Most of my music taste is that of a 50-year-old man (thanks, Dad). In the car, growing up, my dad was the dictator over the radio. He was driving; he was the boss of what we listened to. My mom, not so much. Taylor Swift, Carly Rae Jepsen, or any of the sort was always blaring in the school pickup lane. I can think back to my childhood through songs, specific moments in my life, to a specific song in my playlist.
“Don’t Stop Believing”- Journey
“Don’t Stop Believing” might just be my favorite song ever. I used to call it “Midnight Train” because I couldn’t (or I didn’t want to) remember the actual name. My favorite memories of this song are my uncle playing the YouTube video with me and my cousins dancing around the living room.
“MEan”- Taylor Swift
Not TV. Obviously. I’m talking about good old-school country Taylor.
“Mean” was mine and my mom’s song growing up. “Mean” coming on the radio meant windows down, sound up, scream-sing from my car seat on the way to dance. Whenever a girl in my class would be mean to me or something, and then this song came on, I was told to remember it. I was going to be so much bigger than those mean girls, I just had to wait.
“Summer of 69”- Bryan Adams
“Summer of 69” is THE beach song. Something about it just screams the beach, so it is permanently on my playlist for my yearly family vacation to Ogunquit, Maine. Yet another song I learned from my dad and his brothers, Summer of 69 just reminds me of my family and the ties we have to that beach.
“I Want To Know What Love Is”- Foreigner
In case you couldn’t tell, my dad is probably most influential on my playlist. I literally BEGGED him to buy Foreigner tickets when they went to the Erie County Fair this past summer, and when he bought them, I could have cried. “I Want to Know What Love Is” was the song I knew best of Foreigner and was my favorite part of that concert; the song that makes me think of being a kid. But, honestly, the best part of that concert was seeing that childhood band with my dad.
“Whistle”- FLo Rida
Should I have been listening to this when I was? Probably not. Was it one of my favorite songs as a kid? Yep.
Whenever my dad would go away for work or fishing trips, he would ask my mom for a “report card” when he got home. If the report was good, we would get a reward like Legos or something. My favorite reward, though, was a burnt CD. He would sit at our basement computer next to us and ask our favorite songs to put on a CD. “Whistle” was on a teal CD that my dad made one time, and I still remember it playing on my CD player while I danced in my basement.
“Greatest Love Story”- LANCO
“Greatest Love Story” was released when I was 13, and I blame my hopeless romantic personality on this song. It was one of the only songs downloaded onto my blue iPod, and I would listen to it with my wired headphones on the bus to middle school pretending I was way cooler than I actually was.
All in all, my music taste is my childhood. These songs, and many more, are the events that made me who I am.