A common interview form for Pitchfork, a popular music blog, is to ask a musician what their favorite songs from each five year span in their life was, in hopes of casting insight into the psyche and musical influences of the subject, as part of a segment called 5-10-15-20. (An example: http://pitchfork.com/features/5-10-15-20/8464-5-10-15-20-tv-on-the-radios-dave-sitek/ ) While I am not a musician (at least not until my experimental jazz-rap trio releases an album), maybe using this technique could still help give an idea of how my musical preferences have formed….
5
Believe In Yourself – Ziggy Marley and the Melody Makers
Up until a couple years ago, the family TV didn't have cable. As a result, pretty much everything I watched growing up was on PBS, and the epitome of the televised portion of my education was Arthur. The show's theme, by Ziggy Marley, is nice because it condenses the show's content in a way that appeals to each base instinct. The lyrics are basically an endlessly positive list of ways for everyone to improve the world on an individual level (I mean, who doesn't like some idealism?). Even more than that, the reggae instrumentals backing the song just sound good. Every time I hear this song, the world goes back to my five year old self's conception of a world where the biggest moral failure is stealing animal crackers.
10
Back in 5th grade, I thought everything on 93.3 was the pinnacle of music, despite the fact that the station only plays like eight different songs over and over. My favorite song of 93.3′s mid 2000′s rotation is Single File's Zombies Ate My Neighbors. I don't really have much of a rationalization for why I liked the song so much, besides thinking that the song 'sounded cool'. Not much else to say about this, besides that Single File probably made the best song ever about a zombie apocalypse, out of like three songs on the subject.
15
Around the time I was 15, my tastes were still firmly in the indie (whatever that means) genre of music. I found this song while looking for a download of one of Wavves' albums and it immediately connected. It's sort of hard to not connect to this song, though. The piano is so infectious that I learned it and haven't forgotten. And the lyrics directly appeal to a wish almost everybody has: to ignore all responsibilities in favor of doing whatever seems fun. I mean, there are hundreds of similar songs out there, but none of them have the authenticity of this one. Daylight is a rare commercial-ready song that doesn't seem to be explicitly made for that purpose, but rather as an expression of some natural Zooey Deschanel-esque quirkiness. And that's probably why this song has such staying power to me.
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