Mixtape Challenge: Lauren
Ok, I came up with the following list based on what I'm listening to right now & what just randomly popped into my head (since most of my favorites were STOLEN by my ALLEGED FRIENDS). Here's what I got. (I would make it all pretty & formatted & insert album covers, but I'm at work & therefore gotta make it quick.)
1. "A Message" - Coldplay
This song is so sweet, great to sing, and it breaks my fuckin HEART when he wails "I looooove you, PLEEEASE come hooome!" at the end.
2. "My Love for You is Real" - Ryan Adams
This plays on Starbucks right now, and I hadn't previously heard it (he's so sneaky about letting you think you know all his music and then BAM, outta left field, he's put one out in some genre you didn't even know about, and it's The Greatest Thing You've Heard Since You Last Discovered One of His Albums). Anyway, if you can get over the recent Mandy Moore Engagement WTF-ness, you will fall in love with this song. Fave lyric: "It's river-long/ rock-strong/ true & wild as hell./ Honey now/ my love/ for you/ is real."
(Actually, the lyrics-look-up-sites are in dispute about the "true & wild as hell" part, but that's what I think he's saying and I love it.)
3. "Linger" - the Cranberries
Come on, I don't have to explain this. "You know I'm such a fool for you."
4. "Keep On Lovin You" - REO Speedwagon
This song makes me fist-pump harder than any other 80's ballad. I love it. I think my favorite line is "Instead you lay still in the grass/ all coiled up and hissin" because he uses the correct conjugation of "lie," which I don't even do. Props.
5. "Madly" - Tristan Prettyman *I had it misspelled earlier
This is another one I learned of through Starbucks, and it's really fun & catchy. Also, it's about knowing you should be over someone but not being able to let them go. Which I can relate to right now. (Shut up.) And my favorite thing about it is not a specific lyric, but the claps/rhythmic guitar pattern in the verses.
BAM!
its thoughts like this that catch my troubled
head when you're away when I am missing you to death"
Runner-ups:
Coldplay: Yellow
This song breathes sex. The whole album is liquid love, but this song in particular just drives it home. The thing is, though, that the lyrics are also poignant and haunting. I know that word gets used a lot to describe Buckley, but come on, folks. I have to thank Claud for introducing me to this song during college. I know I've fallen asleep to it 1000 times.
It's never over, my kingdom for a kiss upon her shoulder
It's never over, all my riches for her smiles when I slept so soft against her
It's never over, all my blood for the sweetness of her laughter
It's never over, she's the tear that hangs inside my soul forever
Any long-haired man or woman from the 70s with an acoustic guitar is always going to have a special place in my heart. I blame this on my parents. I've been listening to Jim Croce since the cradle, and this might not even be my favorite song of his, but it's just stunning in its simplicity and honesty. Here's a guy who can't get the words out to tell his beloved how he feels, so he wakes her up in the middle of the night to sing her a song he wrote. And it's A FORKING TRUE STORY!! Croce really wrote that song for his wife and woke her up with with it! And then it wasn't released until after he had died in that plane crash. Can you imagine being her? Jeezum. Anyway, it's perfect.
Every time the time was right all the words just came out wrong
So I'll have to say 'I love you' in a song.
I think Andrew West is actually the one we can thank for putting this on a French CD he made for us after we all got back from Nova Scotia after my second summer at French camp, the summer I turned 17. The lyrics just make the heart ACHE, y'all. I know they're in French, but it's worth your time to look up a translation, believe me. The love story is epic! The title translates to "I have loved you, I love you, I will love you" (not "I love the door, I love the floor, I love you" as Jenny Byrd once believed). We all used to say we'd have this played at our weddings, but Claud's the only one of us who's actually had one of those and she totally fell down on the job.
Mais quoi que tu fasses / L'amour est partout ou tu regardes
Dans les moindres recoins de l'espace / Dans les moindre rêve où tu t'attardes
(But whatever you do / Love is everywhere you look)
(In the tiniest corner of space / In the smallest dream where you linger)
I have loved me some Counting Crows since the 6th grade. I have to thank Katy Allgood, wherever she may be, for introducing me to them during a lip-syncing contest at her slumber party that year. And Lauren has a point that Adam Duritz is the sexiest ugly man alive. On a somber note, I have seen the Crows live twice, and they have never played this song. But it's everyone favorite! It's about falling in love way too fast, and realizing it's happening, and freaking out a whole lot, but staying in it because something in your brain says this. is. it. So thanks, Adam. Before I really knew about anything, you taught me about true love.
Every time she sneezes, I believe it's love
And oh Lord, I'm not ready for this kind of thing
This is, again, going back to my childhood years. My dad is a HUGE Billy Joel fan. It's hard to pick one Joel song about love that's better than the others, but I have always had a huge affinity for this one. It's kinda trite, it's kinda played out, but you know what, I still wish that someone could look at me with all my faults and all my insecurities and all my complex attributes and say, "Fuck it. I love her anyway." My best friend in high school, Gregory, used to play this on the piano and my heart would melt.
She can ruin your faith with her casual lies
And she only reveals what she wants you to see
She hides like a child
But she's always a woman to me
