🎶 the songs that made me 🎸

26-50

Hello, all you cool cats and kittens! 😸

(I know, so 2020…)

I’ve been making friends here on Substack in the month of October, and thus have a lot of new eyes on my work, which I appreciate! As I’ve worked on my mental health during this time [depression 🤺], I’ve been finding joy in sinking into the fall season with my family.

Boulder Creek, CO

For as long as I can remember, I’ve loved being outside, and living in Colorado now means my family and I get out a lot more for hikes and bike rides.

I’m also back with songs 26-50 from my Songs That Made Me list! If you missed numbers 1-25 that I posted earlier this month, you can check that out here and I suggest subscribing so you don’t miss the rest of this list when it gets posted.

26. Real World, Matchbox Twenty
    I enjoyed Matchbox Twenty’s first album, and neither Margot Robbie nor the Barbie movie are gonna shame me out of that now that Push has become the idiot Ken anthem. However, Real World made me a Rob Thomas fan. He would go on to follow this up with a collaboration with Santana a couple years after Yourself or Someone Like You and that project turned me into a super fan. I recognize that he is not the whole of MT, and I appreciate the band for its steady presence as an alternative rock band that wasn’t too corny for me to listen to when I needed to satiate my ears, but rap wasn’t an option because one or both of my parents were within earshot.

27. What is Love, Howard Jones
    Not the Haddaway song, though spoiler alert: that one appears on this list, too!
    

    

    
    I’m referring to the song that’s older than me, the 1983 classic by the incomparable Howard Jones. The one where the lyrics state, “I love you even if you think that I don’t.” 💕
    This is another one of those tracks I prefer to hear the full version of only, and Spotify added the 6:36 version a few years ago. I’m also going to start linking to these songs directly on Spotify so y’all can check them out, too, if for no other reason than to know high-quality versions of these tracks exist in spaces where you might be able to hear them (providing you have a Spotify membership; if you’re an Apple Music nerd…sorry)

28. Take a Picture, Filter
    I know they’re considered a one-hit-wonder, but Filter’s Title of Record was a solid release in 1999 that I still listen to today. I wouldn’t call them ‘one-hit’ because there are several tracks on that album that I still jam to, but I get why they’re considered to be one. Take a Picture still holds up today.

29. We Need a Resolution, Aaliyah
    Reflecting on Aaliyah’s career is always bittersweet for me. On the one hand, I bask in the fun memories I made to her music as a kid, looking up to her when she’d appear on my television screen because she was just so beautiful, so poised and well put together. Very demure, very mindful.
    But to be a fan of Aaliyah means also having to acknowledge the truth of her passing: she was only stepping into her prime and we lost her before she could give us more. We Need a Resolution is the quintessential example I point to when demonstrating this. Her sound was so much edgier here. She and Timbaland were pushing the boundaries and had they gotten a chance to complete their mission, I truly believe Beyonce’s debut album would have been delayed by 5-6 years.

30. My Love is Your Love, Whitney Houston
    I don’t talk about Whitney a lot, but that’s not to say she didn’t play an instrumental role in shaping my childhood, and that I haven’t felt a gaping void since her death. When Whitney was alive, Black women had a thick, sharp spike driven into the heart of the music industry. Remember how Black women’s voices used to be respected? How our art used to be seen as this otherworldly creation from the heavens? I feel like that died when Whitney died. You can try to change my mind if you want, but I’ve had 12 years to form this mindset.
    Anyway, My Love is Your Love was a comeback album for Whitney, and I loved the security of feeling like the queen had returned to her throne when she dropped the titular track. It was akin to the feeling of knowing you’re going to Grandma’s house and she’s making your favorite meal.
    I liked life before Whitney became a punchline. I know many would argue she made herself the punchline, but the world didn’t treat Demi Lovato the same way when she had a serious drug problem. If Whitney could’ve been given real help, she’d probably still be here.
    Bobby Brown did NOT deserve her, nor the child she gave him, who has also now passed on. 🕊️

31. Atomic Dog, George Clinton
    George Clinton is yet another pioneer of music mechanics. Similar to Roger from Zapp and the impact he had through his use of the talk box on California Love, George Clinton and Parliament gave birth to a whole ass sub-genre within Black funk music, and it shows on songs like Atomic Dog. I don’t care if you’re from the dirty south or if you’re an underwater basket weaving instructor from Connecticut, EVERY. DAMN. BODY. knows this song, and they usually get a little hyped when it comes on (especially if it’s a kids movie with dogs in it).

