Ten Songs That Live Rent-Free in My Head
(No offense to yacht rock)
Summer Breeze by Seals and Crofts, released in 1972. Specifically the chorus, “Summer breeze, makes me feel fine. Blowin’ through the jasmine in my mind.” Unequivocally yacht rock - more on that later.
All 4 minutes and 8 seconds of Makeba by Jain. The tempo is perfect for trudging on a treadmill at a steady incline.
That one from Tears For Fears, which came on the scene in 1985: Everybody Wants To Rule The World. It hit my radar when the film Click, with Adam Sandler, was released in 2006. Grocery stores in the U.S. almost never stop playing this song.
U2’s Sweetest Thing. My friend, G, added this to a playlist for me. When my husband and I traveled to Hawaii, we spent three nights on Oahu before jumping on a thirty-nine minute flight over to the island of Kauai. Once we landed, we rented a pacific blue Hyundai Veloster from Island Cars. Maverick was behind the wheel, I was on aux, and I played this song as we drove to our hotel. We were newlyweds - I felt like I might combust into flames when Bono belted, “Ain’t love the sweetest thing?” Because Maverick was on navigation duty, I don’t think he realizes I consider this song to be the anthem of our honeymoon. This was the view from the car as Bono sang, “Baby got blue skies up ahead.”
Music For A Found Harmonium. The composer, Simon Jeffes, happened upon an abandoned harmonium in Kyoto, Japan. He left a note, returned to claim it the following day, and created this upliftingly jolly piece. The song was further popularized via a cover from Patrick Street, featured in Napoleon Dynamite. When I go for a run without headphones, this song keeps me going.
James Taylor’s You’ve Got a Friend. If I feel sad or anxious, those lyrics emerge from my hippocampus - “Close your eyes and think of me, and soon I will be there. To brighten up even your darkest nights.” And when those words start floating around, I think of my dad every time. I should probably call him and tell him how he’s basically my center of gravity. But when given an opportunity to do so, I find myself uttering substantially trivial updates instead. Like, “We have to replace the roof soon.”
Radio, on the Born to Die album - released by Lana Del Rey in 2012. The song starts out slow and sultry, picking up ~30 seconds in. In a sense, it serves as a requiem for the darkest time in my life. These days, singing the chorus is an act of grateful liberation: “Now my life is sweet like cinnamon, like a fucking dream I'm living in.”
It wasn’t until 2018 that I was blessed to hear Linger by The Cranberries. Maverick added it to the first playlist he ever made for me, and I often catch myself humming in the kitchen, “You know I’m such a fool for you.” This one also made the Click soundtrack in 2006.
Falling under the yacht rock category on SiriusXM: Sailing by Christopher Cross. Once on a road trip, I sat headphoneless in the backseat of my aunt’s Mercedes Benz C class convertible. And during the three hour stretch from Scottsdale, AZ to Sedona - I think I heard, “Just a dream and the wind to carry me, soon I will be free” no less than eight times. I’d gladly do it all again, if it meant I could have three more hours with my angelic aunt who passed in 2020.
I Just Called To Say I Love You by Stevie Wonder. I discovered this song seventeen years ago, tooling around on a family friend’s iPod Classic. Instantly captivated, I played it on repeat twelve times in a single day. It’s always stuck with me, so much so that I pinned some of the lyrics to this short-form video of our pup - Bluebell - in 2022.