10 Songs That Influenced a Young Writer
Musically, my life is B.S.P. and A.S.P. Before the Sex Pistols, and after the Sex Pistols. I’ve written a lot about that moment and will continue to write about the after period. However, there are songs (some albums, but mostly songs) that I can look back on and say that they laid the foundation for what was to come. Whether it’s the Sex Pistols, Buddy Holly, or Janet Jackson, the reason artists are still remembered is because they wrote great songs. No one remembers great guitar solos to songs that sucked.
2000 Miles - The Pretenders
This record came out in January 1984, a few months before my 4th birthday. My parents had the cassette in the car at some point in 1984 for sure. The album had a lot of hits on it, lots of great songs, but something about the jangly guitar in 6/8 time, the story of someone going “very far in the snow” and the emotion in Chrissie’s voice showed me what could be accomplished in three minutes and thirty-eight seconds. I felt something, and still do when I hear that song. Definitely the earliest moment I know of connecting with music in that way.
Voices Carry - Til Tuesday
Some of this has to do with the instrumentation and dynamic changes in the music. The verses convey a sense of foreboding while the choruses elevate you out of that. But, if I’m being honest, everything accomplished in this song is carried by Aimee’s words and voice. The music most certainly supports it, but she’s doing all the heavy lifting. People still debate the inspiration for this song, and at five, I certainly wasn’t going to figure it out, but I could tell it was important by the way she performed it.
Trip Through Your Wires - U2
This one is all about the harmonica. I got the cassette because my grandmother’s husband had somehow gotten it and it wasn’t bluegrass or Air Supply, so he gave it to me. It was the first clear cassette I’d ever seen, so I was first fascinated by that. As my parents played it in the car for the first time, I remember asking, “what is that?” and my dad told me it was a harmonica. It’s a wonder I don’t play one better than I do now, but my desire to find different ways to bring my ideas to life probably started here.
Miss You Much - Janet Jackson
I could pick any song off that album, especially “Black Cat” or “Love Will Never Do”. I loved that album and I still do. Back in the day when you could listen to FM radio and hear music that covered all the areas of “pop” from R&B to hair metal to rap to acoustic songwriters, Janet was the first time I could remember an artist specifically taking influences from several genres and making them her own. Yeah, “Black Cat” is a rock song but it’s still R&B because it’s still Janet. “Miss You Much” is an R&B song on top of a driving beat, guitars and filled with lots of attitude. She wasn’t going through a phase, she wasn’t using a genre to “crossover”, she was black, she was a Hoosier, she was a music lover. There’s all kinds of rivers that flow into the musical ocean that is Janet and she’s never been afraid to drink from any of them.
Rain on the Scarecrow - John Mellencamp
Again, I could’ve picked any Mellencamp song, he cast a huge shadow down Indiana 11 in the 1980s and growing up on the same road, just a few miles north of where he did, I was in the darkest part of the shadow. This album was the second album, after Learning to Crawl, that I really responded to. This song being the opener, the two haunting guitar lines in stereo, the urgency both in the tempo and John’s voice, and the story being easy for me to follow even at a young age (even if I didn’t yet understand all the political context) cemented itself in my consciousness and that’s all still there. And looking back, this album is where John made the leap from good to great as a storyteller. Side note: “Rumbleseat” is my favorite song off this record.
Mr. Brownstone - Guns n’ Roses
Appetite for Destruction is a 10 out of 10 record. But this song, I just remember being told not to listen to it (even though it’s really an anti-drug song and I was allowed to listen to the rest of the record to my recollection). Being told I couldn’t listen to it was all I needed to hear to know I needed to hear it until I unlocked its secrets.
Smells Like Teen Spirit - Nirvana
I’m not much of a Nirvana fan really, but I do remember where I was the first time I heard this on the radio: in my parents' Blazer, on Highway 11 near the Bartholomew County Fairgrounds south of Columbus listening to Rick Dees’ Top 40. I just remember thinking, “what the hell is this?” When you’re young, small periods of time are large epochs to you, so hearing this, I knew that it wasn’t an anomaly, but that music would change forever. While in retrospect, I think Kurt namechecked all the punk bands he did because he was trying to be cooler than everyone else, he’s the reason millions of people heard about The Vaselines, the Raincoats, Flipper and when he talked about the Sex Pistols, it was enough for me to go buy a copy of Never Mind the Bollocks to see what it was all about, so thanks Kurt.
Your Love - The Outfield
I can’t say why I was attracted to this song so young, other than it’s a great song, but as a kid who loved baseball, the band name might have been enough. I’ve always been attracted to a sense of melancholy in music because it’s a large part of my general disposition, but we’re all yearning for something, so when I hear that in song, it feels real to me. So many great bands have come out of Manchester, The Outfield often get overlooked in that group, but this is guitar pop at its finest.
The Boys of Summer - Don Henley
Another baseball reference, but holy shit is this a great song. Definitely on my list of the greatest pop songs of all time with music by Mike Campbell and lyrics by Don Henley. I loved it as a kid, but the message of aging into middle-age only gets more profound by the day. Similar to “Check it Out” by John Mellencamp (which I didn’t really get until I got into my thirties and all of that got too real for me), this story goes from mere observation to lived experience. For me it’s not a “Deadhead sticker on a Cadillac” or even “a Black Flag sticker on a Cadillac” but my kid and her peer group wearing Nirvana shirts like they’re a clothing brand. Middle-aged reflection is a mixture of rose-colored nostalgia and mourning and this song nails it.
Hazy Shade of Winter - The Bangles
Last, but not least, this is the first ever music purchase I ever made (and I still own it). I bought the 7” single at the Hills department store in Columbus. It has Joan Jett and the Blackhearts’ “I Love Rock and Roll” on the B-side. Both songs were on the soundtrack to the 1987 film adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis’ Less Than Zero and with all due respect to Paul Simon, this song needs to be played at the tempo the Bangles deliver it at. This song just rocks. End of story. Best thing to ever appear on my Fisher-Price record player… and I had Gremlins storybooks from Hardee’s, plus my Aunt’s old 45s that included the Beach Boys, Elton John and Led Zeppelin.
There were TONS of great music released in the 80s, these were just pivotal moments in my life before punk rock. While punk blew my doors off, you can’t go from “Mary Had a Little Lamb” to Black Flag, you have to ramp up. Then punk rock is the doorway that leads you into a world of all kinds of music that you won’t hear on Rick Dees’ Top 40. Music isn’t invented anymore, it’s simply reinterpreted through a new set of lenses based on the life experience of the writer and the culture in which they exist. We’re all telling the same stories with the same 12 notes as before, we’re just burning with the need to tell you our version of it.