32. Whoever You Are, Geggy Tah
    It is my goal to deliver some obscure tracks to you through this list, and I think this might be one of those if you are not from Southern California. Whoever You Are is a song about changing lanes on the freeway. That’s it! But have you ever had to change lanes when you’re on the 405 during rush hour? Yeah, see, game changer.
    The band Geggy Tah formed in Pomona when two friends decided they wanted to make music together. Pomona is about twoish hours north of where I grew up, so I think Whoever You Are was serviced to local radio and that’s how my friends and I heard it in the late 90s in San Diego, but my cousin in Oakland didn’t. Let me know if you’d heard of Geggy Tah before reading this Substack post…whoever you are. 😉

33. Sunday Morning, No Doubt
    Tragic Kingdom isn’t my favorite No Doubt album, but Sunday Morning is one of my favorite No Doubt songs. Growing up and now singing it with my daughter - in the car, while getting ready, just because - is one of those little sunshiny victories I hang onto in this dreaded thing called adulthood.

34. Bent, Matchbox Twenty
    Bent came out in 2000 when I was a 16 year old angsty teenager. I enjoyed it for the way it spoke to my emotions then and still do today. I am a 40 year old, angsty person now.

35. Sugar We're Going Down, Fallout Boy
    One of the more recent songs on this list, and it gets paired with Dance Dance, which appeared in the last batch. If you were attending college in the early 2000s - especially in California - this song is part of that soundtrack.
    It also holds a lot of fun memories for me of the period of time when I met my husband. He and I will celebrate 20 years together in April, so it’s only fitting that music from the beginning of our relationship is part of what made me — I’ve been with him for half my life at this point. 🤯 this is WAY more than I ever bargained for. 💛

36. Are You That Somebody, Aaliyah
    This is everybody’s favorite Aaliyah song. It shouldn’t surprise you it’s one of mine.

37. Free, Mya
    Free is one of my feel-good anthems. I can remember listening to this on the way home from Capistrano Volkswagen after buying my first VW Jetta in 2003. Financed her all by myself.
    Mya is one of my favorite divas from the golden age in music where pop, hip-hop, and RnB got so close the boundaries blurred, but Black artists were still driving the bus for this evolution — a marked difference from the Doja Cat/Dua Lipa/Post Malone era we’re currently in.
    The Mickey Mouse Club, plus Lou Perlmann’s pop pyramid scheme meant we got a lot of hot, sexy young talent in the late 1990s and early 2000s, and I’m here to say Mya belongs in the Top 5 when people start arguing about whether Justin or JC should be number one. Forget Britney and Christina — all Mya had to do was get out of bed and she shut them both down.

    Mya was a triple threat, meaning she danced, sang, and acted.

    The first two stills are from her music video for My Love is Like Wo which came out three years after Free, but they illustrate my point beautifully - long live Queen Mya:

    

    Sis was versatile with her image and clearly flexible, too. She’s like the head cheerleader.

    

    Not only was sis dancing for us, but TAP DANCING. As a tap dancer myself, I lovvved this shit.

    

    She was part of that iconic ensemble that redid Lady Marmalade in ‘01

    

    She was also in Chicago (2002) alongside Queen Latifah and Catherine Zeta Jones. (lipschitz!)

38. Roc Ya Body, MVP
    I think I picked this one up during my sorority days, but didn’t fully get into this song until I got my 2nd generation iPod Mini (my first iPod), which was around the time I was leaving the chapter and meeting my future husband. I remember this song had the highest play count on my iTunes, so here it is on this list!

39. Feel So Good, Ma$e
    I wish we could’ve gotten more from Ma$e as a solo artist, even if the circumstances surrounding his debut were really tragic. Both this song and this music video are perfect examples of how much fun we were having with hip-hop in the 90s. Ma$e is my favorite 90s rapper, with Notorious B.I.G. in second and Tupac a very close third.

40. Stranger in Moscow, Michael Jackson
    My number one favorite Michael Jackson song. Songwriter and legend Rod Temperton called it Michael’s best, and I agree with him. The instrumentation, lyrics, and emotion of this song are top tier. Most of an artist’s best hits aren’t released to radio, ever, and Stranger in Moscow is a prime example of this.

41. Freak of the Week, Marvelous 3
    Freak of the Week dropped in late 1998, and contains all the lesser-known alternative band quirks I can never get enough of. Marvelous 3 is another obscure band you may not have heard of, but you’ve heard their influence everywhere. Their lead singer is Butch Walker, and he’s got producing credits on P!nk’s I’m Not Dead, Fall Out Boy’s Infinity on High, and Panic! at the Disco’s Vices & Virtues. He has also collaborated with artists like Taylor Swift, Green Day, Jewel, Adam Lambert, and Better Than Ezra, and I credit him for why I like some of the music from those acts.

42. Naked Eye, Luscious Jackson
    As I was preparing for this list, I learned that Vivian Trimble of Luscious Jackson’s original lineup has passed away after a cancer fight 💔 i hate that fucking disease…
    In contrast, I love Naked Eye, as the sound and the music video got everything right.

