I apologise for this being a day late but this week has not been especially kind to me so the internet has not exactly been at the forefront of my mind. Whenever I am feeling down I tend to enjoy listening to songs that remind me of my wonderful, carefree childhood – before the angst of trying to find a full time job set in. Yeah, I’m a little bitter right now.

This is one of those songs that can always make me feel better, no matter how shitty things may seem. My parents were big into Anne Murray and they had her greatest hits playing in the car all the time, and this reminds me of that and being a kid and having the best parents in the world and feeling like the luckiest one. (For the record, they are still awesome). And yeah, I know it’s a Monkees cover, but shamefully I didn’t actually know that until much farther down the road – same with ‘You Don’t See Me’ (originally by The Beatles), which dear old Anne also covered. Oh well.

Also, Joey and Dawson sang it together on Dawson’s Creek and if that doesn’t make it awesome then bind me in ropes and throw me into a river.

Hopefully less angsty next week, kids.

This is always going to be one of the toughest songs for me to listen to, because it reminds me of a time in my life where things weren’t very good. It was 2002 and I had befriended a boy who turned out to be a toxic, destructive force in my life, and I blame most, if not all, of my teenage angst and problems solely on him. We parted ways in a less than amicable fashion, and it wasn’t until about a year ago that I was able to get closure on the issue and – surprise – still a jerk.

The Juliana Theory were not introduced to me by him, funnily enough, but by a friend of his, who I still keep in contact with now. The boy in question did once send me an email of a ‘poem’ he ‘wrote’ for me, though, which turned out to be ‘The Closest Thing’ by the same band. Nice.

But the main theme that echoes through this song is distance, and that’s why it reminds me so much of this particular time in my life. I was under the illusion that somebody cared for me, very deeply, but the entire time I was destroying myself from the inside. It’s funny that the title of the song is what it is, because at the time I thought that it was a love song, and as the years go past it’s so much clearer to me that it’s anything but.

This is one of the songs that reminds me of what it felt like to be hurt and betrayed, but also what it felt like to finally be set free. Feel free to laugh at me for being a walking cliche, but I think everyone has a song like this.

In the mid-1990s, ABC Kids used to randomly show a couple of music videos during the day in between programs. While Sesame Street and Superted and Raggy Dolls played on our impressionable minds, so, too, did the occasional song by bands not even orientated towards the primary school demographic. Which, in retrospect, makes no sense at all.

I was probably around 7 years old when I first heard Oasis played on ABC Kids. I wish I could remember the exact time, but an approximation will have to do. It used to be on multiple times a day, even, and I was intrigued by it – the black and white of the video, the almost monotonic drawl of the vocals, Noel and Liam’s faces (okay, so I had a pre-pubescent crush on both Gallaghers, what the hell are you gonna do about it, huh?!).

The reason that this song is significant is because it’s the first one I specifically remember discovering on my own – that is, without my mum and dad. Everything I’d heard before then, with the exception of Play School songs and nursery rhymes, was limited pretty much to The Carpenters, The Beatles, Simon & Garfunkel and The Everly Brothers (if you ask my boyfriend, the world’s biggest Oasis hater, he’ll probably argue that my upbringing suggested a better fate than my ABC Kids discovery ever did). This was the first song in the modern popular music sphere that I ever heard, and I was captivated in an instant.

It was just about ten years later that this song came back to me. I was acting in a musical that my high school put on at the time and, as all of these nostalgic tales seem to go, I met a boy who became my non-romantic muse for the next year and a half. One of the first things I remember about him was watching him sitting high up on a wall with an acoustic guitar, singing this song. (Of course, now I realise the immense cliche that emerges from such a scene, but at the time it was a total knockout). For the rest of high school he helped me immensely as we both sought to stretch our creative and imaginative wings, seeking solace in each other because no one else understood our non-top 40 souls. (Again, this makes very little sense now because uh, we bonded a little over Oasis. But also Radiohead, so I suppose it’s alright).

All of these things seem a little silly in retrospect but it’s one of those songs that is timeless in a sense that it brings all these small occurrences in my life together. It suited my pop punk phase (Cartel‘s cover) and my ongoing mope phase (Ryan Adams‘ absolutely heartbreaking cover, which I’ve seen live – cue the tissues). Say what you want to about ‘Wonderwall’, but it has proven its own staying power – 15 years after its release, it’s still one of the world’s most recognisable songs and I’m sure I’m not the only one with an anecdote or two to share.

This is the best video I could find of one of my favourite concert memories. It was 2008 and I went to the Hordern Pavilion to see Sigur Rós for the first time. I met my boyfriend at the time at the venue early, so we could line up for a good spot. When my friend arrived a few hours later, no one else had lined up behind us – it seemed we were way too keen. Those who had lined up before us sat in the queue chatting, eating cereal out of the box and making “Takk…” signs. Sigur Rós fans are pretty rad people.

