] playlist reminds me of a time of true independence. Really long walks, watching the traffic, the cool breeze after a hot day. I think a lot of people associate summertime with really upbeat music, but to me, I associate it with happiness and space to breathe.”

SONG: “Judy Garland” - Frog

“Summer 2019. I just met the love of my life, it was on a playlist I made for her (which I nervously listened to to make sure she would love it). We spent the whole summer baking pies and swimming and doing silly stuff like Playdough house-building contests. We didn’t even kiss for like two months. I would give my life to go back to those moments.”

SONG: “It Had To Be You” - Frank Sinatra

“The year when ‘When Harry Met Sally’ came out. First real summer romance. Nostalgia.”

SONG: “Summerboy” - Lady Gaga

“This past summer, I was coming off of the awkwardness of confessing my feelings for my best friend. We were taking the summer while we were apart to really redevelop our friendship. I would listen to this song on the way home from the soul-sucking STEM camp I worked at, and it would remind me of them. As I listened to it more and more, it made me realize that I cared more about our bond and how it made me feel over the theatrics of a relationship (which I would later continue to realize as we attempted a relationship once we came back from summer break). Needless to say, shout out to Lady Gaga for giving my queerplatonic friendship a platform to develop.”

SONG: “You Look Like You Love Me” - Ella Langley & Riley Green

“Realistically, last summer wasn’t my prime, but it taught me the most about resilience. My grandma had been diagnosed with dementia and diabetes. I spent most of my free time taking care of her when my dad couldn’t. We would do shifts at her house; I’d typically stay for the day while he took nights. Her days were full of emotional highs and lows; she’d cry and laugh with me. Get angry, be confused. She couldn’t understand why we couldn’t see the orange crayon all over the walls, or the crying babies the mother had left her to watch. I’d get her to eat and shoot her with insulin. Sugar-water, honey, and peanut M&Ms for crises.

She’d do her laundry and watch The View; she spent some days in flower shops. We started a secret competition with her neighbor; the prettiest flowered-out porch wins. I became her personal chauffeur, she said, and through all the craziness, she seemed content with country radio. We would sing this song every time it came on. ‘You Look Like You Love Me’ is special because it reminds me of the summer I spent with Nana.”

SONG: “Climax” - Usher

“Usher ‘Climax’ was my friend group’s song whenever that came out. Being the car with all the windows down, singing the highest note we can as the boys head to some random party.

Always broke the ice. Ton of finger-pointing dance moves you’d see in any R&B music video.”

SONG: “When U Love Somebody” - Fruit Bats

“I had ‘When U Love Somebody’ by Fruit Bats permanently traveling through my white corded headphones directly into my bloodstream during the summer of 2011. I was living in New York for the first time, and even though I was only there for two and a half months, I knew I’d be back again chasing that feeling for the rest of my life. The feeling of pure bliss that freedom brings. That summer was the exact blip of time in one’s life where you’re in limbo between the naivety of youth and the reality of adulthood.

It seemed to consistently be the perfect temperature every day. Even when it was so hot I went to the movies just to cool off. I was somehow incredibly broke and yet never out of money. I regularly felt the warmth of the sunrise on my journey home after being out all night (and foolishly thinking I would never bear the consequences of a hangover in my lifetime). Still to this day, when I hear the first beats of this song, I’m immediately transported to that summer. For a moment, those four minutes and thirty one seconds are the perfect high.”

SONG: “Is This Thing On?” - The Promise Ring

“This whole album was in the car CD player in the summer of 2000. I was working on my first film job ever, and when that wrapped, I worked as a runner at Blossom Music Center. I was 25 years younger, 100 lbs lighter, and had zero cares. I slept on a couch, and the producer I worked for went to the strip club six nights a week, so I did too. I learned some of the girls’ real names. The bouncer would wave me in because he saw me so often. I drove Taylor Hawkins to the airport after the Foo Fighters opened for the Chili Peppers, causing me to miss their set.”

SONG: “Dani California” - Red Hot Chili Peppers

“Summer 2006 was incredible. I’d graduated eighth grade and had moved a couple towns over. I was performing in a summer camp production of West Side Story and I had my first-ever girlfriend. I now lived in a place where I could ride my bike around town by myself, and I was enjoying the newfound independence and new group of friends. And what song immediately takes me back to that beautiful summer? I regret to inform you that it’s the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ ‘Dani California.’”

SONG: “Breathe (In the Air)” - Pink Floyd

“I got into classic rock right before grade 10, and that was my first summer with a job and I got to walk to work every day. The lyrics are dark, but there’s something about the opening line of ‘Breathe, breathe in the air’ that will stick with me forever.”

SONG: “Work” - Rihanna

“When I was DJing in the summer of 2016, ‘Work’ by Rihanna, ‘Controlla’ and ‘One Dance’ by Drake back to back to back would make people lose their minds lol. Best summer ever — it was the summer going into my senior year of college, vibes were at an all-time high, and those songs were on repeat.”

SONG: “Heaven” - DJ Sammy

“Summer 2006. I was a counselor at a Girl Scout camp across the lake from the enigmatic Camp Shalom (Jewish camp). My unit happened to be on a field trip at the roller rink when a bus full of Shalom boys pulled up.

Their boys and our girls started skating together, holding hands. It was so wholesome! The camp director invited me and the three other counselors in our group to come to their homecoming dance that night. We went back to our bunks, put on tankini tops and a ton of body glitter, and we hitched a ride with the ranger to Camp Shalom.

The DJ was going buckwild, playing Nelly Furtado, Lil Jon, Outkast… at some point the Girl Scouts, starved of skin contact, had to get pulled away from the anxious Jewish boys because the director said we were dancing too sexy, lol. But the peak moment was when they started tossing out Hawaiian leis into the crowd and playing DJ Sammy. We had skipped dinner at the mess hall for this, we weren’t going out quietly. So we all started jumping and screaming ‘I’m finding it hard to believe! We’re in heaven!!!’ Then we stumbled back down the dirt road to camp at 9pm… and almost got fired for skipping dinner. And I’d do it again 😂”

SONG: “Waterloo Sunset” - The Kinks

“I was interning at a summer concert series that my college hosted a few months after my graduation. It was a bittersweet feeling because I knew this would be my last extended stay on campus, and the thought of joining the working world was unsettling. Luckily, the college was on the side of a river and had a beautiful view of sunsets, so my way of relaxing was to occasionally watch the sunsets on a hill while listening to ‘Waterloo Sunset’ by the Kinks. The feelings of angst faded eventually, but I still occasionally went to that hill to listen to the Kinks and spend my final days as a youngster in comfort rather than anxiety.”

SONG: “Seahorse” - Devendra Banhart

“It was the summer between high school and college, which is a great age to be both full of dreams and hopes, but also 1) be able to do a little more stuff; and 2) maybe this is hindsight, but I feel like I was starting to become actually conscious enough about the fact that this kind of youth and vibes weren’t going to last forever, so we were really seizing it. Also, it was 2009 so the world was generally much more hopeful.

This song, I feel, reflects that vibe in general, and Devendra was right in that scene that we loved and then started to mock and I feel like people are starting to become nostalgic about again. I was playing and writing music with friends, doing tiny road trips, and very frequently just hanging around in my friend’s car, driving around my neighborhood while listening to music and smoking a joint. The smell of mid-grade, cheap-ish weed still makes me terribly nostalgic.”

In general, I think we felt free, hopeful, and something like eternal? We were also very angry (the world never lacks reasons for it) but feeling like we could actually do something significant about it… how I’d love to feel that way again.

Aside from the anger, it was a very whimsical summer. The memories of it feel hazy, chill and gold-tinted. It felt both like we were just figuring shit out and like we had it all figured out.

I feel like ‘Seahorse’ just captures all of that in a beautiful and trippy-bordering-on-ridiculous sense, which feels very appropriate.”

SONG: “En el 2000” - Natalia Lafourcade

“Summer 2017. I went on a foreign exchange trip to Spain with people from my high school. I fell in love with my host site roommate. I felt like my life was a movie and this was the soundtrack.”

SONG: “Walkin’ On the Sun” - Smash Mouth

“Came out in the summer of 1997 when I was 13 years old. Middle school was socially rough, and that summer I spent nearly the entire time playing Scorched Earth on Windows 3.1 on our shitty computer in the attic. I’d put on the radio and lock in for like six hours. The radio was insane that year. Third Eye Blind, Hanson, Spice Girls, The Verve, Sarah McLachlan, Chumbawumba…. Good times.”

SONG: “Pittsburgh Left” - Lymbyc Systym

“They played a small fest in 2006 and I was lying on my back on the grass on Substances and never knew who they were until two days ago.”

SONG: “You Don’t Get Me High Anymore” - Phantogram

“I was visiting my best friend in her state, and I just remember driving around with her with that song blasting on repeat.”

SONG: “Here (In Your Arms)” - Hellogoodbye

“This song reminds me of the summer between 8th and 9th grade. I smoked weed for the first time in my friend’s attic and she turned on this song like ‘You’re never going to believe how this sounds.’ I genuinely couldn’t believe it. She had an older sister and we would listen to it all the time driving around laughing and feeling like adults.”

SONG: “Starlight” - Danny L Harle (feat. Pinkpantheress)

“Last summer, my friends and I went to Warsaw. I had visited Warsaw many times as a child with my mom to see family, but this was the first time I stepped foot into a Polish club. Dancing my ass off to ‘Starlight’ and being surrounded by ‘Free Ukraine / Free Palestine’ paraphernalia and ‘Protect trans kids’ flags everywhere made me emotional. For some context, I grew up in a very Polish Roman-Catholic household, and I often struggle with the concept of staying in touch with my cultural roots without being entangled in a religion that caused me so much harm as a young queer. Especially after the passing of my mom, remaining attached to my Polish heritage is something I revere as sacred. In that club in Warszawa, I was surrounded by queer, wild, and messy Poles like me, and it was beautiful. Now I will never question my Polish-ness again. ❤️”

SONG: “Gimme A Stone” - Largo

“We were visiting my sister in law in Santa Rosa many years ago and we went to walk around and visit the stores. I was in a little shop and heard music that completely captivated me (this DOES NOT happen to me EVER).

I asked the shop owner what music was playing (I had NEVER done that before) and they showed me the CD Largo. When we got back to NY, I had all but forgotten about the album when I saw a notice somewhere (New York Magazine?) that the album Largo was going to be performed at Vassar College’s Black Box Theater in Poughkeepsie (about an hour north of Sleepy Hollow). I decided to buy four tickets and dragged my kids (ages 3 ½ and 6) and husband up to Vassar to see the concert. (I had NEVER done that before either!) It was amazing!!! Cyndi Lauper, Garth Hudson, Levon Helm, Joan Osborne, Taj Mahal, etc. all performed the album, which is loosely told as a story based on Dvorak’s New World Symphony.”

SONG: “pat” - wished bone

“This is one of those rare chameleon songs. It can fit many moods — joyous, sad, and most importantly, wistful. Hearing this song in all of its indie/bossa four-track glory, I am brought back to Cape Cod — stuck in a house with only my family as it’s pouring rain outside, and I am helplessly in love with someone hundreds of miles away. It is the definition of melancholic solitude, and there was no place I would rather have been…”

SONG: “:)” - The Japanese House

“This song is perf for summer generally and makes me feel like I’m at the beginning of something new, exciting, and a little scary! That was a summer full of change I wasn’t expecting but made my life more full. Including spontaneously buying a car and driving it cross-country with one of my best friends. I remember listening to this so on repeat all summer long feeling the good change wash over me!”

SONG: “Demon Days” - Gorillaz

“This song is one of my all-time favorites because it instantly brings me back to riding a bike in Copenhagen at the end of my six months there in college. One wire headphone in while the sun hadn’t yet set at 10pm in June. I felt like anything was possible. I couldn’t even ride a bike before this trip lol. At this exact point in time, life felt so full in ways I couldn’t have imagined. Like watching the sun go down in the middle of the night. I was finally looking forward to what was coming next after college and felt with some degree of confidence that I could handle it and maybe even like it.”

SONG: “The Big Ship” - Brian Eno

“I first heard ‘The Big Ship’ by Brian Eno in the movie Me, Earl & the Dying Girl in the summer of 2015. It was one of those needle drops that sticks with you forever and solidifies not just the movie but the entire evening in your mind.

I can still picture driving out of the parking lot with my windows rolled down, a perfect summer evening after a heartbreaking movie. It hit so hard for me that I took my friend to see it two days later, and we saw Gene Wilder at the theater. Now whenever I hear it, I’m thrown back to a place of perfect melancholy.”

SONG: “Nightswimming” - R.E.M.

“2010. 17 years old. Going for a sneaky swim (yes, at night) in August with my first boyfriend who I was deeply in love with. It was the week before he left for college, and with our days together numbered, the time felt imbued with the beauty and nostalgic sadness that’s so perfectly encapsulated by the song.”

SONG: “Time to Pretend” - MGMT

“Summer of 2008. Peak millennial optimism! Going to see Vampire Weekend at Summerstage, my first concert without my parents and getting caught in a rainstorm of biblical proportions. Meeting my best friend’s cousin at a pizza place — the first guy I liked who liked me back. Having my first kiss with Pirates of the Caribbean 3 unceremoniously playing in the background.”

SONG: “No Interruption” - Hoodie Allen

“Working as a summer camp counselor with two of my childhood best friends, this song was our holy anthem. Even back then, we knew it was kind of dopey and thought that was absolutely hilarious. We spent the summer hanging out by the lake, getting drunk in the woods, making out with boys, and singing along to this song at every opportunity. When we play it now, it brings us back to that summer of boisterous, youthful chaos where we had unlimited energy and seemingly no responsibilities (very funny in retrospect, because we absolutely did have a responsibility to keep those campers alive and well).”

Hello, subscribers! I am eternally grateful to you — this newsletter would quite literally be nothing without you and your responses.

On that note, have you subscribed to Cue Sheet but not yet shared a “needledrop” of your own? Do you want to?

Here’s how:

Right now, I mostly collect responses via my Instagram: @gadzucks

I’ll post an Instagram story explaining this month’s theme and asking for your songs. You can respond via Instagram DM.

These IG stories typically run for 24-48 hours, depending on the quantity and quality of the responses I get.

I try to feature most responses I get if they include some kind of context or story — don’t just tell me the name of a song with no accompanying context!

I’ll occasionally also post a response call on Twitter, and I may even post here (like this) if it feels useful. I’m very new to this, and I want to make sure I cast a wide net! But for now, Instagram is your main hub for Cue Sheet response calls.

Want to send one in now?

March’s call for responses is live as we speak!

Click here to tell me your song.

From early crushes to devastating heartbreaks, marital vows, and everything in between, I think we can all agree that music sews itself quite seamlessly into a love story.

As a teenage camp counselor, I sat by the archery course and blasted “Waiting For My Chance to Come” on a loop because I knew my crush liked Noah and the Whale. Shortly after moving to New York, I walked through a blizzard listening to “Triptych” by Samia to mail a final love letter to the boy I’d left behind in California.

Blame it on the movies, but there are few feelings more enriched by music than love. And what greater expression of love than a wedding? As an unmarried person myself, I’ve long fantasized about the songs I’ll play at my wedding. How will they tell the story of my relationship? How will they honor the culmination of the long and laborious road to “happily ever after?”

