💿 the songs that made me 😎

i've got a list of 150 songs to share!

Hey friends! Recapping my favorite albums for you was a lot of fun, and a few of you asked for more music-related content, so here we go!

First, some housekeeping: I’m not going to revise the list, but it’s an absolute travesty that I left Savage Garden’s self-titled debut album off the Albums That Made Me list.

I bought this album in 1998. I wanted to buy it in 1997, but between the Spice Girls, Alana Davis, Everclear, and Brandy, I couldn’t afford to pick this one up until 1998. To this day, this is one of my go-to albums to turn on while I clean the house, or cook, or have something I need to do that I can have music on as background noise. Savage Garden gets a few entries on this list to make up for the slight.

Next, in order for a song to have “made” me, it needed to be part of what I considered the foundation-laying portion of my life. This includes my childhood, adolescence, and young adult life until 2005. This period of time includes college and the earliest part of my relationship with my husband, as we met at ages 19 and 20.

As such, I didn’t feel that music released in 2006 and after belonged here; by that point, I was done with college, starting my career, and settling into my romantic relationship as a fixture. I do plan on releasing a, The Music That Sustains Me, list in the future that those songs will appear on, but this explains why you will see a song from 30 Seconds to Mars on this list, but nothing from Nelly Furtado’s Loose album (a great album that helped sell iTunes subscriptions back in the day).

My process for creating this list included two handwritten drafts that were then typed into Microsoft Excel and then randomized. I wanted to create a list of 100, but that wasn’t enough, so I tried for 125, 130, and settled at 150 because I didn’t want it to become a list of 500. 🙈

I’ll be releasing these in batches of 25, and they are in no particular order.

Without further adieu, here’s songs 1-25 of the Songs that Made Me:

1. Special - Garbage; I already told y’all this is my favorite song ever. It makes sense it would be at number 1.

2. Get Low - Lil Jon and the Eastside Boys; mid-80s born millennials who attended college right after high school have a common soundtrack for those years, and this song is on it. Don’t try to deny it. You can walk into a room of millennials and yell, “TO THE WINDOWWWW…” and I promise more than half the room, even if they don’t like hip-hop, will finish the line.

3. Dance Dance - Fallout Boy; one of the first songs my husband and I rocked out to together. I liked “Sugar, We’re Going Down…” and heard “Dance Dance” afterward, but I didn’t start liking Dance until I noticed him listening to it over and over.

4. California Love - Tupac, Dr. Dre, Roger; this is one of the greatest songs of all time, and it’s aging exceptionally well. As a Cali native, of course this song is on the list of songs that made me.
   
   In 2024, Calfornia Love is still recognizable in any club or bar, and crowds still go wild when the opening verse plays.
   

   Next, and my favorite part: it’s chock full of talent. Dre + Pac yes, but ROGER FROM ZAPP is on the track too y’all...and I’d argue him being there led to Cher using autotune in Believe 4 years later, which opened the flood gates for autotune to become damn near its own genre today. (Side note: Roger isn’t using autotune on California Love, he’s using a talkbox, but he’s manipulating his voice like autotuners do).
   
   You have to listen for 2 mins 18 secs before Pac’s verse even starts (“Out on bail! Fresh outta jail! California dreamin’!), and the total run time for the song is 4:44. Most tracks these days top off at 3 1/2 mins. Just saying, longer songs give you more music for the same streaming price. Any song that can make you nod your head or shake your ass for a solid 4 mins is a work of art, in my opinion.

5. Vixen - Garbage; indeed, Special isn’t my only favorite Garbage song. They, more than any other band I listen to, LOVE to start their albums with a banger first track, and Vixen does this for their self-titled, debut album. (Temptation Waits does this for Version 2.0)

6. Mercedes Boy - Pebbles; I can still remember singing this from the back seat of my mother’s car. Before she robbed TLC blind, Pebbles made some bangers.

7. Remote Control - Beastie Boys; the Hello Nasty album gave us a lot of gems. This was my favorite.

8. Elegantly Wasted - INXS; this was the last release by INXS before Michael Hutchence killed himself while masturbating. Such a bummer! I was just starting to get into this band when this was released in 1997, and I had no choice but to move backwards through their discography as a result. I miss you, Michael!

