Music Makes Me Come Together

People see my family music collection and one of the first questions to come after how the hell do you listen to all that? and how much do you think all of those cost? is:

So which one's your favorite?

My dad can spit it out immediately, and it's a somewhat predictable answer: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, The Beatles. As for me, it used to come out just as easily. I'd say MoodSwing, Joshua Redman and never express the slightest bit of doubt. It's the album that got me into jazz, he's my favorite artist, and it still receives somewhat regular rotation after 10 years. If I'm still playing an album at age 21 I listened to at age 11, it's a keeper.

That album-- and favorite artist status for that matter-- has been seriously threatened since Rufus Wainwright released Want One last fall and my recent discovery of Grace and all that was is Jeff Buckley. For the first time in a while I can't honestly say what my favorite album is. Everyone should have one album that stands to them above the rest. There must be one musician out there who compiled enough excellent songs together in one package so eloquently that you couldn't imagine someone doing you a better job for you even if they personally worked in the studio thinking of your musical likings.

Picking a favorite song to me is much trickier. A song usually recollects on a certain theme, with a certain emotion, in a certain style. There will be songs with melodies that will never leave my head, chords and high notes that give me physical chills on my arms, and lyrics that I wish I had thought of first so I could post them as a blog entry. But it would be a mighty task to come up with 4 minutes of music that could capture half of what my entire self stands for. I can't imagine finding a song, one song, that could unequivocally represent all that is wonderful to me about music. An album can elicit many feelings across many colors, but a song is merely too compact and focused to accomplish that to the same magnitude.

I've never had one favorite song. Whenever asked about my favorite song, I used to recite a Top 5 list, but nowadays my Top 5 list has about eight or nine bullets. I feel no shame, because my dad's favorite song list is a top freaking one hundred, and he doesn't even include any Beatles songs ("There are too many. They'd take up too much of the list.")!

With that, I've decided to compile a list of my favorite songs, songs that I couldn't imagine skipping over if I heard them on the radio. Perhaps this will become an evolving list with additions and subtractions in the future. And who knows, maybe one day I'll reach an even 100 and call it a catalog. I'm almost halfway there anyway.

And if I had to pick one at gunpoint today at this time, I'd say the Rosie song. Or Jimmy. And maybe Josh.