Every love story is unique, and every wedding song is a vital piece of the soundtrack. It’s one of the few cultural traditions where we’re specifically tasked with music supervising our own lives, selecting a “needle drop” to play under a pivotal scene.

So for this month’s question, I asked my followers:

“Will you tell me your wedding song and why you chose it?”

For the sake of transparency, this is how I actually asked:

Every response was an intimate window into a relationship, a love story caught and bottled like fireflies in a jar. Some songs were callbacks to early dates, romantic epiphanies, or shared passions. Some were handwritten, some performed by friends or family members. The Flaming Lips appeared not once but twice. One couple Rickrolled everyone at their wedding. And of course, the Muppets made yet another appearance.

From the bittersweet to the triumphant, these responses are a testament to the power of music to connect us — to our lovers, ourselves, and the world, until death do us part.

The rules: I gather responses via my Instagram (@gadzucks), where I post a story asking for songs + context. The story runs for 24-48 hours, so all these responses were collected within a maximum 2-day window. For this particular question, I also gathered a few responses via my Twitter (@jzux). Not all responses are selected, and all selected responses are posted anonymously. These are people of all ages from around the world. I know some of them personally; some are strangers to me.

Cue Sheet: Wedding Songs

SONG: “At Last” - Etta James

“We picked ‘At Last’ ironically because we totally hooked up on the first date.”

SONG: “Indestructible (Acoustic)” - Robyn

“Both of us got our hearts broken multiple times before we met each other. Regardless, just like the song said, we’re still gonna love each other like we’ve never been hurt before.”

SONG: “The Scientist” - Coldplay

“I mustered enough courage to ask her for a slow dance in high school, and that was the song. She learned to play it on the piano for our first anniversary when we didn’t have any money.”

SONG: “Anyone Else But You” - The Mouldy Peaches

“Good song, bad title, should have been a red flag.”

SONG: “September” - Earth, Wind, and Fire

“We started dating in late September. Did a (quick) surprise wedding ceremony during our engagement party, everyone (who didn’t know in advance) was legitimately shocked and we played this song immediately after and had a big singalong.”

SONG: “Going to Port Washington” - The Mountain Goats

“We both really enjoy their music and had bonded over other songs, but none were very suitable. So we found this track, which appears on a comp album (Ghana) but was originally on a diff comp called ‘The Wedding Record.’ Et voila!”

SONG: “Little Piece of History” - Zoe Muth

She’s my favorite songwriter, and the lyrics felt like they reflected us finding each other later in life having gone through a lot and where we wanted our journey to go.”

SONG: “If You Ever Fall in Love (Please Fall in Love With Me)” - Everit Herter

In 1960, my dad was a recording artist signed to Capitol Records. His career never went anywhere, and I think he struggled with the idea that he failed. During his contract, he recorded a handful of songs, one of which was a never-released song called ‘If You Ever Fall in Love (Please Fall in Love With Me)”. The only reason I have this song is because a friend who worked at Capitol had the song digitized from their archive and sent to me. My dad died in 2002, and we wanted a way to honor him at our wedding, so we decided to use this archived recording as our first dance. I always get choked up thinking that he recorded this song 60 years ago, it got shelved, and he thought it failed. But in reality—and unknowingly—he recorded it just so his future son would have a wedding song.”

SONG: “Turn Time Off” - David Myles

“Our first dance song was a song I discovered on the TV show Workin’ Moms (not even a show I particularly like) and was playing a lot at the time I met my husband. The melody is lovely, but the lyrics were wrong for a wedding: ‘I’m gonna turn time off, I’m gonna turn you on.’ So I asked my brother and his friend to make a cover with that line tweaked. I might be opening myself up to being sued?? But it came out so beautifully, and I can safely say it was no one else’s song, so… worth it!”

SONG: “Second Nature” - Dayglow

“Walked back down the aisle as husband and wife to ‘Second Nature’ by Dayglow. We saw a Dayglow show early in our relationship, and it’s one of my favorite concerts I’ve ever been to. ‘Second Nature’ was the last song of the night, and it’s a core memory for me of dancing with my guy with just sheer JOY to that song that night. Felt like a no-brainer to walk out/celebrate to it:

“This isn’t second nature love

It’s the first thing that comes to my being

I feel it like I feel it now, because

The rhythm, it keeps on repeating, it’s on and on

And I feel it so right.”

SONG: “All I Need Is You” - Silent Point

“Back in high school (~2007), my rock band opened for them, and my girlfriend and I really liked their show. Jump ahead eight years later and we had our first dance to their song. Now, almost 19 years later, we’re still building our life together and smiling when Silent Point appears in our shuffle!”

SONG: “A 1000 Times” - Hamilton Leithauser

“When my wife and I started dating in 2018, she graciously dove headfirst into a few of my more peculiar musical obsessions. I tried to spare her from artists I assumed she wouldn’t like, and I figured Hamilton Leithauser’s shouty vocals might be a bridge too far.
To my surprise, she was all in — joining me for shows to watch him howl into the mic like a new-age lounge crooner. (We even survived a subpar Jersey City set where I got too drunk and threw up out the side of a Lyft home. Thankfully, she stuck around.)
When he launched his annual residency at Café Carlyle, it became our favorite date-night tradition; a yearly splurge we always looked forward to. The first time we went in 2019, she held my hand and swayed with me to “A 1000 Times,” and I knew instantly we had our first dance song. Six years later, we made it happen.

SONG: “Orange Colored Sky” - Natalie Cole

“We used Natalie Cole’s version of ‘Orange Colored Sky.’ My wife was a serious dancer. I was… not. We took ballroom lessons together, and it was one of the first songs we danced to together. For the wedding, we choreographed an elaborate, fancy foxtrot. Lots of dips, spins, lifts. I’m pretty sure you could see me counting in my head if you looked closely, but she nailed it. So much fun. Also the most pain I’d ever been in since I was three weeks post-surprise shoulder surgery.”

SONG: “Wond’ring Aloud” - Jethro Tull

“We married in 2003. Our wedding song was ‘Wond’ring Aloud’ by Jethro Tull. An oldie for sure, but I’ve loved Tull since my parents introduced them to me as a kid. We chose the song because it is sweet, it was simple in its sentiment, and we liked the mix of both hope and apprehension. The future is a big unknown, but we’re in it together.”

SONG: “Kiss Me” - Sixpence None the Richer

“Our first dance was to ‘Kiss Me’ by Sixpence None the Richer. Our romance was very 90’s romcom — we met briefly on a random Tinder date in Berkeley two weeks before she graduated. We went on three dates in that short time and fell in love instantly. She moved back home with her parents in LA, and we decided to keep seeing each other.

We visited back and forth a few times over the next two months. Then she broke the news to me that she was moving to Michigan for her graduate degree. She would never ask me to go with her... It would have been totally insane considering we had only been dating for three months at that point.

I quit my job, packed up what little I owned in my crappy Honda, and drove across the country to be with her. And the rest is history! I’ll never forget how powerfully in love we were (and still are), and that song will always tell our story.”

SONG: “When You Say Nothing At All” - Alison Krauss

“I am, shall we say, a loquacious person, and my partner is much calmer, introspective, but steadfast and steady as a rock. To this day, I can’t hear that song without crying, because it so perfectly encapsulates my embracing a different model of what love looks like.”

SONG: “Humming” - Turnover

“Our wedding events got thrown off by snowstorms so we didn’t get a first dance, but my husband always says our wedding song is ‘Dizzy on the Comedown’ by Turnover and I say it’s ‘Humming’ from the same album. It’s one we listen to together often in the car and on vinyl. I vote ‘Humming’ because of the line ‘Just take me where you go;’ we got married right before the first cross-country move.”

SONG: “Who Knows Where the Time Goes” - Nina Simone

“We had a friend sing Nina Simone’s ‘Who Knows Where the Time Goes,’ the first song we danced to the night we first kissed. We had gone dancing in Austin (like dancing at da club, not romantic dancing) and were pretty drunk, rode scooters back to my tiny apartment, then did drugs and danced more at my apartment. I put on that Nina song and it was like a movie, like we had to dance to it. Then we kissed and we were both like ‘Oh!’”

SONG: “You Gave Your Love to Me Softly” - Weezer

“I met my husband after a Weezer concert we both went to. Funny enough, I thought he didn’t like me at first and we didn’t talk for like two years. I ran into him at a bar two years later and we started chatting about that concert and then we never stopped talking. We got married in 2019, and we’re probably the only two people who even knew that song at our wedding, but we drunkenly screamed/sang it together. In 2024, we went to Weezer’s Blue Album anniversary tour and they played ‘You Gave Your Love to Me Softly!’ I didn’t have a voice for days after that concert and my body hurt all over from dancing and singing along, but it was such a special memory together.”

SONG: “Never Gonna Give You Up” - Rick Astley / “It’s Only Time” - The Magnetic Fields

“Our wedding recessional was listed in the program as Stevie Wonder’s ‘Signed, Sealed, Delivered,’ but we conspired with the DJ to play ‘Never Gonna Give You Up,’ because we both are millennials and loved the idea of rickrolling our guests a bit. Also, we both unironically enjoy that song and it’s fitting for sending off newlyweds.

But also in Pennsylvania, we’re able to do a self-uniting ceremony, and during the witnesses and ourselves signing the marriage license, we played The Magnetic Fields’ ‘It’s Only Time’ for the serious vowing and legal commitment part (because we are also full of multitudes). It’s a beautiful song of loving forever, and now I cry even more when I hear it.”

SONG: “The Rainbow Connection” - Kermit the Frog

“My wedding is in a month, so we haven’t picked all our reception songs, but we’re walking down the aisle to a piano version of ‘The Rainbow Connection.’ I love the Muppets and they’re very important to me and I’ve gotten my partner into more Muppets stuff, so that’s why. Wish us luck!”

SONG: “By Your Side” - Beachwood Sparks

“It’s a Sade cover, and it’s mostly because we went through a phase of reading the Scott Pilgrim graphic novel series together, and when the movie and soundtrack came out this song was on it. When I first got the soundtrack, I had the CD in my car (this dates me) and my husband (pre-married, pre-living together) borrowed my car to run to the store and came back almost crying from hearing that song.”

SONG: “Ready or Not” - Shakey Graves

“I couldn’t be more like the male protagonist: ‘Walking around talking a lot,’ ‘We’re already out for the night, why not make it two.’

The uncertainty of diving into a marriage. ‘Here comes the wedding!’ The certainty of death. Telling ourselves it’ll all be alright, even when it’s not true, and also when it’s true. Everyone was crying.

We picked this song waiting in the wings before heading out on stage. The audio engineer was like, ‘Wait, what song is your first dance?’ We hadn’t picked one, and we just both said ‘Ready or Not.’

We got married in an old historic opera house in the middle of Nevada in my wife’s hometown. Then we rented the entire county fairgrounds (for $150/night lolololol) and threw a music festival with four stages, three bars, food trucks, camping, art…”

SONG: “‘03 Bonnie & Clyde” - Jay-Z and Beyoncé

“The song we walked into the reception was ‘03 Bonnie & Clyde’ by Jay-Z and Beyoncé. It was a song my now-husband threw on the aux on our first road trip when we were still kind of a situationship, and we both locked eyes while he was driving and that basically solidified we were dating. It’s kind of always been our song since.”

SONG: “You’re the Inspiration” - Chicago

“We picked it because we are super cheesy and wanted something over-the-top 80s. But we do earnestly love Chicago, so it felt right. We got married after only being together 13 months, so we didn’t have a long history of songs that felt like they knitted us together. Why did it have to be deep and meaningful, why couldn’t it just be a song we enjoyed!? And perhaps our lowkey real wedding song happened on the dance floor much later in the night… ‘Bust It Baby,’ which played in the car on our first date.”

SONG: “Can’t Take My Eyes Off of You” - Frankie Valli

“My husband played it in the background when he proposed to me, and it only felt right to dance to it at our wedding! I think he just picked the song to play while he proposed because it’s a beautiful song, and now it’s stuck!”

SONG: “I Choose You” - Willie Hutch

“Cause it’s a damn good song and also because we are both huge Pokemon nerds and had a Pokemon-themed wedding.”

SONG: “All of Me” - John Legend

“My wife loves his music. I was taking the light rail to work one morning right around when we got engaged, and JL was on the Howard Stern Show. I was listening and he debuted that song. It seemed perfect for us, and I told my wife about it right away! We never miss his show whenever he tours through Denver.”

SONG: “This Magic Moment” - Lou Reed

“Our wedding song was Lou Reed’s cover of ‘This Magic Moment’ from Lost Highway. It had no deep meaning to our relationship but when I thought of it, it felt like it had a proper traditional ‘wedding’ song wrapped up in the perfect combination of darkness and beauty that wouldn’t be too heavy-handed on the ‘trying to be cool’ thing. It ended up being just the right thing for two people who were on the fence about even doing a first dance.”

SONG: “Do You Realize??” - The Flaming Lips / “You Are the Morning” - jasmine.4.t

“Our first dance and our SONG song is ‘Do You Realize’ by the Flaming Lips. We connected over loving it and dancing to it early in our dating, and we’ve since seen the Flaming Lips twice. Also, when we got together, my partner was in treatment for stage IV melanoma, and to me it felt like I was falling in love in spite of the risk of being with someone who was potentially terminally ill. The song makes me feel so in the moment and reminds us to enjoy each other’s faces right here right now!

Our walking down the aisle song is ‘You Are the Morning’ by jasmine.4.t. The song is so much about queer and trans joy, and as a queer couple, it feels like we’ve really achieved that happiness in each other against all odds. We feel like the future!”

SONG: “Wouldn’t It Be Nice” - The Beach Boys

“We were long-distance (he’s from the UK), and it always meant a lot to us — both the sentiment of the song and also we both adore The Beach Boys. When we met, we used to just be up late lying in bed playing songs back and forth the way you do when you meet someone you know instantly you really like. Like you’re giving them the crash course on who you are through playlists to make up for the fact that you just met and don’t actually know each other even though you feel like you know each other. ‘Oh, I grew up on this’ / ‘This one was formative’ / ‘I went through this phase.’ It was just one of those bands we both grew up loving, so you lie there and you listen to songs you loved as a kid, but now you’re big and it makes it different. The next thing you know, you’re trying to make it work cross-continent and you go upwards of six months without actually seeing each other so now it’s changed again and you start getting a little weepy when Brian Wilson starts singing ‘You know it’s gonna make it that much better / When we can say goodnight and stay together.’

SONG: “Wedding Dance - Demo” - May Blue

“Neither of our families were supportive of us, but we wanted to get married — so we did. We had a very simple wedding in a church hall. Very old-fashioned. I wrote this song for our wedding when I was holding a lot of happiness and sadness at the same time. I didn’t want upbeat music, I wanted that contrast and emotional space.

Because our wedding was so old-fashioned, not themed but everything just felt like it was from the 1800s in a way, I wanted only live instruments. Nothing from a DAW. Other than ‘acoustic guitar’ tracks (which are a very respectable choice, but it didn’t fit), I couldn’t find anything that was what I wanted. So I made it.”

SONG: “Thriller” - Michael Jackson

“My husband and I bonded over Michael Jackson songs from childhood, so we decided to perform ‘Thriller’ as our first dance — but we wanted it to be a surprise. So we started with ‘I Just Can’t Stop Loving You,’ and after about a minute we cut in with the Vincent Price laugh and performed the dance break. The crowd went wild!”

