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tariandlenasmusicblog-blog · 6 years ago

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25 Most Influential Songs

L: A few years back, during a summer when I was on the road quite a bit and people I loved were moving in all directions, I decided to ask a handful of friends to make me a playlist of songs that influenced them in some way. The only 2 limitations I put on the playlists were 1) No more than one song per album and 2) no more than 25 songs. I tried to emphasize “influential” over “favorite” because I thought it allowed for more freedom to think about the time or space you heard something in, rather than just how many times you’ve listened to it. From some people, these playlists came with lengthy explanations of what each song meant and some playlists came without annotations, and either way, I felt a deep connection to these people listening to these thoughtful, intense, and fun playlists. Of course, I had to make one of my own as well.

T: I was so glad when Lena asked me to make this playlist. It feels like a return, in a way, to a practice I left by the wayside a while ago. 9 years ago, when we first became friends, I used to give people playlists on CD-ROMs as parting gifts. I’d try to describe our relationships in some way - maybe through songs we’d sung together, or through soundtracks to important milestones in our friendships. It was corny, and wonderful, and helped me process the complexity of leaving friends that I did not know that I would see again. I continued making playlists long after that time (go look at my Insta if you want more), but it became a solitary pursuit in a way - a way to show off my present mindset or to expose others to how awesome my music taste is (heh). This playlist feels different - it feels like I’m sharing myself and my interior journey to whatever self-actualization that I can claim.

So first to how we chose to arrange the playlists. When Lena tasked me with making this playlist, I figured that it would be easy – a quick 25-song jaunt that combined the obvious (some Kendrick Lamar here, some Alexisonfire there) with some deep cuts to make me seem more interesting and musically promiscuous than I really am. On the contrary, I’ve devoted at least 10 hours to making this playlist, and it still doesn’t feel complete. After much deliberation, however, I chose to place mine in chronological phases - from a childhood listening to Fela Kuti and Lauryn Hill, to an adolescence filled with 80s hardcore and mid-00s emo, to moving to UWC and discovering the wonders of Fleet Foxes, and then to Quest, where pivotal events like the Ferguson protests completely changed my listening habits. I end off with me now - sometimes melancholy, often questioning, but mostly calm.

A lot of the songs on here take on a yearning, mopey quality. That’s unsurprising – I am, after all, a retired emo kid – but even still I do think that the extent of the mournfulness is worth noting. Take for example the Attack in Black song “If All I Thought Were True”, a dusty gem that sat quite far back in my figurative musical catalogue to add here. The juxtaposition between skinny 14-year-old me sitting down in Milton Keynes and the slide guitar and gruff vocals is hilarious. I’ve been doing this whole existential wondering thing for a long-ass time.

L: I chose to arrange my playlist chronologically. It starts with Swallow Tail Jig, the first song I fell in love with as a fiddle player. It goes through my early discoveries in the most emo of years (though I stand by my emo kid decisions!), the rediscovery of folk music through bands like Modest Mouse and Bon Iver. I love that my playlist overlaps with Tari’s here- I have a distinct memory of his excitement when the first song on the new Fleet Foxes record was titled “Montezuma,” the name of the small town where we lived. My weird college phase makes a brief appearance with Xanakis’ musique concrete masterpiece. I was studying the history of electronic music, which I found academically fascinating, but ultimately very few pieces moved me in the way that I know music can. So, I found myself diving back into the angst. The second half of the playlist explores a broader range of styles, definitely delving into more electronic-influenced stuff and a tendency towards complexity either in music or production. The mold of highly emotional, lyrical songs is hardly broken, though. Where Tari may call himself a retired emo kid, I’m more partial to calling myself a grown-up emo kid, and it’s not something I’ve ever grown out of.

I also want to address something Tari mentioned to me when he was creating his playlist- the glaring lack of diversity. The racial diversity and the gender diversity on my playlist is truly abysmal, but its an accurate reflection of my listening habits throughout the years. I can count on one hand how many female or POC artists I listened to before I got to college. I studied music, and I can count on one hand how many POC or female artists I was taught about prior to taking a feminist musicology class. I’m starting to realize how sexism in the industry that I’ve internalized has impacted the way I think about my own music, and so the last few years I’ve tried to branch out and find music created by a wider range of people and appreciate the new connections that’s brought into my life.

T: My first draft of the playlist had two women on it. Two. That’s not good. I think it says a lot about my listening habits, and I suspect that I am not alone. Unconsciously, I think that I have been conditioned to take music made by men as more reflective of my personality than music made by women. Following on from some of Lena’s thoughts above, the brooding male troubadour with an acoustic guitar is an archetype that is commonplace and fits preconceived notions of what #meaningfulart sounds like.

It is, simply put, bullshit. It’s an insidious form of sexism that I have to work harder to unlearn.

Once I twigged to that impulse, I thought deeper about some of my core life experiences. I thought about wandering around Nairobi listening to Erykah Badu, dancing in dorm rooms to Lauryn Hill and getting over my first real breakup while listening to Laura Stevenson. Those songs are vital to me and to my self-expression. Leaving them off a playlist like this would be absurd.

My playlist does not reflect shared experiences at all. In fact, it’s all a reflection of a deep interior world that I often retreat to. I think this task was so difficult because I use music to complement and to complete my emotional expression. Songs aren’t just songs to me – they are experiences, memories, dreams and fears. So trying to pin down 25 songs that are influential to me feels like trying to pick my 25 favourite brain cells – the point is that they all work together to create a vital part of what makes me who I am.

L: I could drag out this post into a series of overwrought sappy stories, but I’ll spare you and summarize the trend. Very few of these are songs I’ve “discovered” on my own. They are shared with me, either in dorm rooms or on USB drives and mix CDs like the ones Tari gave me back in the day. Those that aren’t are songs I’ve seen in incredible live performances, or maybe played covers of in one of the shortlived cover bands I’ve graced with my skills. The shared experience of music is so powerful as both a listener and a creator, and in the hours and hours that I have spent creating this playlist, I’ve come to one that’s 90% about those communal moments. Blasting Noname driving around Logan Square, windows down with my friends for an entire summer. Doing a crazy arrangement of Chicago with more than a dozen musicians in high school. Seeing Bon Iver debut 22, A Million in a field in the middle of Wisconsin with my closest friends next to me. The music that influences me is as much about the music as it is about the connections it’s helped me build with people and places, and, in a phrase, that’s why I love music.

#music #ramble #nostalgia #emokids #25mostinfluential #hiphop #folk

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