43. The Rubberband Man, The Spinners
    This is another one where you gotta give me the full version or I’m not interested. The full version of The Rubberband Man is 7:22 in length and if I ever get that Netflix standup special I’m vaguely planning for, I’m gonna see if I can make that whole 7:22 an intro segment for my show.
    Aside from The Spinners being a classic RnB group responsible for giving us timeless Motown hits, The Rubberband Man is a song of progression and storytelling. The energy goes from baseline to off the chart by the end, and I love that kind of music. I feel like musicians aren’t truly artists if they can’t ad-lib and improvise from time to time, and that’s what songs longer than four minutes feel like. It’s like the band said, “screw the sheet music, we can just PLAY,” and then the song went on until they were over it.
    The holidays are coming up, and as a fun throwback, check out my favorite Christmas commercial from 20 years ago for Office Max, who used The Rubberband Man for a marketing campaign in 2003 and 2004. Is claymation ever NOT nostalgic?

44. Everywhere, Michelle Branch
    This song gets paired with another one on this list that came out around the same time (2002) by an artist who to this day still gets compared to Michelle Branch. 😉
    But that’s not to say Everywhere, along with the other song I’ve alluded to but won’t disclose until we get to it in the list (🤭), aren’t great pieces of work by themselves. I bought my guitar not long after hearing Everywhere and seeing Michelle in the music video. Aside from her abilities on the guitar, Michelle Branch’s vocals on Everywhere are flawless. She, and her musical counterpart whom she lovingly refers to as her sister from another life, blew the music scene open in 2001-2002, and I needed her to listen to between Ashanti and Incubus during senior year of high school.

45. Everything You Want, Vertical Horizon
    I’m actually really happy this song ended up in the same randomized batch with Take a Picture. Both songs came out around the same time, but Everything You Want captivated me slightly more, which is why I bought the Vertical Horizon album before Filter’s. Notice: Vertical Horizon was on my Albums That Made Me list, but Filter wasn’t.

46. Someday, Sugar Ray
    The 14:59 album from Sugar Ray gave us a lot of great hits during the late 90s and early 2000s, and I consider Someday to be a standout from the album. There is a bonfire scene from the music video, and it reminds me of the bonfires my friends and I would have at the beach as teens. Amber, if you’re reading this, we gotta have a bonfire next time I’m back in town! #CaliGirl

47. Believe, Cher
    Like Aretha, Cher has captivated fans across several generations. She roped me in when she dropped this song in late 1998. What’s funny is that I don’t know if she was aware that she was helping usher in a new genre by agreeing to use auto tune on this track. As I explained when I talked about California Love, these voice manipulations of the 90s gave way to auto tune’s over usage today.

48. She Drives Me Wild, Michael Jackson

    This is another obscure Michael Jackson song that slaps. My father had a McIntosh stereo when I was growing up. A CD player, subwoofer, amplifier, and pre-amp. The shit was diabolical as far as sound. I don’t know how our neighbors weren’t complaining about us every Friday and Saturday night during the 90s, because those speakers and that bass shook the whole house and probably the fence and mailbox, too.
    But I can’t complain about it too much because it’s the reason I got to experience Michael’s Dangerous album with such full, unadulterated force. Through all that sonic boom, I came to love this track from that same album. It’s got that new jack swing PLUS Michael Jackson flair that Teddy Riley, a producer on this album and frontman for Blackstreet, did so well.

49. Goodbye, Alien Ant Farm
    Goodbye, from Alien Ant Farm’s second studio album, TruANT, is my favorite song by the band. If you enjoy alternative music, you liked their cover of Smooth Criminal, and you’re looking for something new to listen to, I suggest giving ANThology (2001) and TruANT (2003) a try, with the latter being a more lighthearted, sunshiny album than the former. Both are a fun listen.

50. You Make Me Feel, Jeremy Toback
    This may be another obscure track to you, but I first heard this song in 1999 and it captivated my teen heart long enough for me to remember to load it onto my iPod in 2005 (that 2nd gen mini I told you about!), then add it to the custom wedding playlist our DJ let me build for our wedding in 2009. If you were there, You Make Me Feel played during dinner.
    If it hasn’t become clear to you intelligent readers by now, I was an emotional teenager. I was misunderstood, overwhelmed, anxious…but more than anything, I was longing to be loved. My parents loved me, but they also worked hours away from home and weren’t emotionally accessible. This song was what I dreamed of finding love to…and then it was a song I celebrated love to. More than the melody and the uniqueness of Jeremy’s voice, the lyrics made a lot of sense to me at 14 then again at 24 because sometimes love isn’t explained through flowery lines and phrases — sometimes it’s just that they made you feel something, and that was more than enough.

I’ll be back soon with 51-75!

be well, friends
good music is like a hot bath for the soul ✌🏾