SONG: “Four Walls” - Irish Mythen / “Last Surrender” - Matt Anderson

“We had two: ‘Four Walls’ by Irish Mythen, which we chose because it spoke to us navigating grief through lockdowns together and falling even further in love. And ‘Last Surrender’ by Matt Anderson, because he performed it at our first folk festival together and it’s about til death do we part. Bonus, his mom was a folk singer and performed with Anderson before.”

SONG: “Till There Was You” - The Beatles

“It described the way the world opened up to us after we met. Been married 44 years, so it must have worked!”

SONG: “Black Butterflies and Deja Vu” - The Maine

“The Maine is one of my favorite bands, and I knew upon first listen of that song that I wanted to incorporate the bridge of it into my wedding in some capacity one day. We met because my Tinder bio included My Chemical Romance lyrics. Late-00s pop-punk/emo was kind of inevitably going to be part of our wedding. I said up front I either wanted to walk down the aisle to the bridge of BBaDV or have it be our first dance, and they were on board with either. They’re a big metalhead, and that’s much harder to incorporate sonically at a wedding. We ended up eloping, so I used the lyrics in my vows, but we still consider it our wedding song. We also saw The Maine live the day after our wedding.”

SONG: “Falling Slowly” - Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova

“Every morning I would get to school early to play it on the piano in the choir room, and my now-husband began joining me and learning the harmony part to sing with me just by listening. We became super close doing that.”

SONG: “Let’s Fall in Love” - Vic Damone

“Found it by expanding my Mad Men playlist to other songs from the era, and we loved it! It’s a swingy uptempo version. Then the next song to get people dancing was ‘We Found Love in a Hopeless Place’ by Rihanna because we met at Cornell lol.”

SONG: “Rock With You” - Michael Jackson

“An insane uber driver in LA was blasting this song and told us that he could tell we were in love before we’d even said that to each other.”

SONG: “The Luckiest” - Ben Folds

“I’ve loved Ben folds for years, and didn’t think it’d be my wedding song but when my now-husband listened to it, he loved it too. I’ve always been more interested in music than him, so it was on the back burner for our wedding song. We listened to it on our Apple TV (lol) with the lyrics up and the lyric ‘And in a white sea of eyes, I see one pair that I recognize’ hit us like a ton of bricks.”

SONG: “Dream a Little Dream of Me” - The Mamas and the Papas

“I started singing it to him in bits when we first moved in together, and then it moved into us slowly dancing around the room in sweatpants on a Monday evening before bed. Happened all the time. It was the only choice! Felt like home.”

SONG: “Do You Realize??” - The Flaming Lips

“My wife and I had just seen them for the first time a year before our wedding. It was one of the best concert experiences we ever had. We also thought that song was a good way to honor those who couldn’t be at the wedding with us. Some of the older folks didn’t quite get the choice, but we believe it describes love in its purest form. We love its optimism, basically saying, ‘As long as I get to experience the world with you, I am at peace.’”

SONG: “Stuck With You” - Huey Lewis

“Wanted people to laugh, then quickly join. Playlist directions were NO SLOW SONGS NOT ONE.”

SONG: “Nothing Matters When We’re Dancing” - The Magnetic Fields

“Wife is a former professional ballet dancer, and 69 Love Songs is a perennial favorite of mine. We would slow dance to this in our apartment during COVID when we felt like we couldn’t go anywhere.”

SONG: “You Matter to Me” - Sara Bareilles (from Waitress)

“We saw the musical Waitress on our first date, and the song also really mirrored the story. I met my husband while I was in the worst relationship in my life. When I ended up in the hospital (from said relationship), he was the only one from college to visit me.”

SONG: “Fly Me To the Moon” - Frank Sinatra

“We got married in Vegas, and after dinner, my husband and I walked the strip in full wedding attire along with all our guests. We paused to watch the fountains at the Bellagio, and when Frank came on, we had our wedding dance.”

SONG: “What A Wonderful World” - Louis Armstrong

“Married in New Orleans on a balmy, sunny, overcast, rainy Saturday in May. It’s a beautiful and hopeful song… and that voice. Talks of a blessed day, friends shaking hands, and babies. A great way to start a union almost 29 years strong.”

SONG: “It’s Been A Long, Long Time” - Kitty Kallen

“I had already loved the song, and as huge Marvel fans at the time, we loved seeing it close out Avengers: Endgame. Our wedding got postponed due to COVID, so when our first dance happened, we appreciated how worth the wait it had been.”

SONG: “The Thermos Song” - The Jerk

“We love that movie and quote it all the time. I surprised him at our wedding with the band playing that song while we drank from striped, monogrammed thermoses. He hopped on stage and sang badly.”

SONG: “Cerca de Ti” - Hermanos Gutierrez

“Outdoor wedding in the mountains amongst the wildflowers. Not really a reason other than we both love it — it was a perfect walk-down-the-aisle song, romantic but no words to distract.”

Hello, everyone! Starting this post with another thank you — I’m so grateful to everyone who’s subscribed, shared songs with me, and liked/commented/engaged with the newsletter in any way. Last month’s post even got a shout out from the fine folks at themselves!

This month, we’re ringing in the new year with a soundtrack to starting over. Forty-three of them, actually.

As January reminds us, life is full of fresh starts. We move to new cities; we start dream jobs; we meet people who will change our lives. Every year offers boundless potential for new beginnings, and our lives become scored with these beginnings as years go by.

I’ve always been enchanted by the music that soundtracks these moments. When I sat on the bed in my college dorm, alone for the first time, I played “Lisztomania” by Phoenix and imagined myself at the start of a great adventure. Four years later, as I moved out of my college house after graduation, I sat on the bed again and listened to a string quartet arrangement of the same song (I am nothing if not sentimental).

For this month’s question, I asked my followers:

“Is there a song that will always remind you of a new beginning?”

For the sake of transparency, this is how I actually asked:

Naturally, the answers didn’t disappoint. A lot of you have fond memories of starting college or moving into new apartments. Some of you remember arriving in new cities, beginning new relationships, or even reinventing yourselves entirely. No matter whether you felt excited, sad, terrified, or some combination of the three, a song carried you through.

And whatever new beginning you choose next, a song will be there too.

Cue Sheet: Starting Fresh

SONG: “Bittersweet Symphony” - The Verve

“Lame as hell but super kismet — at the end of my last day of high school, when I turned my car on to leave the parking lot, “Bittersweet Symphony” was playing on the radio. I still think about how perfect the timing was; it sort of felt like a Truman Show moment (lol), but it definitely cemented the end of that chapter and moving on.”

SONG: “Go Do” - Jonsi

“I used to lead a lot of backpacking trips, and the last song I’d play in the car before we got out and started hiking was Go Do. There’s something really magical and anticipatory about it, like the hopeful start of a journey, and it always put us in high spirits as we started some pretty grueling hikes.

SONG: “Reflections” - MisterWives

“I had a really hard, lonely year the first year after college and was super depressed. Then, during the summer, I started a new job, moved to a new apartment, started making more friends, and started a new relationship. I heard ‘Reflections’ by MisterWives playing in The Bean in Williamsburg (RIP) and was like wow this is sooo catchy and saved it and listened to it on repeat for like the next six months. It’s super upbeat, and it’s about moving on and not looking back. It made me feel excited to move forward in my life.”

SONG: “Unwritten” - Natasha Bedingfield

“For high school, I changed from my local public school to an all-girls private school. It was high school only, so it was a new school for everyone. On the first day, all the freshmen had an assembly and the principal played ‘Unwritten’ by Natasha Bedingfield and gave a whole speech about how we were all starting to write our new story at this new school. It was moving TBH! At graduation, she played it again at the end of the ceremony and everybody wept. Really cute! Once I moved to New York, I went to a pop night at Baby’s All Right and they played it. I very drunkenly took a video of me singing along and posted it in my “Prom 2013” Facebook group which we had to make sure girls didn’t wear the same dress lol. I love that song!!!!”

SONG: “Corridor of Dreams” - The Cleaners From Venus

“Played it gearing up for a big move across the country when I was 21 and now to guide/comfort me when I feel transitions in my life bubbling up or chapters closing. It’s an upbeat/dreamy melody with a guttural sax solo that swells adjacent to the bittersweet lyrics that talk about having created a life for yourself and doing a hard but beautiful thing: moving on. Solidified in the final lyric ‘It’s not where you are, it’s where you feel you should be, and it’s where your heart is.’”

SONG: “Heart It Races” - Dr. Dog

“The song of my college years. I had it on a playlist for our little graduation party and it tickles my feelings to this day. In my hipster days, I pretended to like the original, but I’m brave enough now to say that I prefer the cover.”

SONG: “Ode to The Mets” - The Strokes

“I remember listening to ‘Ode to the Mets’ by the Strokes on a loop on my way to my new job. Listening to the Strokes on the subway in New York City… typical and corny in the best way.”

SONG: “Wicked Little Town” - Hedwig and the Angry Inch

“When I first moved to LA a couple years ago, I was really overwhelmed at first and I remember sitting on the shitty mattress on the floor of my aunt’s guest room (which was actually her workout room… the mattress was crammed between the wall, the stationary bike, and the treadmill) and listening to ‘Wicked Little Town’ (the Hedwig version) from Hedwig and the Angry Inch. It helped me breathe and realize that I’d been dying for change in my life because I was so miserable at my old job in my old city. I remembered that change is only scary if you let it be, and I didn’t have to let it be. After all that time waiting for things to get better, this was my chance, and I felt like I deserved it. I decided I just needed to keep my head up and keep moving.”

SONG: “Old Friends” - Pinegrove

“I’ve found ‘Old Friends’ multiple times in my life when I’ve moved on from friend groups for personal reasons or tried to do soul-searching/find where I wanna be in my life. Inevitably, there’s always a chapter of grieving those friend groups and questioning the meaning of life! Being so intent on developing as an individual almost always (for me) comes at the expense of developing as part of a collective. It makes me sad every time, but so does being stagnant.”

SONG: “Serotonin” - Girl In Red

“When I moved from a rather small city to Berlin three years ago right after a breakup and before starting my first real adult full-time job, I was on the highway in a rental car packed with my stuff and ‘Serotonin’ by Girl in Red played on the radio. I had never heard the song before, instantly loved it, and listened to it on repeat while getting settled at my new apartment. The intro of the song will always send me back into that era: being excited (i. e. full of serotonin) for a new beginning in a new city while also having to come to terms with the past and adjust to all the changes that come with moving and breaking up.”

SONG: “The King of Carrot Flowers, Pt. One” - Neutral Milk Hotel

“My first night of college in 2009, a bunch of freshman broke into a spontaneous jam session on the quad. They kicked it off with “The King of Carrot Flowers, Pt. One.” Picture a few dozen 18-year-olds in their American Apparel and Urban Outfitters finest, guitars and other instruments in hand (I remember a triangle and bongo or two, it’s that kind of place), singing as loudly as we could. The New England air in September was mild yet crisp, and mingled with the smell of clove cigarettes. I didn’t really know the song that well at the time, but I joined in anyway. When I hear it now, I can still smell those cloves.”

SONG: “I Love LA” - Randy Newman

“When my wife and I first started dating, I was living down in San Diego and she was living in LA. After a couple months, it was time for me to move up to LA, so I did. But on the day I moved, she was on a work trip, so when she got back, I had to pick her up at LAX (I am a saint). When I picked her up, I was blasting ‘I Love LA’ by Randy Newman. Windows down, full volume, hell yeah brother. I’m a huge Randy Newman fan, but that song specifically keeps showing up in my life in weird ways. Like, every year the LA Marathon starts by playing that song, which for some reason makes me kind of emotional? It could be so corny, but the song is about how special LA is — even the dirty parts, even the weird overlooked parts. You can love something and recognize its flaws.”

SONG: “Faith” - Limp Bizkit

“End of middle school, beginning of high school, Jewish summer camp. West Texas. 1 billion degrees outside. Song was Limp Bizkit’s cover of George Michael’s ‘Faith.’ My parents were staunchly against any music with a parental advisory sticker, so I secretly burned the CD before I left for camp. Listening in my Walkman was one of the first times I felt comfortable leaning into anger. I had all these big feelings to process (as one does at hugely transitional times), and that song made me feel understood in my confusion.”

SONG: “Rivers and Roads” - The Head and the Heart

“It was something my friends and I had listened to throughout college. It felt like for four years, we were all sharing the collective notion that our time together wasn’t permanent. By the time we were all set to leave and start new lives, it started to represent this melancholic acceptance and retrospective that there will be people we’ll move on from and people we’d travel across the country to see. It also really set in the idea that there is family to find everywhere you go.”

SONG: “This Is All We’ve Got” - Cut Copy

“I listened to that song almost on repeat when I was on the Greyhound Bus to move to NYC. It was one of the songs that was downloaded on the music app of my phone (pre-Spotify, the kids will never know), and it felt very optimistic and hopeful and the lyrics touch on navigating big life changes so it felt ideal for the moment. I moved to the city in 2014, took a bus from Virginia and went to a three-month sublet I had in the East Village. I had no job, no plans, no employable skills... but I’ve been in NYC ever since, so I’ve made it work I s’pose! Now that I think about it, I don’t think I really listened to Cut Copy before, but somehow they found me.”

SONG: “Alone” - The Cry

“I heard ‘Alone’ by The Cry blasting out of a Bluetooth speaker walking to go watch the sun rise the day I graduated college in 2021. I had never heard the song before, and I can’t listen to it without feeling that same feeling in the song: ‘Isn’t it odd now to be on your own.’ After all that funneling to the next step — prepare you for high school to prepare you for college to prepare you for the real world — the decisions you make are ultimately your own and guided by no one else.”

SONG: “Goodbye, Oh Goodbye” - AJJ

“When I was 17, I was sent against my will to a school/institution that was ultimately shut down two years later after finally being publicly exposed for child abuse. After some genuinely harrowing months, I finally convinced my parents the place was an abusive cult, and they came to secretly pull me out with almost no notice (if the school knew, they’d try to stop us). I packed in secret, and when they arrived, I rushed out with all my bags, sobbing, and they grabbed me and sped away before anyone could stop us. I was crying and crying of joy — there’s a video of the exact moment we pulled out of the parking lot/driveway, the school finally in the literal rearview mirror, with me in the backseat scream-singing GOODBYE OH GOODBYE as that song played over the car speakers and the building vanished behind us. In that moment, it truly felt like my life had just begun again — I could start thinking about having a life for the first time in a very long time.”

SONG: “Flames shards goo” - ML Buch

“This song will always remind me of the sweeping vistas of the black hills in South Dakota. It was the summer of 2024, and I had accepted a job to work in Wind Cave National Park because I was debating whether or not to stay in the film industry due to the hellscape of consolidation happening and jobs not picking back up after the writers/actors strike. I didn’t have a car and knew absolutely nobody out there, but I did it anyway. I was working in the maintenance crew reinforcing the fencing around the park to keep the wildlife inside the perimeter, and almost every day after work, I would take a cold shower and go explore the park straight from my government housing complex inside the park. I look back at that time as one of the happiest months of my life because of how connected I felt to the world and how in touch I became with my intuition and myself as a person.

