So, What're My Top 100 Songs? (Or 100 Reflections on Life So Far).

"The unexamined life is not worth living." -Socrates

"History is nothing more than memories, and memories are only as powerful as the emotions we attach to them." -Cole Cuchna

"Historians study the past not in order to repeat it, but in order to be liberated from it." -Yuval Noah Harari

This list is simple. It needs no long introduction. It's a list of my 100 favorite songs. It is also the story of my life so far, a story a lifetime in the making. However, this list serves a larger purpose than to merely register my 100 favorite songs or even tell my story. It is an examination, an expansion of my emotions, and an act of liberation. It is at once a simple list and a complex tapestry of catharsis and recollection. So, without further ado: My Top 100 Songs or 100 Reflections on Life So Far.

100. In My Life - The Beatles (1965)

I was 13 when I discovered the Beatles. I hadn't really listened to the Beatles growing up, but when I got to 7th grade I found a real joy in listening to classic rock. I carry their music with me everywhere I go, in my heart and in my head. (No, not on my head - I had the Lennon cut well before I realized I was ripping off the Beatles' hairstyle.) This list is for them and every other musician I carry with me. 

I haven't lived a long life, 21. That leaves almost my whole life ahead of me, but it's also a really pivotal moment for me, because, very much like those musicians, I carry the memories of a childish yesteryear with me into a more mature and complicated adulthood. So I wanted to take some time to reflect on those memories, and what better way to do that than through a list of gigantic magnitude and astounding importance to me personally? These 100 songs are the songs that defined my first 21 years of life. (And, don't worry, while most of the songs are sad, I've actually had a pretty good run of things. I'm happy.)

So, here they are. 100 songs. 100 memories.

"There are places I'll remember all my life, though some have changed. Some forever, not for better. Some have gone and some remain. All these places have their moments with lovers and friends I still can recall. Some are dead and some are living. In my life I've loved them all."

99. Wonderwall - Oasis (1995)

It was a sunny fall day, and I went down to the basketball courts tucked between the back road out of Hampshire College and the woods. I was working through a lot in my head. A lot of things I wanted to say to people, certain emotions I just couldn't put into words. I shot free throws, slowly and methodically. The thing about shooting free throws by yourself is no matter what happens, make it or miss it, you're gonna look like a fool walking to pick up the ball every ten seconds. But I did it. I did it while listening to this song, over and over and over again (something I've been known to do with too many songs). 

And watching me from the shade of the woods, out of my line of sight, were two people I had yet to fall in love with. It's probably good I didn't see them. It certainly would have deterred me from looking like a fool. But I didn't see them. Instead, I shot and listened. Shot and listened. And, eventually, I worked through my head and I found the words.

"There are many things that I would like to say to you, but I don't know how."

98. Creep - Scala & Kolacny Brothers (2002)

I don't think I've ever listened to this song in the light. Every memory is dark. In one I'm listening while crying under my bed sheets. Another I'm standing around the corner of my pitch-black room as I watch the light of the video showing this choir performing Radiohead's "Creep" illuminate the face of the woman I love. Much like this song, this miraculous cover, everything is dark. And that's okay.

"I don't care if it hurts. I wanna have control. I want a perfect body. I want a perfect soul. I want you to notice when I'm not around. You're so fucking special. I wish I were special."

97. Somebody to Love - Jefferson Airplane (1967)

It was the summer after my freshman year of high school. I was on a flight either to or from California when I decided nothing would be "cooler" than listening to Jefferson Airplane (a classic West Coast band) while actually on an airplane bound (someway) to or from California! So that's what I did. Silly, I know. But, as with every listen, I fell in love with them. I wanted to get up and dance in the aisles. The track is just so fun, so surreal. It's a little magical flight in and of itself. I cherish that flight and my 9th grade summer, defined by Jefferson Airplane and all their psychedelic musical buddies.

"Don't you want somebody to love? Don't you need somebody to love? Wouldn't you love somebody to love? You better find somebody to love..."

96. Beautiful Skin - Goodie Mob (1998)

I owe a large portion of the music in my life to my mother's ex-wife, Haley. This song is no different. I don't know if it was the first time I heard the song, but it was certainly the first time I noticed it. We were pulling into the parking lot of a restaurant (American Roadhouse, if you're curious), riding in Haley's worn Toyota Tacoma and this song was playing. Cee-Lo, who I was already a lifetime fan of, drew me in with his poetic rapping and the chorus flowed through me. I've never listened to this song regularly. I didn't then and I don't now (although I've listened to it quite a lot while compiling this list). But no matter what, I always come back to it. It's just so good, and I'm indebted to Haley for giving me yet another great musical lesson.