So thanks to our super keenness, we ended up in the centre of the front row for the show and it was nothing short of spectacular. I could go on about it forever, but ‘Gobbledigook’ was the moment that, for me, really stood out. In the video, watch 2:51 or so when the white confetti shoots off the stage into the crowd during the song’s finale – the utter euphoria that surrounded me at that point in time was indescribable. People raised their arms and caught the little white pieces, laughing, smiling, screaming with joy. To be standing with thousands of other people and listening to words we didn’t understand, and yet still being able to feel that kind of unadulterated bliss, gave me a feeling that I’m unable to erase from my memory.

And so whenever I hear ‘Gobbledigook’, it takes me back to that exact second on that freezing August day when I felt like I could do or be anyone in the entire world. It’s one of those incredibly cliched things that is almost offensive to hear because of how utterly trite things like that are to say, but Sigur Rós are simply an act that has to be seen (or heard) to be believed. Moments like this one are enough to completely change a life within seconds.

Everyone has a band or song that turned their music taste around. Prior to the year 2000, I was an avid listener of the likes of S Club 7, STEPS and B*Witched (you know you were too, don’t be such a hater). But this song made me step back and run in a different direction altogether, the direction that so many wayward childfolk went in – POP PUNK.

I remember it clearly – I was sitting in my bedroom, in all my 11-year-old glory, listening to a Top 40 countdown on some station, most likely 2Day FM. Number 32 came on, and it was by this band called blink-182 who I had no idea about at that time. The song was catchy and I found that it was in my head for weeks afterwards, and so began a journey down the road of self-discovery.

It was a blitz, my relationship with this band. My mother did not approve of my new found favourite punksters; I remember vividly an argument we had in the middle of KMart when she refused to buy The Mark, Tom and Travis Show for me because it had an explicit language sticker. The internet was new and so I got my uncle to Google the lyrics to ‘Man Overboard’ for me, and I read them over and over. The first song I ever downloaded (how illegal!) was ‘First Date’ via Morpheus (hah!) in 2001 or 2002. I got Take Off Your Pants And Jacket for Christmas in 2001, and loled heartily at the naughty title (and at ‘Happy Holidays, You Bastard’).

I fell in with a pretty shit dude when I was 13 and he hated blink-182 and so I did too, for a while. Or at least I pretended to. After we parted ways, it was back on again. I saw them in September 2004 on what would become their last Australian tour and I sang my little heart out, and told a radio station that my favourite song was ‘Going Away To College’. I still put their songs on in the car and remember every word. I still think Enema of the State is the greatest thing ever.

This video is the one that started it all and I honestly wouldn’t take it back for anything. I still laugh my arse off when I watch it (especially the flower eating part) – it will always be one of my favourite music clips ever. I’ll make a megapost about the merits of pop punk another day, but what I’m trying to say is that you should never forget where you came from or what shaped you. There is little else in this world that makes me as happy as singing my heart out to blink-182, and that’s nothing I’m at all ashamed of.

As part of my mission to revamp and personalise my blog, I’m introducing a new weekly segment called Throwback Thursday, in which I will post a song a week and talk about its significance in my life.

There was never any other option for me as to which song to start with. People know this song from all sorts of different times and places – from the film Tootsie, from Family Guy, probably from some shitty karaoke sessions. But the reason for this song being quite possibly the most important one to ever come into my life is because I don’t remember anything before it. Quite literally, this song is my first memory.

I was two or three years old and it was one of my dad’s favourites. The first thing I remember about life is lying on my parents’ bed alone, listening to the song on a cassette player. I was a sharp kid and learned to speak and understand quite early on, and so I remember hearing the lyrics and thinking about the pictures they were describing. “I’ve been passing time, watching trains go by” – I was a tomboy and trains were my favourite, so I dug that. “Lying on the sand, watching seabirds fly” – I dug that too, because seagulls were pretty neat and they ate my bread at the beach.

It seems like such a weird first memory, especially since it suggests that I was able to process those kinds of semi-complex thoughts at such a young age. But as much as I try to remember otherwise, or as much as I try to recall with such vividness events preceding that one, I can’t.

The song was all around. In the car on the way to music lessons, it was on. Whenever my parents watched Tootsie (and they watched it A LOT), it was on. My dad sang it all the time and put it on one of the little mix tapes he made for the car (along with ‘All I Have To Do Is Dream’, which also features prominently in my early life memories). This song, I swear, was EVERYWHERE.

And the thing that is so great about it, to me, is the fact that it’s so simple and not overly complicated. I was barely walking and I already was able to find my little slice of meaning in it, and I really believe that that shaped the way that I decided to live my life when I got older and remembered this specific incident. It was one of the stepping stones to who I am now and the way that I feel about and interact with music, and for that, Stephen Bishop, whenever I may find you, I owe you several million high-fives.