Whenever I hear this song (or entire album), I think back to being in the wide open fields of sweeping tall grass, the prairie dogs chirping their calls to each other to warn of predators, the buffalo herds walking in tandem to protect their newborns from the coyotes, the constant gentle breeze blowing through the air and being a constant low rumble in your eardrums, the ginormous clouds that would rise thousands of feet into the sky and create the most breathtaking landscapes. I never felt more alive and in tune with my confidence that I was always in control of my immediate future and that it was my responsibility to be my own best version of myself. This album was the perfect soundtrack to believing in myself and that everything is temporary and there’s nothing more beautiful than that. That experience really made me be so grateful for life. I miss it dearly.”

SONG: “Objects of My Affection” - Peter Bjorn and John

“When I was 19 and had just moved to LA, I was driving west on the 10 toward the McClure Tunnel on my way to a job interview. I was totally unaware of the dramatic ocean view waiting on the other side, just jamming along to ‘Objects of My Affection,’ full of nervous interview energy. Then I saw the view. I’ll never forget that mix of excitement! ‘So I’m gonna give, yes I’m gonna give, gonna give you a try’ particularly hit in that moment.”

SONG: “Backyards” - Broken Social Scene

I moved to Portland for a job after living in NorCal for most of my life. I was nervous, scared, in disbelief... I’d just signed a lease for a Victorian on The Grid in Sacramento with friends when given the offer, so I had to decide: do I remain in comfort with what I think I want, or do I go in the direction that scares me?

During that transition, I was in the middle of turbulent relationship/friendship breakups... I lost/hurt a lot in that, so much that my body felt like it was electric for the months to come. After settling, I started reading When Things Fall Apart, and somewhere around that time, Broken Social Scene’s “Backyards” found me. It felt like a gentle hug I’d been longing to feel, and whenever I feel uncertain I always think of the lyrics in the outro as a mantra: ‘It’s a hard parade, just be courageous.’

SONG: “Now & Forever” - Drake

“I remember crying in my Honda Civic to Drake’s “Now & Forever” the week I moved to USC. I couldn’t wait to leave the area where I grew up. I felt like I’d outgrown, had a contentious relationship with my dad, nuclear family dynamic was starting to deteriorate, typical stuff. I had no intention of looking back or maintaining the relationships I had made. I remember feeling almost vindictive about leaving because of how I felt like that time of my life treated me. Again, typical angsty stuff.

My little sister and I bonded a lot over hip hop during that time. It’s hard to remember exactly, but the Drake song probably made me think of her. The song has a lot of repetition (‘I’m leaving, I’m leaving, I’m gone’), so you can’t really avoid the messaging. I think I realized that I had basically forgotten about her perspective in all of this. Up to that point, we had shared the same problems at home, but I knew they were worsening, and I feared she would face some real tough shit for the three years she had left in high school (which turned out to be true).

For a while it felt like abandonment, but I don’t hold the same amount of guilt anymore. She and I talk about it a lot now, and while that’s brought us closer, those few years are also what makes us fundamentally different today.”

SONG: “The World Is Outside” - Ghosts

“Perhaps a bit on the nose with the title/lyrics, but it came out in 2006 just as I was finishing primary school (I’m in the UK), and it perfectly captured that anticipatory feeling of a new start. I turned 30 a few days ago, and it was the first song I listened to.”

SONG: “It’s My House” - Diana Ross

“I played ‘It’s My House’ by Diana Ross when I moved into a new place on my own after breaking up with a horrible ex that I lived with. I got to decorate it with all my girly artwork that he hated!”

SONG: “Broccoli” - DRAM

“A song that will always remind me of a transitional period in my life is ‘Broccoli’ by DRAM. That song really blew up in summer 2016, the first college summer I wasn’t living at home with my parents but around campus with friends. It felt like a baby step into independence. There was nothing better than going to work at my summer internship, then coming home to friends also there without any homework to do so we would just hang out. It felt like a never-ending party! At the time, we also thought the 2016 election was for sure not going to go to Trump, so that summer also had a sense of fun, innocence, and hope for the future.”

SONG: “California” - Delta Spirit

“This is so cheesy, but the lyrics are ‘I want you to move to California for yourself,’ and I listened to it several times daily on my month-long trip to move to California post-pandemic/post-breakup.

Even more embarrassing: I would pretend it was my ex singing the song, because the lyric is ‘I want you to move to California for yourself, but not for me / I want you to go out there and find somebody else.’ That concept of someone wishing a person well for a big important move and wishing them the best for their new creative pursuits and romantic pursuits was exactly what I needed in that moment to break free from a past that was no longer fitting for me.”

SONG: “Chicago” - Sufjan Stevens

“I moved to Chicago in 2007 at the very height of the Sufjan Stevens Illinoise era, and the song ‘Chicago’ feels so much like triumph. He literally says ‘moved to Chicago, all things go,’ and that was me, doing the damn thing. Now it’s 19 years later, and I’m still here.”

SONG: “I Always Knew” - The Vaccines

“I was completely alone going to college, coming from a school of 30 to one of the biggest colleges in the nation (University of Texas). While getting to know my new life, I enjoyed the routine of walking to class and feeling like this was my New Life and everything was going to change no matter what I did. I hadn’t made friends yet but I knew they were out there; until then, I enjoyed the time alone, and one of the songs on repeat in my wire earphones was ‘I Always Knew’ by The Vaccines. That song and the album (Come of Age) were my best friends while getting to know my new life, and I see the burnt orange of the fall leaves and school colors every time I listen to it and it takes me back. The song itself was nostalgic and exciting, all the feelings I felt going into college.”

SONG: “Green Light” - Lorde

“When I kind of impulsively moved (back) to NYC after moving back home FROM NYC, I moved in with my little sister and didn’t have a job or one lined up or any plan or even a bed. I had my first anxiety attack, and after I calmed down enough, my sister and I thrash-danced around her room to Lorde’s ‘Green Light.’ Now it always makes me think of starting again.”

SONG: “Came so Easy” - The Weather Station

“When I was first dating my now fiancée in 2021, we decided to make playlists for one another. Both playlists were around six songs, both with titles that cheekily referenced the few random factoids we knew of each other (job, hometown, etc)… and both included this song. I remember feeling like we were such a pair — a pair that ‘came so easy.’”

SONG: “Silver Lining” - Rilo Kiley

“In 2016, I was dating this guy for six years who, in retrospect, was very obviously cheating on me. He would do annoying things like not put our relationship status on Facebook or get mad if I tagged him in photos with me. On top of that, he was at times physically abusive to me. I finally got the courage to leave him and get my own apartment, and that song became my anthem.”

SONG: “When I’m Gone” - Simple Plan

“In 2024, I’d been feeling stagnant and lost in my own life. I was in a marriage I wasn’t content in, I hated my job, my family and closest friends were far away, and I felt there was nothing to stay for but couldn’t bring myself to do anything about it. Then, I went to a Simple Plan concert with an old friend (very reminiscent of my teen years) and the song ‘When I’m Gone’ came on. I decided in that moment: It was all over and things were going to change. I left my marriage, my job, my house — everything I had known for 15 years — and moved to Scotland. It was the best decision, I feel so free and lighter now. That song will forever remind me: Choose yourself first, and you can start over as many times as you need to.”

SONG: “The Morning” - The Weeknd

“I moved to Bangkok in 2011, when I was 25. I was burned out of my early-stage non-career, and my mom convinced me to go overseas and teach. I ended up in Thailand, where I would meet my wife. I remember landing in Bangkok knowing absolutely no one, feeling anonymous and free for the first time in my life, and absolutely loving it. Life was fresh and new. A total blank slate. I was listening to The Weeknd’s House of Balloons quite a bit, and ‘The Morning’ was the right song for the city back then. I stayed in Bangkok 13 years, and every time I hear that song — the guitar solo, especially — it brings me back to that year, the best of my life.”

SONG: “Clouds” - The Go-Betweens

“A few years ago, my marriage fell apart rather suddenly and strikingly. I take a lot of pictures of clouds, and as I was out for a walk one day, a song I hadn’t paid much attention to by one of my favourite groups, The Go-Betweens (yeah, I’m kind of old), came on my phone. The song is called ‘Clouds,’ and to my astonishment, it completely captured how I felt and helped me process what was going on and teach me that it’s ok — in fact, mandatory — to feel what I felt and grow with that. I took a lot of cloud photos that autumn. All is good.

The clouds are here / They aren’t up in the sky.

I cupped them with my hands / and reached up high.

I said to these clouds, “no more am I blind.

I have to see straight / and that will make me unkind.”

Visions of blue, I’m angry, I’m wise. And you, you’re under cloudy skies.”

SONG: “On the Road Again” - Willie Nelson

“When I leave to do a show/film out of town, I usually play ‘On the Road Again’ by Willie Nelson somewhere on my drive. I know it’s clichéd, but it works for me!”

SONG: “Pretty People” - Monkey Majik

“I met my wife during a summer job in my hometown. She was an adorable dork and also my boss (that’s another story…), and she was SUPER into Japanese pop music. The song ‘Pretty People’ by Monkey Majik instantly brings me back to that summer. We went to different schools, so when the fall semester started, I went back to school, moved into my off-campus apartment, and played that song while I unpacked and put up the framed photos of us she had given me as a present. I was so sad she wasn’t there. Fast-forward to today, we’ve been together 18 years, married for five, and that silly song instantly brings me back to one of the happiest times in my life, when I met the person I love.”

SONG: “Young Folks” - Peter Bjorn and John

“‘Young Folks’ still reminds me of the time between the end of freshman year and the start of sophomore year of college, when my wife and I met and eventually started dating. They’d usually play the song when we went dancing with friends every week. We were both fresh out of long-term relationships we felt burnt by, but we instantly had a great connection and were cautiously giving each other a try — I think the song captures that feeling. 😄”

SONG: “Debaser” - Pixies

“When I dropped out of college and moved to Atlanta on my own in my early 20s, I moved into a constantly flooding basement for a year, but I loved it so much because it meant I was starting my life on my own. I listened to Doolittle by Pixies for the very first time, and the whole album stayed on repeat in my car. The first song, ‘Debaser,’ really really still brings back memories of East Atlanta where I lived. My friends and I would blast the album from my car stereo and we sing ‘Da basement!!!’ because that’s where I lived. That’ll always mean that to me.”

SONG: “So This Is Goodbye” - Junior Boys

“I moved into an old little apartment in Barcelona, the first time I’d had ‘my own’ place. It still needed painting and furniture and so on, but I unpacked and set up my stereo first. I played ‘So This Is Goodbye’ by Junior Boys — not for the lyrics, but for the feel of the music, the warm synthesizers that helped me imagine what I wanted my place to become once I’d sorted it out.”

SONG: “Twenty-Something” - Kerrigan-Lowdermilk

“I’m a theatre nerd at heart, and there’s a YouTube video of a song called ‘Twenty-Something’ by Kerrigan-Lowdermilk that went up when I was like 15 (17 years ago). I looooved the song. When I was 19 turning 20, I listened to it at midnight, and it became a tradition where all through my 20s, I listened to it at midnight on my birthday. Now I’m almost 33, and this post prompted me to listen to it for the first time in years. I felt so warm and fuzzy about all the years it saw me through. My 20s were hard AF (truly just awful), and this song was validating of the hard stuff and gave me hope for the good stuff.”

SONG: “This Year” - The Watanabes

“I was living a double life in rural Japan as an English teacher by day and a professional fighter on nights and weekends. Visas are temporary by nature, and I was on my final stretch before moving to parts unknown for more education in the U.S. At the start of that year, I attended an art event in Tokyo where this amiable British guy gave me a copy of his band’s first album. Said band was basically him and his brother, and they were making whimsical guitar pop about the mix of being homesick and newly in love so common among expats in Japan. I put the CD on in my car and didn’t take it out the entire year. The lyrics of this song are pretty on the nose, sure. But hey, I’m a corny guy. They’re a corny band. A 25-year-old whose life felt like it was at once ending and just getting started needed corny.”

SONG: “Cow” - Sparklehorse

“It was the day after Halloween 2023. I woke up earlier than usual and checked my phone. I saw a message from my best friend of five years: She never wanted to talk to me again. No reason given. I didn’t cry at the time because it felt surreal and I didn’t know what to do, so I just went on a walk. The only thing that kept me going was listening to this album, and this song particularly. I find it strange that, although I still haven’t gotten over her entirely, this song feels unrelated to her — more like the start of my new chapter than the end of my old one. I still love this song, and I listen to it fondly picturing a cow. I no longer picture her.”

SONG: “All the Rock Star Jobs Are Taken” - Dylan Hicks

“I had interviewed for a bunch of professor gigs, and most of them didn’t lead to a second interview. One of them did, and it seemed to have gone really well, but then I ended up one vote short of an offer. As the title hints, it’s a song about a dream that doesn’t come true, with lines like ‘Wanted to be Leonard Cohen / Not some third-rate Billy Joel’ and ‘Things didn’t really go as planned / I’m playing bass guitar in a wedding band.’ I’m someone who likes to wallow in his melancholy, and this fit the bill. I played it a lot. Then, when I hadn’t heard anything from anyone in over two months, I got a call. I’ve been a professor for a while now. I’m no Leonard Cohen equivalent, but I’ve done alright, and I still dream of one day putting just the right words in just the right order.”

SONG: “Break It Down Again” - Tears for Fears

“The fire never reached my apartment, but it made it so toxic I had to stay at a Red Roof Inn in downtown Chicago until I found a new place to stay. This happened as I was in year three of trying to find a new workplace, and I now also found myself without an apartment to work from. I saw myself facing the possibility that all my long-term effort and sacrifice would be worthless because some dumdum started a fire while frying some eggs. At 7 a.m., I put on my coat and went to the coffee place around the corner. When I finally sat down with my coffee and sandwich, Tears for Fears started playing. I was still learning English at the time, but I paid attention to the lyrics and salted my coffee with my own stupid tears. Since then, whenever I move or experience a significant change in my life, I play the song.”

Hello, friends! First of all, I want to thank you. I had no idea what to expect when I started this newsletter last month, and it’s been so soul-affirming to know that you’re all as nosy and sentimental as I am.

Music is remarkable to me because it is both universal and deeply, devastatingly personal. As a music supervisor, I’m captivated by the way music helps us tell stories. And as a hopeless social media addict, I’m grateful that so many of you are willing to share the music that has shaped your story.

This month, as the days get shorter and the news presents us with a veritable advent calendar of horrifying tragedies, I had this question for my followers:

“Have you ever played a song on repeat when you were crashing out?”

For the sake of transparency, this is actually how I asked:

As expected, the answers were funny, devastating, and inspiring (sometimes all three). A lot of breakup stuff, of course. Some hard truths about jobs, a couple big life transitions, several unspeakable losses. At least two songs from the Muppets. Our ears can surprise us when we’re at our most vulnerable, and an unexpected song can become a catalyst for epiphany, a tool for self-flagellation, or a soothing tonic. These “crashout” songs are fascinating because they are often completely divorced from our usual taste, our auditory ego, our perception of ourselves as listeners. Something deep in our subconscious latches onto a song and uses it to heal — if that isn’t a testament to the strange power of music, what is?

