The Home of the Cyber Shark(s)

Day 4

A Song That Makes You Sad

Music is pretty cool in the way it can force emotions on you whether you want them to or not. Seriously, songs can be like emotional rapists. Yes. I just made a rape joke.  About music. Bam.

Fortunately for me, I tend to be less emotional, and potentially a robot, when it comes to feeling feelings, so songs that make me feel feelings are very very limited. I have two that are pretty much tied for songs that tend to depress the fuck out of me, for pretty similar reasons, but while I don’t always cry when I hear Stairway to Heaven, because that was the song I was listening to when we got the phone call that my grandfather died, I Will Come to You always makes me cry.

You see, back in the day, I didn’t know anything about pop music. It wasn’t until 7th grade that I learned that not only had the Beatles broken up, but that John Lennon had died. A long time ago. This will be important late on, not the Beatles part, but the part where I admitted that I was so oblivious to anything new going on around me that I thought The Beatles were a current band in 1997.

We had had a pretty hard year, financial problems happen with every family, and in our case they shouldn’t have… at least that’s the impression I get about the whole fiasco, because my parents never told me or my brother exactly what happened because, and I think they were right about this, they didn’t want to influence our opinion on the people involved, who were family. Well, anyway, money was involved, fights were had, and we had to move. And November came, and my grandmother had a stroke – my mom’s mom, who was also related to the family members mentioned above. This was not the easiest thing in the world to deal with, or even understand at 12 going on 13, so I don’t think I felt much then. But on a Wednesday, when my grandmother would come to make sure I got on the right bus to go home (log story which I’m saving for another blog post), and she wasn’t there, I was close to losing it. Of course I was still in my uniform, and got enough flak from the popular kids at school that I didn’t want to be caught crying so I help it all in until I got hom, went to my room, and turned on 102.7 which was, at the time, THE classic rock station (it’s now 104.3) in NYC. But I just couldn’t listen to those songs, as much as I love the 60’s as far as music goes, and the 70’s as long as it wasn’t disco, the moody music wasn’t the right mood.Orit was too cheerful.Or too laid back. So I changed radio stations for the first time ever (possibly an overstatement, but I don’t know by how much) to z100, which plays nothing bt pop music.

Pop music, at the time of the mid to late 90s, was a far different landscape than it is today, focusing a lot of harmonies, dance moves, and, in some cases, actual bands playing actual instruments, the music felt familiar to someone who grew up with Classic Rock, but was different in a good way because it was like getting a lemon squeezed in your ear… you know, cause lemons are fresh? and I was hearing new and fresh things?.

So, anyway, my point being, having not known about any band that existed after 1979 basically, I dove head first into pop music, at a moment in my life that could be described as  “a real downer”, and the very first song I heard in this new life of mine was I Will Come to You. By Hanson.

The song didn’t help cheer me up by any means, especially after seeing the music video which seemed like it was just rubbing salt into my horrible gaping wounds, but it did help me cry, which was something I hadn’t been able to do.

Luckily this song doesn’t get much, if any, play these days unless you go to a Hanson concert, Idoshutup, so getting horribly depressed and cry-y because of a song reminding me about my grandmother, and that whole business which I don’t think I’ll ever get any closure with, doesn’t happen often. But I do always cry when I hear this.

So, in conclusion, my Hanson-fan-ism should be blamed on my now dead grandmother for having a stroke.

-Jillers

Tags: 30 Day Song Challenge, 30 Days 30 Songs, day 4, grandmother, hanson, music, music is an emotional rapist