Turn Of The Century Revisited

A few years ago (eight to be exact), long before the advent of music blogs, I put together a website to go along with my annual Christmas card. I guess it was like the online version of a Christmas letter, except that it centered almost entirely around music. As part of it, I put together a soundtrack for the year, which I explained as such...

Sometime this spring, I sent out an e-mail to some pallies having everyone make a soundtrack for their lives. The rules were pick 12 songs that would serve as a killer soundtrack album, should they ever make the movie of your life. It was so much fun, I thought I'd do one for this year. So here it is, in no particular order, the songs that will be forever etched in my brain as reminders of the turn of the century...

Why Does It Always Rain On Me - Travis
Accelerator - Primal Scream
Time Machines - Lexo and the Leapers
When I Fall In Love - Nat King Cole
We're Going To Miss You - James
Pumping On Your Stereo - Supergrass
To Find What's Waiting For - Sixteen Deluxe
It's My Life - Bon Jovi
In Love With A View - Mojave 3
Drive On To Me - Elliott
Sunshine - Samiam
The Bends - Radiohead

So why am I revisiting this today? Because I heard two of these songs last night. One, "Why Does It Always Rain On Me," was performed by the acoustic duo that apparently performs every Tuesday at the Flying Saucer after trivia is over. It was actually pretty cool, except that they promptly ruined any goodwill I had towards them by playing John Waite's "Missing You" right after. Bastards. This was actually my favorite song of 2000 by far (Travis I mean, not John Waite). I wrote about that on my Christmas website too, but I'm not going to repost that bit. I went through a bit of a sad bastard phase in 2000, and I'd rather not get into all that crap. It's still a great song though.

Travis - "Why Does It Always Rain On Me?" (mp3) from The Man Who

The other song I heard at Kroger when I stopped to pick up some pop on the way home. I caught quite a bit of shit from my friends for my unabashed love of this song back in the day. It wasn't even a guilty pleasure... I honest to god loved this song. And frankly I still do. I remember getting an email from my friend Joe chastising me for only liking it because it had a reference to Sinatra in the chorus. I replied that I hadn't even realized that the "Like Frankie said I did it my way" line was a reference to Ol' Blue Eyes until he brought it up (probably because "My Way" is without a doubt my least favorite Sinatra song). I'm pretty sure he threatened to never speak to me again after that. I've listened to it about twenty times while writing this, and it's easy to remember why I liked it so much... it fucking rocks. The talk box intro, the anthemic chorus, the key change at the end... it's like aural crack. You know it's probably not good for you, but you can't help yourself.

Bon Jovi - "It's My Life" (mp3) from Crush