The rules: I gather responses via my Instagram (@gadzucks), where I post a story asking for songs + context. The story runs for 24 hours, so all these responses were collected within a 1-day window. Not all responses are selected, and all selected responses are posted anonymously. These are people of all ages from around the world. I know some of them personally; some are strangers to me.

Cue Sheet: Crashout Anthems

SONG: “King” - Florence and the Machine

“When I was in the process of opening my long-distance relationship and moving to NYC, all I was really doing was going on long walks because it was COVID and I lived with my immunocompromised friend. The song was the perfect thing to walk to, has great drums… the main line is ‘I am no mother / I am no bride / I am king.’ I’d been living in total quarantine for 8 months because of my friend, and I was happy to do it for her, but I had started to get restless and finally the world started opening again, I made the plan to move, and the song literally felt like marching to the top of a hill. Like, I would always listen to it and think of Joan of Arc. I was like okay, maybe I can break out of this relationship that is tethering me somewhere else, maybe I can break out of this apartment that has been a warm home but I grew out of. The song just has this amazing crescendo that felt exactly like what I was going through.”

SONG: “Untitled October Song” - Runnner

“I had a massive long-distance crush on someone for a few years, and we had a very flirty friendship for a long time. Then, in the past couple months she became single and we were talking a lot and she was planning to visit to finally jump start things. Then, the day she was supposed to visit, she called and told me she wasn’t coming and that she met someone else. I sat down after that call and saw this song was just released and it was so close to what I went through that I nearly broke my brain listening to it over and over. It gave me some sort of comfort that I wasn’t alone in this feeling.”

SONG: “Coming Around Again” - Carly Simon

“End of a long-term relationship. There’s such a longing in the vocal while recognizing the imperfection of the relationship. And then there’s hopefulness in the end. It was on constant repeat.”

SONG: “How To Disappear Completely” - Radiohead

“When I found out my dad was going into hospice care, I probably listened to ‘How To Disappear Completely’ by Radiohead 1 million times in my car outside of my band’s rehearsal studio.”

SONG: “Something About What Happens When We Talk” - Lucinda Williams

“Over and over. Painful yearning at its finest. Hurts so good I always gotta run it back again and again.”

SONG: “Matilda” - Harry Styles

“I’d just gotten out of a very toxic relationship and all my friends had moved out of LA and I just felt so untethered. I decided to move to New York shortly after — in my final days in LA, I’d drive around Los Feliz and listen to this song on a loop for an hour at the end of every single day. The lyrics aren’t all spot on, but there’s a sweet sadness to it that just felt so cathartic.”

SONG: “Bruised Orange” - John Prine

“There was a time in like 2023/2024 where every day everywhere I walked I was inexplicably frustrated at virtually everything around me, any inconvenience. Soon after, I got really into John Prine and would have ‘Bruised Orange’ just playing on repeat (either Prine’s version or Justin Vernon’s cover). All of Prine’s music has this effect for me, but ‘Bruised Orange’ does wonders at centering and grounding me, it’s a super great reminder to not let little things make you spiral or dig yourself into a depressive hole.”

SONG: “The One” - Kesha

“I listened to ‘The One’ from Kesha’s new album over and over for a month this summer when I was going through the most painful breakup of my life. It’s a joyful song about realizing that SHE’S ‘the one’ in her life, the one she’s been searching for all this time. I was trying to convince myself of the same, though I never fully believed it. One day in particular I played it on repeat while riding my bike around a cemetery and taking advantage of the solitude by belting it out.”

SONG: “Hawaiian Roller Coaster Ride” from Lilo & Stitch

“For some reason, during my senior year at the University of Maryland (go Terps), I rediscovered ‘Hawaiian Roller Coaster Ride’ from Lilo & Stitch. I’d loved the movie as a kid, but for some reason the song hadn’t stuck with me… until I heard it again as a 22-year-old. It instantly became a comfort song during those sad senioritis winters. After rehearsals with my sketch comedy group, I’d drive all the car-less members home and blast it at full volume — singing (maybe even screaming) at the top of my lungs. It was kind of a running bit, and it probably made me seem mildly unhinged, but everyone eventually joined in earnestly. I like to think it counts as a “happy crash out.”

SONG: “Diving Woman” - Japanese Breakfast

“I play ‘Diving Woman’ by Japanese Breakfast every time I’m on a plane taking off (I hate flying and especially taking off, but despite the song’s name it is sooo soothing).”

SONG: “Sex” - The 1975

“I was 21 and studying abroad in England and met and fell deeply in love with a Moroccan girl who, unfortunately, had a long-distance boyfriend at the time. They were open but she wouldn’t hook up with me because we had feelings for each other. For weeks we’d hang out in each others’ rooms without doing anything and it was some of the most intense yearning I’ve ever felt, and that’s when I came across ‘Sex.’ Lines like ‘And now we’re on the bed in my room / and I’m about to fill his shoes / but you say no.’ Truly was exactly what I was going through at the time. Anyway, after a few weeks we finally did hook up and had a very intense love affair for the last month of the semester. All while listening to ‘She’s got a boyfriend anyway.’”

SONG: “I Have A Dream” - ABBA

“August 2022. I’m house-sitting a beautiful little cottage in the middle of an orange grove. I’m going through a hard time with a relationship, all of my girlfriends are out of town, and I’m relishing in my staycation. I decide to take a handful of mushrooms, I feel ready for a heavier dose than the micros I was used to. Confident I’m going to have a good trip, I decide to relax and watch a movie. The movie? Girl Interrupted. The mushrooms really kick in during the (spoiler alert) suicide scene. It comes to my attention that I can NOT handle what’s happening. I start to panic. I freak out. I FaceTime my girlfriends who were all in Tahoe. I put on ‘I Have A Dream’ by ABBA. I replay the song over and over again. It’s the only thing keeping me tethered to earth. My girlfriends suggest I eat citrus because they heard it helps with mushroom highs. Perfect, I’m surprised by it. Come to find out, citrus intensifies the high. I walk in circles saying to myself, ‘I believe in angels.’ On my Spotify Wrapped that year it showed that I listened to that song 73 times in a row.”

SONG: “Short Story” - Bon Iver

“I was listening to it incessantly in the lead-up to a big job interview / potentially leaving my previous gig where I’d spent 13 years. I got the job, only to have the offer rescinded over a silly policy. Eventually they restored it after I emailed the whole-company head of HR pleading for someone to take another look at the situation. Lots of depression during the middle phase! But I still kept listening to the song throughout.”

SONG: “September” - Chloe Moriondo

“I had just spent a weekend with a girl and been rejected at the end of it. She had been supporting me for months long-distance and I thought there was more there than existed. It gave me hope that I’d find the words on a good day to make it work. And eventually it helped me let it go by holding the memories close. ‘And I won’t regret it / I won’t regret ever holding you this closely / And I won’t forget it, you won’t forget me, hopefully.”

SONG: “God Only Knows” - The Beach Boys

“Fifty times in one day. My grandpa had just died and instead of being able to go to the funeral, I had to study for my midterms.”

SONG: “Ever Again” - Robyn

“I was in this toxic relationship, and every time my now ex ‘ended’ things I played the song on a loop trying to convince myself that I should be moving on. The relationship lasted 1.5 years, during the pandemic (isolation to the max) and things ended every two weeks on average, so you do the math.”

SONG: “Alberta #3” - Bob Dylan

“Anytime I’ve hit a wall at work or life, anytime I don’t know what to listen to, or really anytime I reach an impasse at something, I listen to ‘Alberta #3’ by Bob Dylan. The version that appears on the Another Self Portrait bootleg. It’s a perfect 2:30ish where the melody and songwriting are so simple and beautiful. I always listen twice. It calms my mind down and whatever happens following, I’ve at least allowed that moment of bliss to soothe me.”

SONG: “Bastards” - Ke$ha

“I had a mental breakdown and was diagnosed with cancer. My older sister was a dick to me so I listened to that song a shit ton.”

SONG: “Better Off Alone” - Alice Deejay

“I was working at a burger place and stuck in a romantic friendship with my coworker that I was so in love with and he... wasn’t. We started a band together and broke up before our first show. I had a pattern since childhood of having deep longing and unreciprocated crushes on people that didn’t like me back. He started dating our much younger coworker and I freaked out and switched my shifts so I wouldn’t have to work with him and ended up quitting. I would listen to ‘Better Off Alone’ on repeat for days, and I got a tattoo on my hip in my brother’s attic to remind myself I’m better alone than chasing people who don’t want me.”

SONG: “Everything Stays” - Adventure Time

“Several times I’ve listened to this song on repeat for about 24 hours, most recently when I moved to LA and was crashing out about ‘What if I fail out here and have to go back home’ with a hint of ‘I lived here before with someone special who’s no longer in my life and now I’m reliving those memories.’ The song is very much about dealing with change and loss healthily. I actually want to get a tattoo based on this song!”

SONG: “January 1979” - mewithoutyou

“My father died a few years ago. He was an awful piece of shit and I do not and did not mourn his loss. But the events surrounding his death were crazy and far too long for this story. Regardless, my mother’s heart was breaking. His father, my Papaw, was also in the hospital for a fall that happened on the day he died. I was driving back and forth from where I live and my hometown. To and from the hospital. Every time I was in the car, I played that song. Multiple times. SCREAMING it. It’s sad and emotional. It was cathartic to scream into the void.”

SONG: “Holy Havoc” - Yoke Lore

“It was the last single released for that album and it came out the night before one of my best friends was killed by a drunk driver. I couldn’t listen to anything else for a couple weeks because it was the only song that made me feel safe in a new horrific reality. ‘I’m not ready to be rearranged / Don’t hold it against me.’ I’m shocked that I still deeply love that song.”

SONG: “Scenario” - A Tribe Called Quest

“Stressing over a massive scenario analysis problem at work that I’d pulled a couple of all-nighters for. Sometime during the last night, I just put ‘Scenario’ by ATCQ on repeat at full volume for the final 6 hours. My officemates had decidedly mixed opinions about it.”

SONG: “The Only Thing” - Sufjan Stevens

“Breakup. It was maybe a month or two in early 2018. I think it was really that whole first half of Carrie & Lowell, but I listened to that song more than any other. I guess I felt like that album really meets a person who wants to self-harm where they’re at. Like, he sings about his self-destructive desires in such a pretty and seductive way, and yet it’s a song about NOT killing or hurting yourself. Like, even the title is about the fragile beauty of the things that keep us hanging on. I think that when you’re in a bad place, things can feel more beautiful and precious because they become a reason to live. Beautiful or interesting things become imbued with a kind of life to a desperate person that they don’t ordinarily have. And the songs themselves can sometimes become that — a small reason to live.”

SONG: “What About You” - Worst Party Ever

“My anxiety was at an all-time high because I was happy in a relationship and didn’t recognize my emotions; I was in flight-or-fight mode because my body simply was not used to being happy in a relationship. I used this song as a window to my old depressed self I’d been before working on my mental health and finally getting medicated. For about a week in either July/August, I played this song exclusively at night as I walked my dogs in my neighborhood where I bought my first house with my ex before I went to play hockey. I was living with my current partner and this song randomly played after an album finished on my walk one time. The lyrics appealed to my former self that I didn’t realize was my former self at the time, if that makes sense. The song is hella depressing and I think my mind was looking at the past with rose-colored glasses not realizing how destructive my anxiety was currently being.”

SONG: “In Too Deep” - Sum 41

“Truly just like, ‘Will I ever leave this job? Or am I truly IN TOO DEEP?’ I didn’t notice how much I was listening to the song when I first started — I was just listening to an early aughts punk/emo/soft rock playlist, but then I realized it was like every day when I would leave my office and head to the subway I would keep repeating the song. It wasn’t until I went to karaoke with my coworkers and said ‘I need to sing Sum 41’ that I realized I was listening to it nonstop, and it was because I hated my job.”

SONG: “November Rain” - Guns N Roses

“A study hack I developed in high school is playing one bad song on repeat for the entire time I’m doing a task I’ve been procrastinating so I’m more motivated to work quickly / get it done. My freshman year of college for finals, I chose ‘November Rain’ and listened to only that for about a week straight until I started to like it and it had the reverse effect where I started really savoring it. And now it works like a sleeper-cell cue where it makes me feel like I’m forgetting an assignment whenever I hear it.”

SONG: “Hollywood Baby” - 100 Gecs

“‘Hollywood Baby’ was all I could listen to while I was editing a sketch comedy special this summer. It practically made me enter a spiteful flow state as I stayed up for 36 hours trying to stitch together degraded audio and inelegant raw footage.”

SONG: “This Year” - The Mountain Goats

“I had a job I absolutely hated for a few months in 2017 where my desk was in a windowless closet and my boss was toxic. I drove in heavy Atlanta traffic for an hour every morning to get there, and I’d listen to ‘This Year’ by The Mountain Goats on repeat. They fired me on New Year’s Day 2018 before I got a chance to quit. Now I can’t listen to that song without feeling the misery of that year again. The lyrics were a perfect match — ‘I am gonna make it through this year if it kills me.’

SONG: “1965” - Jessie Murph

“The day my boyfriend and I broke up, I listened to Jessie Murph’s ‘1965’ 70 times. I’m an adolescent therapist and one of my clients was talking about the album in session around the same time, so I was just checking it out. And then things went left in my personal life and the album stuck, but that song specifically hit a nerve because it’s about being willing to accept less-than-ideal circumstances for the dream. I think at the time, and still now (breakup was only a month-ish ago), that didn’t sound so bad.”

SONG: “La Perla” - Rosalia

“As I discovered the nice guy I thought I was dating actually sucks. To me, this song speaks to the shittiness of being played by someone who is outwardly such a charming person, seen doing all the right things, only to experience that they direct all their worst behavior toward the person they love the most. And Rosalia turns that shitty feeling into this gorgeous operatic expression of sheer righteous anger without needing to qualify herself or apologize. Going through something similar myself, I needed to hear a woman be so powerful in her self-respect who speaks her truth against all the manipulation and fear a man like that tries to evoke. Also, the fact that it’s in Spanish, a language I’m fluent in but out of practice, felt like it was only for me and he can’t even understand it.”

SONG: “The Rainbow Connection” - Kermit the Frog

“The first week of quitting drinking was so difficult, I had withdrawal symptoms, shaky hands and stuff like that, felt really bad all around. I listened to ‘The Rainbow Connection’ (Kermit’s version) 23 times that week.”

SONG: “Roman Candles” - Death Cab for Cutie

“I was (and am, TBH) in a job that’s not a career. I had two kids, the first of which was born in April of 2020, and I felt like my world and life and mental health coping mechanism house of cards had completely toppled over. ‘I used to feel everything like a flame / Now it’s a struggle just to feel anything / I watch the world from a window on a hill / Everyone moving as I’m standing still.’ These lyrics hit me like a Mack truck going 100mph. One of those sections of a song you rewind because they didn’t make you emo enough the first go around. That verse in particular was able to articulate my feelings about where I was vs. where I thought everybody else in my life was — them moving, me standing still in the eye of a chaos storm I couldn’t control. And yet, in typical Death Cab fashion, the chorus of ‘Roman Candles’ is actually quite optimistic: ‘But I am learning to let go / Of everything I tried to hold / Too long cuz they all explode like Roman candles.’ The verses were a gut punch, but the repeating chorus made me feel like ‘This too shall pass.’”

