What Would Be the Soundtrack to Your Life?

I find it so cool how you can hear a song and INSTANTLY be teleported back to a specific moment or feeling, whether it's the song that you cried to over a first heartbreak or the one that puts a smile on your face thinking about dancing on your daddy's feet to it.  I thought it'd be fun to show you my life in songs and I'd be very interested to see what would make your list as well.  You can post in the comments here or write a post on your own site and link back here :)

The Soundtrack of My Life (and what feeling/moment it brings to mind)

I am the type of person where if I like something, I like it deeply: Songs move me deeply, movies make me cry and get sucked into them so much that I watch them over and over to relive it, etc so when I say that I have emotional ties to some of this stuff, ooooh do I!  

- Childhood

There are two musicians who I can name that completely make up my childhood.  They were the music to my life until I was about 11 and what fine music it was: Michael Jackson and Luther Vandross.  If I was with my cousin who babysat me, it was all MJ all the time nonstop (Who's Bad?) and if I was with my mom then I was treated to the constant crooning of Luther.  To this day, I can listen to them on repeat and be just fine.

MJ was the first man I ever was infatuated with as a kid and this song is my first memory of him:

BAD  (and I seriously had the same aesthetic in guys later, butterscotch/caramel complexion, curly hair, tight little bodies, great smiles, big eyes...I was in looove and looking for a replacement)

and Luther has the voice of an angel, A House is Not a Home will forever be the quintessiental Luther song for me, this version is my absolute favorite. 

-Middle School/Junior High

With the start of junior high came the dawn of the age of the Boy Bands!  Were you a Backstreet girl or totally N'Sync?  THAT was the question :)  I loved them all and "Drive Myself Crazy" still makes me beam when I hear it.  You ever have those perfect moments, when there's just a song that comes on at the right moment and it just seals itself into your memory?  That's this song (one of a couple on this list): I was taking a nap at a different cousin's house and had my cd going on the stereo, but had turned it off to sleep.  I guess I rolled over onto the remote and turned it on and this song synched up and started, blasting at just the right volume in the quiet house as I lay on the comfortable couch with the breeze coming in through the window and it just sounded so intensely beautiful wafting through the house.  I always get a sense of calm now when I hear it, taken back to that moment of peace. 

Usher also got big when I was in the 7th grade and OH BOY did girls go gaga for that man.  "You Make Me Wanna" was played repeatedly.

-High School

My teen years are quite memorable for a couple specific songs.  My mom bought me my first discman and the first CD that I purchased for it was Nelly's Country Grammar.  I felt so cool because I memorized every song and would randomly spit it on the bus from my private school lmao.  Nerd

My favorite song was E.I. by far (my mom really didn't know what she had bought me, lmao!  I was her good geek girl)

Then Britney Spears came out and I was all Britney all day all the time!  She was my girl, I wanted to be cute with a tight body just like her.  Oh Britney, how I loved thee!  Any song from her first 2 albums could go here, but I'll focus on the Oops I Did It Again album because it was the one that I bought especially for a 3 week tour of Europe that I was taking and I remember listening to that cd sooo much while on the plane and buses there.  Don't Let Me Be the Last to Know was my favorite because I was deluding myself into believing that the guy I had a major crush on in my group also liked me and was too shy to say so.

On that same European trip, Mariah Carey #1s cd was just perfection to me.  Every song was a dear friend on that trip, but she really blew me away by singing my first boo's song so well, I'll Be There...and the guy who sings it with her is INCREDIBLE. For the past 10 years I thought that she hit that note at 2:34, which was impressive but even more so since it was HIM.  Why isn't he famous??

Love Takes Time also was a favorite of mine.  That woman had one of the best voices I'd ever heard...no crazy studio help, no autotune, just pure angelic heavenliness.  There are only two performances where I've been brought to tears just by virtue of the beauty of their voices and this particular love takes time performance made me go WOW as well as that live House is Not a Home above by Luther.  

Came back to high school from Europe and back to crushing on various classmates.  Of course those times had their musical memories too!

R.L. and Deborah Cox: We Can't Be Friends

Brandy: Have You Ever

Jessica Simpson: I Wanna Love You Forever

Got my first job sometime in high school in an office near my house, with the boring tasks of filing/organizing the paperwork for a place that hadn't been organized ever and just a lot of paperwork drudgery, so I had my earphones glued into my head and bought Creed's Weathered CD to get me through.  I LOVED them because I used to be a massive wrestling fan (really, make that a massive The Rock fan) and they used their song My Sacrifice as the theme one year and I realized that I liked a lot of their stuff once I listened. 

My favorite song from that album is One Last Breath (What can I say, I can be a melancholy girl)

Then came my crunk/hood music years.  My cousins and I would ride out, bumping these songs and going to post up at the car clubs with our tight pants, short shorts, and little skirts on trying to catch the eyes of the guys with the candy colored Monte Carlos.  