9. All That You Are x3 - Econoline Crush; this song hit radio in 1999 and has remained in rotation on my radio since. Whenever I have some big scary shit to do, like drive myself and my kids and dog 1300 miles to our new life, I listen to this a couple times.

10. Alright - Jamiroquai; remember fuzzy hat guy from the 90s? He and his band have bangers, like this one that came off the same album as Virtual Insanity.

11. Six Underground, Nellee Hooper Mix - Sneaker Pimps; every alternative millennial girl loves this version of this song. The album version is good too, but Nellee Hooper’s mix elevated Six Underground. It encapsulates late 1990s so well. Also super fun to pole dance to. 👠

12. Old Man & Me - Hootie and the Blowfish; there’s something so cozy about Hootie. I know they were somewhat generic in the 1990s, but they were a nice contrast to the gangster antics that got really hot in the 90s. This is also my favorite song by Hootie and one of their least popular.

13. Malibu - Hole; this song is just pretty, and I enjoy listening to it as well as playing it on my guitar.

14. Again - Lenny Kravitz; my favorite Lenny Kravitz song

15. Bootylicious - Destiny’s Child; oooh this one is fun! I miss the fun era of Destiny’s Child. Stevie Nicks has a cameo in the music video, and Beyonce has called this song her tribute to Michael Jackson.

16. Rock Steady - Aretha Franklin; my favorite Aretha song. Years ago, I found a series of musicians on YouTube doing covers for parts of this song - drums, bass, keyboard/organ. Todd Hamby’s bass cover is still up all these years later!

17. Shimmer - Fuel; this was the first song I heard from this band in 1997, then I got to watch them play this live as they opened for Aerosmith on the Just Push Play tour in 2001. Damn, that concert was one of the last things I did before 9/11…

18. Stranded, Alien Ant Farm; my favorite Alien Ant Farm song, and a gem from the ANThology album.

19. I’m Like a Bird - Nelly Furtado; this debut from Nelly Furtado captivated me. I know people weren’t happy when she switched up her style for Loose in 2006, but I see her as a whole musician because of it. This song is simply beautiful and still holds up 24 years later.

20. Circles - Incubus; since they’re another one of my favorite bands, it makes sense that their lesser known songs would appear here.

21. A Rose is Still a Rose - Aretha Franklin; realizing that the two Aretha songs on this list ended up in the same randomized batch! They were also released 26 years apart in 1972 and 1998, respectively. Aretha was a timeless artist with limitless talent that roped in multiple generations. This song in particular was produced by Lauryn Hill while she was working on Miseducation (that’s actually Lauryn singing “What I am is What I am”). If you like this song and also loved The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, this might be why. The music video featured Black singers and actresses in bright colors, including Elise Neal and Amel Larrieux.

22. Barely Breathing - Duncan Sheik; let me know if you are a millennial woman who didn’t like this song growing up. Not saying they don’t exist, just that I’ve met very few. Did you know Duncan doesn’t even like this song? He says it was too successful as a debut single and kept people from listening to his other music. I dunno Duncan, I listened to She Runs Away and I’m on a High too…they just didn’t stick with me as much as your debut song did.

23. Heard it All Before - Sunshine Anderson; yet another R&B pop singer I thought would go further in mainstream. This song still holds up, and I hope Sunshine is reaping the royalties.

24. Return of the Mack C&J Extended Mix - Mark Morrison; I only like the extended mix of this song. The real version has a total run time of 7:21

25. Come Undone - Duran Duran; I have to thank my childhood next door neighbor for introducing me to Duran Duran by blaring them through his speakers. That’s how I heard this song and Ordinary World, which I later figured out both came from their 1993 self-titled release, which my neighbor had clearly bought and enjoyed listening the hell out of. This song contains beautiful harmonies, a nice drum loop, and just enough darkness to make it mysterious, but not depressing.

Alright y’all. I’ll be back with 26-51 soon! Follow me on Spotify to check out my playlists.

be well, friends
👩🏾‍🎤 good music can turn anything around 🎶