SONG: “We Fly High” - Jim Jones

“In like 5th grade when I got an iPod shuffle (the popsicle stick one), I listened constantly because I wanted to memorize the lyrics and felt like it made me ~cool~ listening to rap music at a Jewish private school.”

SONG: “Tarmac” - Blondshell

“One time, I found out a man had done something that hurt me very badly and I was biking home late at night after I found out, sobbing on my bike (dangerous), SCREAMING ‘Tarmac’ by Blondshell over and over and over for like 40 minutes lol.”

SONG: “Pink Pony Club” and “California” - Chappell Roan

“Crash out 1: When I first moved from the East Coast to LA, I didn’t have a job or a car and I would sit in my husband’s car blasting ‘Pink Pony Club’ and sob. I was so far from my friends and family, and it made me feel a little more tethered to our new environment name-dropped in so many songs.

Crash Out 2: Flash forward to us leaving LA and moving back to the East Coast. While packing up, I listened to ‘California,’ again by Chappell Roan. Very on the nose, literally about bombing out and not making it in LA. Now I just think about my friends in LA and listen to that song whenever I am feeling like a sensitive marshmallow.”

SONG: “Love Me More” - Mitski

“When I was in my mid-20s, I realized that I needed to end my 5-year relationship even if that seemed terrifying. I had this powerful gut feeling that what we had was wonderful but it wasn’t enough. Cue me finding the recently released Mitski song ‘LOVE ME MORE.’ The catharsis of Mitski demanding she needed MORE — there was an itch she wasn’t supposed to scratch — if only she got enough love to drown it out. It so perfectly reflected this angst and hunger in me that I was trying to suppress. I couldn’t stop listening to it. It struck such a chord and, truthfully, helped me end the relationship. One night I went to a party and had a really manic energy, the energy of someone with one foot out the door of their relationship. The next morning I woke up violently hungover and texted my best friend that I needed her advice. En route to her apartment, I started listening to ‘Love Me More’ on a loop. It was the only way I could feel the bizarre mix of devastation and elation that was brewing in me. I listened to it so much that day and then again and again in the next three weeks leading up to the breakup.”

SONG: “Used To Be Young” - Miley Cyrus

“Along the lines of breakups, I played both ‘I’d Hate to be You When People Find Out What This Song is About’ by Mayday Parade, and then later ‘Used To Be Young’ by Miley Cyrus. When I split with my fiance after a 5-year-long relationship. I felt like I’d wasted my twenties with him in a relationship I was hesitant to enter in the first place and had a million red flags. A couple months after the breakup, my best friend from high school had her 30th birthday party, which was a costume party where everyone had to dress as a music icon, and I came as Miley Cyrus from the ‘Used To Be Young’ music video.”

SONG: “Don’t Delete the Kisses” - Wolf Alice

“I was having a big ol’ crisis about never finding a serious partner, I was dumped by my ex in like November 2022 completely out of the blue and he didn’t tell me why (🤩) so I was spiraling about having met guys that sucked on dating apps and thinking that there was a part of me that’s unloveable and I didn’t know what it was because my ex wouldn’t tell me. I would drive to and from work every day and listen to it at least three times and just wallow in the ‘What if it’s not meant for me, love?’ lyrics and think about how I would laugh and connect with all these guys but then we’d have sex a few times and then the connection would fizzle out and I’d stop getting texts back. I do think now, in retrospect, I still feel sort of like an August girl (like the Taylor Swift song), but I’ve also realized that the men I was entertaining the affection of were just looking for a quick fling and would dip when too much time had passed and it started looking serious. I’ve had much better results now (at 25) than I did then (at 22/23).”

SONG: “I Can Lift A Car” - Walk the Moon

“I have listened to this song on repeat during a chaotic day at work of nonstop phone rings, emails, teams, etc. I also listened to it on repeat while running a 5k. I first discovered this song from a guy on a dating app that I met. We bonded over music and he burned me an amazing CD and left me this CD to come find in a bush by a gas station because he lived two hours away and we weren’t able to meet up. Confusing, but it was fun. Sadly, it didn’t work out, but I always think of what could’ve been while listening to this song, which causes me to crash out even more.”

SONG: “Streetlights” - Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit

“I was going through a terrible time — I had just moved across the country with my boyfriend at the time, and he had fallen into some bad old habits and was staying out til 3 am every night. I heard ‘Streetlights’ by Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit and ended up laying in bed every night listening to it on repeat. I think I racked up over 400 plays in a month?! Luckily, my boyfriend got help and things worked out, but I still appreciate Jason Isbell.”

SONG: “Something Pretty” - Patrick Park

“I was so so so in love with a guy in college who was a close friend and there was a lot of mutual flirting and I was so convinced that I was just one party or one night out away from him telling me that he loved me back. I would listen to this song over and over walking to class, creating vivid scenarios of him confessing his love for me in my head. Specifically the swell at 1:14 and the line ‘I’m the friend you need but can’t be trusted’ spoke to me on such a level that my 18-year-old brain was convinced that this guy wanted to love me and tell me but he just didn’t have the courage. Reader, he never did and we never got together, and I am deeply embarrassed about how I still carry the babiest flame for him.”

SONG: “Adventures In Success” - Will Powers

“I always used to listen to this song on my way to a date to make myself not crash out lol. It’s a wild record, and the lyrics would take me out of my self-doubt and nerves and make me laugh instead for a moment. It didn’t always make the date work out, but it gave me a little lift of confidence. I usually used to find that sort of thing cringe, but at some point I had to get over myself and use music as a more complete tool for emotional regulation and genuinely give up the sense of control I thought I had. ”

SONG: “Masterpiece” - Motionless in White

“I have a history of addiction and trauma, same old story. My behaviors in relationships, romantic and platonic, were so self-destructive — if left unchecked, they still can be, even after 9 years sober. It’s a beautiful song that reminds me to stop wishing I made people cry and just instead don’t make them cry today. I heard the song not long after it came out RIGHT after one of the breakups with someone I had 100% committed to spending my life with. My trauma responses come out as cold in relationships and I’d iced out one of the purest humans ever put on this planet. She had enough and left. It was about 2 weeks of this song being played 1-15 times every time I was in the car, the gym, the shower. I wanted that relationship to be the last time I let my bullshit from the past be an excuse for my shitty behaviors. So I guess I just tried to sear that song into my brain. I’ve been in an incredible relationship now for 8 months; the universe just keeps introducing me to more pure souls, and I will do everything in my power not to repeat old behaviors and defense mechanisms. I still listen to that song once a day.

SONG: “I Gotta Feeling” - Black Eyed Peas

“I played ‘I Gotta Feeling’ by the Black Eyed Peas one night on repeat all night to study for grad school. It was the fall/winter after the song came out, so it was everywhere. I put it on and then didn’t like the next song, so I started over. Part of the hook is ‘And we’ll do it again,’ so I tried a third time. At that point it just burrowed into my brain and wouldn’t leave.”

SONG: “Used to Make Sense” - Imani Graham

“The song doesn’t literally match the plot of my crashout over my codependent/probably homoerotic friend breakup with my roommate of 5 years, but when I first heard the line ‘We used to be friends, but we’re not quite friends now,’ I literally had to restart the song. This friend and I trauma-bonded in grad school housing (during peak COVID) and were the duo; we helped each other through breakups and mental illness crashouts and everything that comes with the early 20s. About 2.5 years in, she literally just stopped being friendly — telling me about her day or even asking about mine. When I asked her about it, she told me that she was just so ready for her long-distance BF to move back to California and get married and start her life that she didn’t really care about what was happening right now anymore. I was in her past before her future even started. So basically, when we moved out of our apartment without any sort of real goodbye to close out 5 years of friendship (and maybe we were in love? Who knows!), I played this song the entire car ride to my new apartment. The way you can hear the artist’s sadness mixed in with the anger hit me so hard, because I could never figure out how I felt about the end of this friendship. I would switch between devastated and furious daily. For a minute, I tried to pretend like she was always a horrible friend and that none of it was real. But what this song really captures for me is the acceptance of the two truths: We used to be friends. It used to make sense, and it used to be good. And it just isn’t anymore.”

SONG: “Holding Out For a Hero” - Bonnie Tyler

“I listened to Bonnie Tyler’s ‘Holding Out For a Hero’ maybe 50 times in a day and then about 5-10 times a day for the weeks after when I was writing my fantasy farce. I started listening because I thought it was going to be the song I danced to in the final ‘fight,’ so I was listening with the intent to choreograph a silly comedy dance fight, but then it became more like a talisman that I clung to. I blew completely past the cringe and just let the song become about me and the pressure I was putting myself under to write something good in time for the show. ‘Holding out for a Hero’ became an absolute anthem, and sure, this was a song written for the movie Footloose and it probably had its biggest modern moment as the finale in Shrek 2, but man was Bonnie Tyler speaking to ME. I ended up not using the song as the final dance because it just felt like it became something more.”

SONG: “Man Or Muppet” from The Muppets

“When I went to college in New Orleans, a very Hurricane-prone place (I am from a part of the country that is more into tornadoes), I was fetal position on the ground listening to ‘Man or Muppet’ as the hurricane started to descend on my dorm building and flood my room. There was a primal calling within me that wanted specifically that song and it didn’t cease for like 5 hours.”

SONG: “tombstone poetry” - Field Medic

“You ever get cheated on and then later find out that you’re the other guy for the guy who was the other guy when you were dating the person you’re sleeping with? I remember playing this over and over and over again. Sitting in the parking lot of a liquor store, crying in my room, playing it again after every time I ran into her (Minneapolis is a very small city).”

SONG: “Baby Drugs” - Tristen

“I was breaking up with my boyfriend of 3 years, we both liked drugs but he liked them more. I realized he would always pick them and partying over me, but I’d always pick dancing and having fun over drugs or him. Maybe. I listened to it a few times in a row every day for a week. The opening lines describe taking good care of a partner, which I thought I did! But I also brought drugs around sometimes.”

SONG: “Woke Up New” - The Mountain Goats

“After my dad died. There’s a thin line between songs about heartbreak and grief. ‘Woke Up New’ captures that feeling like you just landed in a world you don’t recognise anymore, disoriented by the idea that nothing will ever be the same again. ‘The first time I made coffee for just myself, I made too much of it / But I drank it all just ‘cause you hate it when I let things go to waste.’ It felt like everything I did in those days after he died was coloured by what he would have said or done. And every time John Darnielle sings ‘What’ll I do without you?,’ I’d cry buckets, with no idea how to answer that question. JD so perfectly captures all the unhinged confusion and blurred thinking of despair and hope so perfectly that I just couldn’t stop listening over and over, like the answer was in there somewhere.”

SONG: “Hopeless Opus” - Imagine Dragons

“In sophomore year of high school, I had just gotten my wisdom teeth out and I was also doing really bad mentally. We went on a road trip to Glacier National Park and I listened to ‘Hopeless Opus’ by Imagine Dragons for over four hours straight!”

SONG: “Diet Pepsi” - Ben Platt

“This summer I moved from NYC back home. I was feeling very mixed about it and for some reason I kept listening to the Ben Platt cover of ‘Diet Pepsi.’ I really only listened to it for about three weeks in the summer, but Spotify Wrapped clocked it at 47 listens, lol. I would range from crying that I was never going to walk through my neighborhood again, never going to sleep in my apartment, never going to really be a New Yorker again, to just full of excitement for what’s next. And I think that specific cover really locked in to the strangeness of the transition period I’m in.”

SONG: “Change My Past” - From Ashes to New

“When I was still living at home at 25 with zero boundaries with my parents because they wouldn’t accept them/abide by them and I couldn’t remove myself from the situation and I had a dead end WFH job so I just disassociated and listened to the song and stared at my brother’s cork board wondering what would happen if I poked my eyes out.”

SONG: “Extraordinary Love” - Erika Wennerstrom

“For the first time in years, I was beginning to feel somewhat grounded. I felt like I was moving past the pain of loving someone who no longer loved me in the same way, finding my confidence again in my creative life, and I felt level-headed when I thought about the future. That spring, I had gone back to my hometown to help my mom after a minor surgery. During the procedure, doctors found tumors from two different types of cancer. Obviously, everything changed. I spent months focused on everyone but myself. I left the city I was living in and every decision I made going forward was centered around my ability to be available to take care of them. It kind of feels like gravity stopped working the way it should, and suddenly everything was floating around and I was desperately trying to keep everything and everyone from drifting away. I was (and to a degree, remain) in a haze. This song, both sonically and lyrically, just seemed to be the only thing I wanted to listen to while I tried to keep myself together.”

SONG: “A Better Son/Daughter” - Rilo Kiley

“I spent many a manic night in my parents’ garage dancing to this song all alone during the five months that I was living at home during the height of the COVID pandemic. This song somehow sounds orderly in a sarcastic way, which made a lot of sense to my very OCD-addled brain at that time.”

SONG: “Holding” - Grouper

“There have been a few times over the years where this song has roped me back in, but it was my top-played song a couple years ago after playing it on repeat for over a week maybe. Her lyrics really stuck with me; the song reminds me of the heartbreak I’ve experienced from years of unrequited love, the grief gained from having had no romantic connections, and various factors that have come along with that. I remember being very depressed in 2022 after a traumatic experience, deciding to walk the mile to work early at 5am, and stopping to sit at a park beforehand in the dark listening to it on repeat the entire time.”

SONG: “Pink Pony Club” - Chappell Roan

“My #1 song this year was ‘Pink Pony Club,’ but my secret is that I would play it in my car on my way to work every morning and cry. The song was a bop, but I was a girl from a small town about to marry another girl, so the queer joy and line about ‘Mama’s southern drawl a thousand miles away’ would make me boo hoo every time. But kinda in a good way?”

SONG: “Silver Springs” - Fleetwood Mac

“No idea why that became the anthem to my crashout relating to my sister having a mental breakdown and getting held in Riker’s. I don’t think it was about the lyrics. It was Stevie’s pure anger and desperation and resilience? For some reason just tickled a part of my brain that went YES GOOD MORE OF THAT.”

SONG: “Don’t Cry” - Rachel Bobbitt

“From October to present, I’ve been absolutely drowning with work stuff, being of service at seemingly every turn in my life. Honestly just completely overwhelmed in every sense of the word. Anxiety episodes, you name it! Also lots of resentment toward myself for not setting strong boundaries and holding them. The list really goes on! Back in October, got put on to an artist named Rachel Bobbitt and was having a full-on emotional collapse while driving home from work. I decided to throw her album on and hopefully clear my head, and the very first song on the album ‘Don’t Cry’ came on. It absolutely fucking hit SO HARD for some reason. It triggered this euphoric sort of feeling like I could let go of everything I was holding in the moment. I easily listened to it 10 times back to back on that car ride and countless times since then (although I’m certain Spotify knows exactly how many times I’ve listened to it). Complete crashout binge listening. Power of music!”

SONG: “Tubthumping” - Chumbawumba

“I listened and screamed along to ‘Tubthumping’ by Chumbawumba every single M-F morning of my first year of adulthood on my commute on the way to work when i was placed for my first rotation with the company in a tiny town in upstate NY with a population smaller than my high school to work at a brewery through the coldest, darkest winter I’ve ever experienced (sunset at 3:30pm, snow routinely burying my car, negative temps for weeks). All alone at the ripe age of 22 while my peers got placed in locations like LA, NYC, and South Florida 🤠”

SONG: “Come Pick Me Up” - Ryan Adams

“Listened nonstop for months during my divorce after being cheated on.”