This was our THEME SONG.  I don't know why, but we just listened to this nonstop.  Somehow my cousin got ahold of it like a year before it got big and we just knew we were hardcore for having it lol.  Crime Mob - Knuck if You Buck  It didn't help that I was rocking the kinky twists that the girls wore and so I'd always shake them and act hard whenever this came on. HOT ASS MESS.

Lol, what can I say, I loved to shake my butt to this song.  All of the guys wanted to be around me when this came on in the club.  Back That Ass Up by Juvenile

-College

The very first song that greeted me and welcomed me to Miami was Dirty Vegas' Days Go By and I still am transported back to that cab ride from the airport to my school with a big grin on my face, wondering how college would be and what the future held.

I met some awesome friends in college and a trio in particular of us would go to south beach all of the time and party (or attempt to, if we got in since we were underage) and what stands out to me musically from that period was the ride home, when we'd be exhausted at like 4am and just want something soothing to ride to:  Lenny Williams - Cause I love You

Girl you know I I I love youuuu!  As soon as I hear that, I want to grab the phone and call one of my best friends from then and belt it into her ear because this was her favorite song and she was the driver who always popped that song on. 

Bad Boys II came out when I was in college and Shake Ya Tail Feather by Diddy, Nelly, and Murphy Lee was OUR song.  Set in Miami, about some fly girls, oh yeah, that was so us!

Then something happened that made all of my friends hate me:  I discovered RENT. I told ya'll uptop that when I like something or feel an emotion, I feel it HARD and oh man, nothing showed that more than my complete love for Angel and Collins of Rent.  I had the ringtones for my phone, played the movie once a day, created tons of wallpaper collages for my computer backgrounds, read fan insider info, listened to nothing else on my iPod...I was a definite nuisance for a year lol. 

*sigh* I love them so much, they are still my favorite couple ever.  

My first big romance happened in college too.  I was smitten with someone who was smitten with me back, fireworks!  We'd sit and "cake it" (that was the term then for whispering sweet nothings in someone's ear for hours) on the phone forever and text all day.  

Brandy: Sitting Up In My Room was always blasting through my iPod at the time, summed everything up for me.

Oh how I liked liking someone.  I was always the type to have massive crushes on people without letting them know or flirting/going on one date with folks, but this was the first time that I actually liked someone semi-long term and they knew about it lol.   :D  Jamie Foxx had just dropped his first CD and it was OUR cd.  We listened to it on the phone together (I was in Miami, he in Chicago) all of the time and the two songs in particular were the title track of Unpredictable and Storm (Forecast)

As these things tend to happen, it ended :(  Remember that whole feeling things deeply?  Yeaaaaah, talk about mopey!  I remember one particular melodramatic evening where I went out onto the grounds of my school and found somewhere really dark and alone, some random stoop of a building no one used, put up my hood on my sweatshirt and just cried listening to Deniece William's Silly and Britney Spears From the Bottom of my Broken Heart for hours. 

I was starting to be over Miami and the school and decided to apply for a transfer to go somewhere else. I got accepted to other places and just really wanted to have a change of pace.  I mentally prepared to say goodbye to "The U" with Whitney Houston's I Will Always Love You (melodramatic, I know)

My mom convinced me to stay at the school, though, so I never even left.  I just remember playing that song repeatedly and saying my goodbyes to the campus.  

Our senior year of college, my school decided to adopt Souljah Boi's "Superman" as it's song and our mascot who rocks my socks, Sebastian the Ibis, was a total badass about doing it at the games.  

Those were some fun times.  Finally, it was nearing time to graduate and I remember that I had a class that was right across this beautiful fountain yard from my dorm and I always got out of class at twilight when the sun was setting and it just called for a great song.  My Heart Will Go on but the Kenny G version was just the song to make me smile and play in my ear as I walked through sparkling fountains and prepared to say goodbye to the place that had been my home for 4 years (for real this time). 

So beautiful!

After college, I don't remember there being any major moments defined by songs for a while until my world got rocked on June 25th, 2009 and my original boo died.  Michael Jackson, RIP.  I literally listened to NOTHING ELSE but him for a year, crying and rocking out to my favorites but discovering songs from his extensive catalogue that I had never even heard before.  One of those previously unheard of songs came to be my favorite and was on constant repeat:  All I Do is Think of You

Then I started being curious about the other people who were so important in his life, namely Diana Ross because she'd been a great influence/mentor of his.  I of course KNEW about The Supremes and had heard Baby Love, Stop in the Name of Love like everyone else surely has, but I wanted to read up more on them and what made her so magnetic that he was practically obsessed with her for years. Read her biography and was thoroughly impressed  with the DIVA that is MissRosstoYou and then went on to playing HER music pretty much nonstop.  I love great women in history so it wasn't a hard sell to want to research her more.  For The Supremes, My World Is Empty Without You is my favorite song and my favorite solo D. Ross song is The Boss. 

And with that, I'll end this super long journey down memory lane.  Just a bit of insight into my tastes and what songs have had influence in my life.  

I'd LOVE to read about the songs that stand out in your life soundtrack and any memories to go with them!  You can leave a comment here or do a blog post at your own blog home and link back :)  

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