SONG: “Somebody That I Used to Know” - Elliott Smith

“When I finally had to cut off contact with my abusive and mentally ill mother after a lifetime of chaos and pain, I listened to ‘Somebody That I Used to Know’ by Elliott Smith ON REPEAT for weeks and weeks. It was a way to process my sharp grief and to weirdly comfort myself with the almost self-assured lyrics of the song, knowing I did all I could and you just can’t change someone else, sometimes all you can do is let someone you love go. This was years ago at this point, but the song still hits me like a ton of bricks when I hear that intro.”

SONG: “American Love Song” - Momo Boyd

“Bit of a sad crashout, but I was repeating the song ‘American Love Song’ by Momo Boyd (the live version at a farm) whilst sat in an airport pub trying not to cry in public knowing I was leaving behind the Edinburgh Fringe, one of the rare places I feel truly happy (and there was a woman involved, because, obviously).”

SONG: “I Don’t Live Here Anymore” - The War On Drugs

“I lived in the same house in Nashville with friends for eight years. They all decided to move to different cities, I moved to Chicago where my sister lives and my boyfriend at the time who I met on Slack at work lived — who I had only known for like 3 months. My sister and I had a major falling out, boyfriend and I broke up within weeks. And I listened to ‘I Don’t Live Here Anymore’ over and over and over and over again”

SONG: “Red Eye” - Kid Cudi, Haim

“This was in 2020, full COVID. The job I was working at actually got more work due to COVID, but it was repetitive, and they asked me to work overtime without compensation. As it was my first big girl job and I didn’t know better (hadn’t learned to advocate for myself just yet), I did. The burnout slowly crept in. When I finally said I couldn’t do it any more, they started offering other folks $100 per report. I had been finishing those reports in 20 minutes! This and other factors helped me realize this wasn’t where I pictured myself forever. I took a longer ride home to listen to music, this song came on, and I put it on repeat until I got home. After that, I started taking the longer route every day, listening to this song on repeat after work and spiraling, just thinking I was stuck and this was going to be my future forever. The song resonated every day as I imagined just running away from the job, but couldn’t figure out how. I felt stuck. I’m out and doing something I love more now, but ‘Red Eye’ always takes me back!

SONG: “Under Pressure” - Cornbread Red, Pickin’ On Series

“When I was 23 and trying to get my first ‘grownup’ job after college, I was working full-time at a restaurant and interviewing like crazy for office jobs in my field, often getting four or five rounds in only to get absolutely ghosted. I started to go a little insane, as one does, and after every demoralizing interview I would sit in my car and hold the steering wheel so hard my hands turned white and listen to the same bluegrass cover of ‘Under Pressure’ on repeat for the whole drive home. I eventually got a job and pulled myself back from the brink of insanity, but it was touch and go there for a while.”

There are two things I love in this world: music and being nosy. I’ve built my life around both, in a sense. As a professional music supervisor, I spend my days helping filmmakers, producers, and other creatives select and license the perfect songs for their projects. As a decidedly unprofessional Twitter poster, I’ve amassed an audience that is willing to answer relatively personal questions in exchange for online anonymity. I’ve asked my followers to tell me their monthly rent, their salary, the worst thing that happened to them that month. A few years ago, I asked them something more specific:

“What’s a song that will always remind you of the beginning of a relationship? What’s a song that will always remind you of the end of that relationship?”

The best music supervision doesn’t happen in a movie or a Super Bowl ad. It happens in our headphones as we stare out the train window, the church as we walk down the aisle, our bedrooms as we cry ourselves to sleep. We are constantly music supervising our own lives, coloring our experiences with songs that become integral parts of our finest storylines.

When things are good, this can be the best feeling in the world – “Smoke From a Distant Fire” by Sanford Townsend Band will always remind me of my mom, and “The Way We Move” by Langhorne Slim will always remind me of getting into college. Even the songs we play in our darker moments weave themselves into the narrative of our life in a comforting way, assigning meaning and beauty to our pain.

Our strongest feelings seem destined to attach themselves to music, and those feelings remain trapped like fossils in musical amber for years, even decades down the line. I find this to be particularly true when it comes to love and heartbreak, so I took to social media to find out if others felt the same.

I wasn’t sure what to expect. Why would these people, who range from close friends to near strangers, want to show me such an intimate degree of vulnerability? As it turns out, nobody wants to keep their pain (or their joy) privately encased in a musical memory.

What follows are the accounts of around 50 people, all at different stages of closure but all haunted by the memory of a pair of songs: one that reminds them of falling in love, one that reminds them of that same love unraveling. Some provided descriptive context, and others chose to let the music stand more or less on its own. None of these responses has been significantly edited in any way, but for purposes of anonymity promised to those who shared, all names have been redacted.

Cue Sheet: Beginnings and Ends

BEGINNING: “Being Around,” The Slaps

END: “Me And My Husband,” Mitski

“I acted like a psycho in the falling-in-love time, like idiots in the movies. Like, skipping around and shit. Felt like the first time I was really really in love. The breakup lasted two weeks and destroyed me, but somehow I couldn’t find anything sadder to listen to, lol.”

BEGINNING: “Death With Dignity,” Sufjan Stevens

END: “Location Unknown ft. BEKA [Brooklyn Session],” BEKA, HONNE

“The context for the falling in love song is that we had just started watching This Is Us right as we moved in and it really escalated the relationship. This song is in the opening episode and others, I think, as a little recurring motif. We would also play it at the start of every road trip to signify the start of the trip, and it was always so cute.”

BEGINNING: “Glitter,” Tyler the Creator

END: “Ugly,” Deb Never

“She made me feel a certain way, and ‘Glitter’ was pretty close to how I felt in a weird way. When we were nearing the end and actually ending things, ‘Ugly’ is how I felt — unwanted, and like we weren’t compatible.”

BEGINNING: “Silver Springs,” Fleetwood Mac

END: “Robbers,” The 1975

B: “We shared a mutual love of the song, and even though it’s about heartbreak, I still associate it with falling in love.”

E: “The vibe was listening to it on repeat on a sad plane ride.”

BEGINNING: “Beacon,” Matt Duncan

END: “Kenny,” Still Woozy

“This is for a situationship that basically just ended, haha. Beacon was a song that we listened to on a day trip and it really reminds me of the good times/good memories of him. And Kenny has just felt right, just feeling like I can be cool on my own.”

BEGINNING: “Here, There, And Everywhere,” The Beatles

END: “They Always Come,” Dinosaur Jr.

“So the ridiculous thing is she didn’t really like much music, mostly just Fleetwood Mac and Odesza. The first song is significant because one of the first “dates” we had, I played Revolver all the way through. But she didn’t really like the Beatles…

And the Dinosaur Jr. song is kind of hilarious, because we split up like three times and I went back to that song every time. But it’s also a great example of what she called “my kind of music,” and while we were breaking up, she would not infrequently text me saying ‘I’m at some place and they’re only playing your kind of music and it’s annoying.’”

BEGINNING: “French Navy,” Camera Obscura

END: “Poke,” Frightened Rabbit

No comments provided.

BEGINNING: “I Love You, Honeybear,” Father John Misty

END: “Skinny Love,” Bon Iver + “Why Don’t You Get a Job,” The Offspring

B: “Sort of self-explanatory. We were both really into FJM and it fit the honeymoon phase vibe for sure.”

E: “Sort of cheesy, but it definitely was a relationship that fell apart slowly, and I woke up one day not knowing why I was still going and frankly, who could possibly deal with the turbulence she had going on. The funnier breakup song, though, would be “Why Don’t You Get a Job” by the Offspring. A little mean, but damn, she couldn’t hold a job down for more than six months, and that shit gets old.”

BEGINNING: “Just The Two Of Us,” Bill Withers

END: “Petty Lover,” Jaz Karis

“Both of these songs are from a super recent breakup like five days ago, lol. We had been friends for a while, and then she asked me to go for a bush walk, which ended with us getting drunk, making food, and then sleeping together in her van. Lasted about a month of dating, but then she told me she’d also been seeing two other guys who I consider distant friends, which I wouldn’t have minded if it was communicated earlier. She broke up with me at 2AM super drunk at a gig I was helping run. The first song, we listened to on that first night because she asked what my favorite songs were and she really liked it. The second song popped up yesterday on my feed and hit me straight in the feels.”

BEGINNING: “Punching In a Dream,” The Naked and Famous

END: “Old Pine,” Ben Howard

“Summer fling with a fellow camp counselor. It was only a few months, but I fell HARD and was hung up on her for ages after it ended.”

BEGINNING: “Wait So Long,” Trampled By Turtles

END: “Solace,” Counterparts

No comments provided.

BEGINNING: “Warm Water,” BANKS

END: “When It Pleases You,” Sara Watkins

B: “Okay, so I’m in my freshman spring at college, I meet this girl, and I’m so powerfully attracted to her that for the first time I have all the confidence in the world to pursue her. As if on instinct I was like, ‘I can’t let this one pass me by, I have to go for it.’ So I did, and the chemistry was wild, and we dated on and off really intensely for over two years, lol. But this song was playing on repeat at that time, it’s the exact kind of strong eye contact lusty confidence of ‘I know what I want’ paired with the wobbly-knees insecure undercurrent of ‘I have no idea what you want or how this is going to go.’ Particularly the lines ‘Looking you over and you don’t know my name yet / By the time you looked away I already knew I couldn’t fake it,’ and ‘I think I may love you / if you give me some time, maybe you’ll love me too.”

E: “So this one is pretty literal. By the end, the relationship had devolved into a cycle of her treating me very poorly and getting furious when I brought it up or tried to hold her accountable, me deciding it was over and needed to end, then a week later her begging me to come back and showering me with love when I did. I had very poor boundaries and very low standards for how I was treated. The love felt so good and so real that I thought the other stuff didn’t matter. After the final breakup, I discovered this folky/bluegrass album by Sara Watkins and was bowled over by this track. The lines “You love me when it pleases you / You want me when it’s easy to do … / I’ve been keeping it convenient for you to keep close to me / I’ve been making it too easy for you to hang on loosely” helped me realize how enabling I had been, and the responsibility I held for tolerating and excusing poor treatment. The song is so on the nose I don’t think I’ve ever played it for someone else, but it’s still very powerful for me emotionally!”

BEGINNING: “ROS,” Mac Miller + “See You Again,” Tyler the Creator

END: “Lucid Dreams,” Juice WRLD

“It was a college relationship. Freshman year, I was totally enamored with this guy, got along with his friends and family, etc. And one invite, he just took somebody else, never said a word. I thought we were exclusive, because, you know, he introduced me to his parents as his lady. But yeah… even the girls at the invite were confused and sending me pictures of him macking on some random girl. Blocked him on everything until senior year after we drunkenly reconciled. And by reconciled, I mean I decided to finally accept his apology and be done with the anger and embarrassment I felt towards him.”

BEGINNING: “Beautiful Crazy,” Luke Coombs

END: “Tomorrow,” Chris Young

“They’re both country music, and I’d never listened to that before, but I met this person while traveling in the south and thought I’d give it a try. In the beginning, I wanted them to fall in love with all the quirky parts of me, and I cared so much that I wanted them to appreciate “my beautiful crazy” like the song. By the end, they weren’t able to put in the time or care what I wanted, and they were feeling bad all the time about it. This song is about, like, a good last night before it all ends, which was what our conversations were about.”

BEGINNING: “Simple As It Should Be,” Tristan Prettyman

END: “Death by A Thousand Cuts,” Taylor Swift

“Bookends of my 12-year relationship/marriage.”

BEGINNING: “Still Dreaming,” Raveena

END: “Distance,” John Craigie

“We met in a WFR course in Joshua Tree where I was working as a wilderness guide. She lived in LA at the time. In between trips, I would go see her, and it was one of those magical, quick-burning sparks. We had plans to pursue the relationship further. In the summer months, I guide trips on the west side of the Sierras, and she was a ranger at a national forest area on the east side of the Sierras, so we had planned to continue seeing each other by making trips back and forth over Tioga Pass or meeting somewhere in the middle of Yosemite. A seemingly perfect setup for two nomads.

This February, I led a monthlong trip in the Joshua Tree backcountry, and we exchanged letters like old-timey couples during times of war, lol. But in one of the letters, she told me she got offered a job as a ranger in Canyonlands National Park this summer, her absolute dream job. And she was going to leave a couple days after I got back from my trip. Very bittersweet, because I was really happy for her, but I still had work stuff to do, so we never got to see each other before she left for Utah.”

BEGINNING: “Vernon/Wrestling Jacob,” Tim Eriksen (from the Awake My Soul soundtrack)

END: “Doomed,” Moses Sumney

B: “[Redacted] and I met doing Sacred Harp singing in college, and after we both transferred, we’d go to signings in [redacted] where we’d be doing our darndest to keep up with Tim (aka the guy who sings all over the Cold Mountain soundtrack). Vernon’s one of the tunes with lyrics about God that could be easily reapplied for a relationship.”

E: “I distinctly remember this song coming on in the car on the last times I visited her in Philly when we were stuck in some combination of weather and traffic and things were hardly restarted and mostly uneasy. One of our last calls later, she quoted the lyrics back at me, which is something she did a lot with various songs…”

BEGINNING: “Each Day Gets Better,” John Legend

END: “Godspeed,” Frank Ocean

“We were high school sweethearts and would often listen to his whole album while driving around our hometown, staying up too late, sneaking out to meet up on school nights, etc. It was so wholesome. And then, as cliched as it is, honestly Godspeed was one of my go-to cry-late-at-night songs amidst the breakup in the spring of 2019. We were together for 7 years, and she chose to break it off. We moved out of our small hometown together to Seattle, we moved down to LA together and shared so much over that time. I’ll always cherish our relationship, and I sincerely hope her and I will be able to be in each other’s lives in a meaningful (even if platonic) way at some point in the future. That time isn’t now, but hopefully eventually.”

BEGINNING: “I Will,” Mitski

END: “I Will,” Mitski

“Insane heartbreak/desperation to be close to someone when it also feels impossible/mourning something before it even ends/trying to untangle the tension between caretaking and loving and self-sacrifice.”

BEGINNING: “Human Bog,” Baths

END: “Online,” Tama Gucci

B: “My first girlfriend, a two-year relationship that really helped me embrace my queerness… but it was long-distance, NA/NY with lots of plane tickets, grand romantic gestures, and poorly connected Facetimes. She showed me this song, and it’s kind of sad but for me it fully encapsulated new crush yearning and long-distance loneliness.”

E: “After so many talks of us both seriously considering how to feasibly move to the other’s city, she lost hope in that ever happening. She ended things, but for months after, when we were in the samy city we still kept seeing each other and hooking up (big mistake), we still had each other’s locations (bigger mistake), and digital communication was hard to curb. This song resonated with the experience of having so much access to her through phones and social media because we were trying to stay friends, but that unsevered communication only further spotlit our loss of intimacy and the pain of heartbreak because the rules of appropriateness had totally changed, even though the quantity of accessible information had not. Funny enough, she moved to LA a few years later and admitted she still had feelings for me, but I was already happily with my current girlfriend.”

BEGINNING: “Daylight,” Taylor Swift

END: “Rae Street,” Courtney Barnett

B: “Daylight is such an underrated T-Swift song. I’ve struggled finding love and am constantly doubting myself. This song embodies finding that light in a seemingly endless period of darkness. I fell for a good friend of mine and growing into love with them felt like seeing this light. I felt that deep infatuation and tunnel vision that is highlighted in the chorus - not wanting to see or think about anything else but that light in your life.”

E: “Rae Street isn’t really a breakup song, but the lyrics describe the feelings and observations of a dull day that you’re living over and over again. It’s a complete 180 from Daylight, where you’re reverting back into darkness and life is continuing on just as it did before. As much as I didn’t believe it initially, I knew that time was really the only thing that could heal my heartbreak. It felt like I was barely hanging on waiting to get through each day, but just had to keep showing up until enough time had passed.”

BEGINNING: “Here Comes the Sun,” The Beatles

END: “Thank You,” Led Zeppelin

“Here Comes the Sun as we were falling in love in 2000. Our first kiss was over the top of a bong. Thank You as we fell apart in 2016.”

BEGINNING: “Helena,” Nickel Creek

END: “Everybody,” Sara Keden

“I think I’m someone who’s always been ‘good’ at being sad, especially in my willingness (and desire?) to let a song take me to new depths of angst. I like a song that has a big ‘whoosh’ moment that lines up with what goes on in your gut, whether you’re falling in love or forcing yourself out of it. Breakup songs in particular should have a ‘whoosh’ moment that perfectly matches an airplane taking off, or you slumping down in the shower, or running home in the rain. Too corny? GOOD. I’m single, if anyone’s interested.”

BEGINNING: “What A Life,” Scarlet Pleasure

END: “Strange Hellos,” Torres

B: “We saw this movie right around the time we started talking, great ending scene from the movie, was used often on vacation and road trip playlists.”

E: “I rediscovered this song right around that time because I was going to see her live. Good rock song that progressively gets louder and louder. Also, the lyrics ‘If I don’t believe then no one will’ and ‘I love you all the same, I hope you find what you’re looking for” were pretty affecting, I think, for me in that moment probably.”

BEGINNING: “Unravel,” Bjork

END: “Dawn Chorus,” Thom Yorke

B: “I’d just met someone who broke my brain in a good way - like there was no up or down, just with her or not - but we were long-distance for a bit. This song felt like it held both things I felt: the need for someone like they’re your air AND the crushing weight of not getting to take another breath until they come back.”

E: “Another sad one and ~10 years later. The relationship had lasted so long - the song had so many contradictions that I felt. If I could do it all again, of course I would. The best times were literally the best, plus the times where I was shitty - I could not be! Then again, maybe I would do it again so in the times she was shitty, I would be stronger. To stand up for myself or be more decisive. Or maybe none of that matters and we’re just left with what is. Either way, those thoughts always seem to float out between sleep and consciousness.”

BEGINNING: “Huacachina,” Monte Rosso

END: “Dis, quand reviendras-tu?” Barbara

B: “One of the deepest loves I’ve felt was for a dancer, and we used to end nights out by dancing to this song together before going to bed. And I always felt light and in the now at that time.”

E: “I’m French, and those words are the most sad and beautiful words I’ve ever heard on this topic. You can try to read the translation, but I’m not sure this would give you the beauty of the song.”

BEGINNING: “Sexy Boy,” Air

END: “Jet Black,” Anderson .Paak

B: “We met at a party last September and I put this on the aux, having discovered it a few days before. She knew the song, and we noticed we shared a pretty similar music taste (French disco, electropop, and indie in general and whatnot). I developed a huge crush pretty quickly, which contributed to me listening to this song a lot during that time. Obviously, the title also describes me perfectly…

E: “After a few months and talking for a while, exchanging music and memes and meeting up a few times, I started noticing we weren’t really compatible, and the crush began to wear off. I discovered this song during that time, which ironically describes her hair pretty well.”

BEGINNING: “Blue,” Kamal

END: “Kill Cupid,” Dro Kenji, $not

“I do not think I will ever get over her.”

BEGINNING: “Start Of Something,” Voxtrot

END: “Missing Ember,” A Yawn Worth Yelling

“Voxtrot was my favorite band, just jammed that song when she and I started dating. Towards the end, she and I listened to Missing Ember, and I just kept listening to it after we broke up, bittersweet feeling even though the song itself sounds joyous.”

BEGINNING: “In Your Eyes,” Jeffrey Gaines (cover)

END: “My Body Is a Cage,” Peter Gabriel

B: “The first night I met her was pretty intense, the chemistry and the stares. But we fell for each other later that week, while we were singing this song together. We were already connecting pretty hard, and then it came on the radio suddenly. We both knew every word. We ended up kissing and that was it. The relationship was a storm of passion and a tidal wave of infatuation. But we were both so dysfunctional that (I think) we knew it was doomed. However, we still held on desperately to one another. In Your Eyes playing that night was a moment of serendipity. I wasn’t even going to leave the barracks that night, so even meeting her felt serendipitous. And we fell in love.”

E: “What I didn’t know at the time was I had PTSD and clinical depression. It affected our relationship so immensely. She eventually broke up with me after her ex came back into the picture, so there were other factors. But my behavior weighed heavily into that decision. Sabotaged by my own brain, lol. But that didn’t change how much we clung to one another. It was very unhealthy and toxic, but we refused to let go of our old love for years. My Body Is A Cage is a song I’ve played so many times on repeat, I couldn’t even begin to guess the number. She started dating her ex pretty quickly, but I stayed in a cycle of self-loathing and blame. So, 12 years later, it’s on my playlist and still reminds me of my loss, and well as my condition. But I’m in therapy… it’ll totally be okay. It’s funny, both of these songs are originally by Peter Gabriel. Get out of my brain, dude.”

BEGINNING: “Shoulders,” Fazerdaze

END: “Charlie,” Oso Oso

B: “I love how it’s so much about that adoration for all the small things that a person does/is, and how you notice them over and over until it becomes love. Also, the song’s from NZ, I’m from NZ, she’s from NZ, so it holds a special place in my heart.”

E: “Feels like you’re not quite out of love but you know the relationship can’t go on for things like distance… I moved from NZ to the states for grad school.”

BEGINNING: “Everything’s Easy,” Girly Man

END: “Another First Kiss,” They Might Be Giants

No comments provided.

BEGINNING: “On the Bus Mall,” The Decemberists

END: “Baby, We’ll Be Fine,” The National

“On The Bus Mall was playing the first time we said ‘I love you.’ The room was bright and still, and the dreamy guitar from the intro made it feel like time slowed down. 7 years later, I am listening to Baby, We’ll Be Fine in my car while they pack their bags inside before moving away for good. I picture a younger us when I hear ‘I pull off your jeans, and you spill jack and coke in my collar / I melt like a witch and scream / I’m so sorry for everything / I’m so sorry for everything.” Everything was fine until it wasn’t.”

BEGINNING: “Walking On Sunshine,” Katrina and the Waves

END: “Caro Mio Ben,” Cecilia Bartoli

“When I started a new relationship, I had to drive across a bridge to meet her. I would play Walking On Sunshine all the way across the bridge, singing along. It was that relationship, 20 years later, that ended in a terrible way. I was devastated. Dragging myself through every day in a fog of despair and fear. One day, a random shuffle of my iPod played Cecilia Bartoli singing this beautiful Italian folk song, just as the clouds parted in the sky, the sun broke through, and I knew I was going to be okay.”

BEGINNING: “Ordinary People,” John Legend

END: “Baba O’Riley,” The Who

B: “He either sent it to me or shared it with me around the time we started doing long-distance (a whole 3 months into the relationship). The main lyric is ‘Maybe we should take it slow,’ which is very ironic because in this relationship, NOTHING was taken slow! He even recorded a video of himself playing it on the piano and then at the end of the video talked about how we’d maybe get married one day (to clarify, though, I was 100% on the same page at the time, maybe even more so, but I feel like the overall mood of thing song reflected our outlook at the time of something like, we love each other and know each other so well, we’re doing this hard thing right now, but it’s going to be worth it because we’re beginning something that’s going to last the rest of our lives.”

E: “I blasted this while driving away from his house after I broke up with him (it came up on shuffle, what can I say). At the time, things had gotten so heavy and difficult and I couldn’t put any more of my energy into trying to make things work, and I had this overwhelming urge to just be free and do dumb early 20s stuff, and I feel like this song also channels that.”

BEGINNING: “Blinded By The Lights,” The Streets

END: “Only Skin,” Joanna Newsom

B: “I was going pretty hard at the time, out a lot, doing a lot of drugs, and that song really just summed up the vibe I was feeling at the time.”

E: “Both songs are really about knowing someone doesn’t love you like you love them, probably never will, but trying to make it work anyway, and suffice it to say, the breakup was not mutual.”

BEGINNING: “Into the Mystic,” Van Morrison

END: “Better Than,” Lake Street Dive

“I fell in love with him and the world he lived in, but we never seemed to be able to create one together. I loved how much he loved the world, and Into the Mystic will always make me nostalgic for that. I can still picture his face in the car, driving along the water somewhere with this song playing, and feeling so in love with him and us. But eventually I realized that I was making sacrifices to be in his world, and it was making us both unhappy trying to make it work. Better Than was the song that let me live in that gray/messy area and feel the slow painful surrender of letting go.”

BEGINNING: “Midnight City,” M83

END: “Buzzcut Season,” Lorde

“Waking up in my college GF’s bed to her Midnight City ringtone… it still gives me an almost electric feeling of happiness.”

BEGINNING: “You & Me,” The Plain White Ts

END: “Lover’s Carvings,” Bibio

B: “I made a music video for my ex to that song, haha.”

E: “The last song I added to a collab playlist I had with the same ex.”

BEGINNING: “Shine A Different Way,” Patty Griffin

END: “Aphasia,” Pinegrove

“I did a little trip to the east coast last year to see friends and to see a boy in Buffalo. We went to college together and I was always in love with him but we were just friends. He reached out to me last year and told me he was thinking about me a lot, so me being the hopeless romantic that I am, added his hometown to my trip. Before going to see him, I saw Patty Griffin play a show, and she ended with this song and I just felt all the things. I was so excited to see him and maybe give it all another chance. ‘I’m gonna let it be your face / The one that ran away / I’m gonna let it be forever.’ The trip to see him was really fun and we had a great time together, but ultimately, I feel like he just wasn’t able to get past how I was in a career I enjoyed and he would too as a music lover, but he was still kinda aimlessly figuring out his life. There just seemed to be some jealousy around it, and it was sad. Aphasia is my go-to breakup song. The bridge says ‘And one day I won’t need your love / One day I won’t define myself by the one I’m thinking of / And if one day, I won’t need it / Then one day you won’t need it.’ And I can usually tell how much I’m over someone by the way I sing that part, haha.”

BEGINNING: “This Old Dog,” Mac DeMarco

END: “I Will,” The Beatles

“This Old Dog was like a very gentle soft feeling, but I was dumped so he could get back with his ex — I took I Will as more of this haunting oath to that girl.”

BEGINNING: “I’m Not Talking,” AC Newman

END: “The District Sleeps Alone Tonight,” The Postal Service

B: “I’ll forever associate this song with one of the biggest snow days in NYC, my junior year in college. It was the day of our first real date — an hour spent over tea, my mascara a mess from the two-block walk through the snow — after weeks of circling each other from a distance and anxiously overanalyzing each of his texts. I had played this song all that morning, and now when I listen, it still holds that feeling of secret, euphoric disbelief that I could like someone so much and they could like me back.”

E: “I won’t pretend like this is any groundbreaking or original song to listen to when heartbroken, but even today when I hear those first three chords, I still get a wind-knocked-out feeling in my belly. The night he asked me to meet him in a park and ended things, I wandered around midtown for a few hours (would not recommend, even when in a good mood), unsure how to react. It wasn’t until I got back to my dorm room, googled ‘best songs for heartbreak,’ and listened to this 20 times that I finally felt it.”

BEGINNING: “Wouldn’t It Be Nice,” The Beach Boys

END: “Shiver,” Lucy Rose

“These are actually from two different relationships, but surprisingly, for each failed relationship I’ve had, I have either a getting together song or a breaking up song that stuck — never both. If I end it, I seem to remember the getting together song, and if they end it, the breakup song. I hadn’t realized this until just now… interesting.”

BEGINNING: “Madder Red,” Yeasayer

END: “Habibi,” Tamino

“We’ve been together for 8 years, and it was the happiest time of my life. We enjoyed the same music and both had a very dark sense of humor, which was also showing in our music preferences. Sadly, we broke up when depression hit me hard. It’s not easy to be there for someone else if you’re not involved with yourself. Still miss her, like in the last song.”

BEGINNING: “Mystery Of Love,” Sufjan Stevens

END: “Want You Back, Haim

B: “I first heard this song during the scene it plays in Call Me By Your Name. That scene at the end with Elio and his dad was so important to me just in the parental relationship and frank discussion about learning from grief and growing, rather than just moving on quickly. While I was out to my parents at the time, we didn’t exactly discuss things or talk about relationships yet. And so the day after watching that film, I told my parents that I had been seeing someone and we had a conversation about life and things and relationships. Now that I wasn’t hiding anything from anyone anymore, I felt like I would be able to love more fully and authentically.”

E: “I have only been in one real relationship, but there was a period after we both graduated where the ‘Well, what’s next for us’ set in. At the time, we had only been really dating for about half a year, so it wasn’t serious enough where any input would go into making those big postgrad life decisions with so many variables that needed to be figured out. During this mutual mini-break, I think I realized that I actually was in Love. The song reflects upon a former relationship that was taken for granted. Two lines I strongly relate to are the one about being opposite lovers and “No more fearing control / I’m ready for the both of us now.” After 2 weeks of being apart, we did meet up to discuss the state of us and decided to get back together. So while this song relates to a breakup (?) for me, it also has a happy ending.”

BEGINNING: “Without You,” Parachute

END: “Before You Go,” Lewis Capaldi

No comments provided.

BEGINNING: “K.” Cigarettes After Sex

END: “The Bomb,” Florence and the Machine

B: They said “I would love to have this be my walking down the aisle song.”

E: It came out right around the time we broke up, and it fit perfectly. It encapsulated all of the drama and heartbreak, the tumultuous nature of the relationship. I would drive down all the streets we used to drive down, listening to it on a loop.

BEGINNING: “Direct Address,” Lucy Dacus

END: “The Heart Is a Muscle,” Gang of Youths

B: It’s all about “Is this love or is this not love?” So at the beginning, it was all about the excitement of thinking I might love them. But then it became about realizing I probably wasn’t in love with them.

E: This song played once randomly when I was feeling like shit after the breakup, and it made me realize I could heal and move on. Now whenever I’m at the end of a breakup and I feel tired of being sad and ready to heal, I play this song.

BEGINNING: “Fit N Full,” Samia

END: “Rubberneckers,” Christian Lee Hutson

B: I remember going on a road trip with this person like three weeks after we met, feeling positively manic with hope and attraction and blasting this song as we drove down the highway.

E: I spent months punishing myself after this relationship ended, tortured with guilt for ending it and terrified I’d never find love again. Then I heard this song, and the refrain is “If you tell a lie for long enough / Then it becomes the truth / I am gonna be okay some day / With or without you.” It made me realize I could do the same thing, just tell myself I would be okay until it became true.