"Living and learning are our only obligations."

95. Total Eclipse of the Heart - Bonnie Tyler (1983)

So, this one means so much to me. The sheer power of this song makes every memory I have with it stand out. I was literally blasting this song as I stood in the street, black glasses pressed to my face, staring up at an eclipse last summer. My all-time favorite dance (and one of the best dances you will ever watch) is set perfectly to this song. (It's Melanie and Neil's So You Think You Can Dance performance. Look it up.) 

But most importantly, this was the go-to song when my debate partner, Bailey, and I wanted to have fun and get ready for debate events. We played this at practice. We played this at debate banquets. We played this before rounds. It's my ultimate hype song. And while it's a great heartbreak song, it's an even better song for building memories around.

"I don't know what to do. I'm always in the dark. Living in a powder keg and giving off sparks. I really need you tonight!"

94. Keep the Customer Satisfied - Simon & Garfunkel (1970)

I'll never forget the first time I heard this song. I had just received Bridge Over Troubled Water on vinyl, and while I was familiar with nearly every song on it already, there were a few I had never heard. This was one. So I put it on the record player and let it spin while I sat at the kitchen table, writing something (probably a debate case). After "Cecelia" (another phenomenal song), the needle found this song's groove. At first I was unsure about the country-twang singing and the Bible references.

But then the horns kicked in. And my whole body jumped. I had never (and still haven't) heard a song that's only 2 and a half minutes long with so much orchestration. I hopped out of my seat. I was dancing, I was conducting, I was smiling from ear to ear. I still do every time I hear this song. It ended on a high note and I picked up the needle and brought it back down at the beginning of the track. And for (at least) the next thirty minutes I brought that needle back down at the beginning when it ended. This song will be long worn out on that vinyl before the rest of the record and for good reason. 

"And I'm one step ahead of the shoeshine, two steps away from the county line. I'm just trying to keep my customers satisfied. Satisfied!"

93. Misty Mountain Hop - Led Zeppelin (1971)

I have lived this song. I was not sober. Obviously. All I remember is walking down the middle of the street. It was bright, like really bright, but it wasn't hot. I definitely had flowers in my hair. I don't remember what I was doing. I don't remember who I was with. 

I just know this song was playing and I thought something like, "Wow. I love this song. I am this song." That was a great moment and I can't help but return to that street when I hear this kaleidoscopic song kick. 

"So I'm packing my bags for the Misty Mountains, where the spirits go now. Over the hills where the spirits fly. Ooh..."

92. You Can't Always Get What You Want - The Rolling Stones (1969)

There's nothing quite like forcing people to listen to music. One of my best friends, Raini, is much like me in that he forces music upon others as well. So when we're together, we are a force to be reckoned with. That is especially true for this song.

It was a Monday night run to the grocery store, except we had finished shopping already and we were sitting parked in our apartment's lot, forcing our roommates to listen to the Rolling Stones, specifically this song. And it wasn't the cut-for-radio version. No. We sat there, singing and jamming to the full seven minute version of this song. They didn't want to be there but Raini and I had them trapped. They were obliged to listen all the way through it with us. And they did, despite what they wanted.

"You can't always get what you want. But if you try sometimes, you just might find, you just might find you get what you need."

91. Nobody Home - Pink Floyd (1979)

For a 21 year old I've had far too many people cut out of my life (most by their own doing, few of my choosing). People I could once call day or night who aren't there anymore. Perhaps that's an inevitability of life, as it almost certainly is. Perhaps I've run the gauntlet with these people a few too many times as well, as I almost certainly have. Regardless, I miss each and every one of them, and I'm reminded of them every time I hear this ballad.

"I've got second sight. I've got amazing powers of observation. That is how I know when I try to get through on the telephone to you, there'll be nobody home."

90. SpottieOttieDopaliscious - Outkast (1998)

This is the chillest song to ride to. I remember cruising up Freedom Parkway with my brother one summer afternoon, in the short time between the end of one high school year and the beginning of the next, bouncing to this trumpet line of this song. I remember carpooling with my college day-one boy, E, and his sister back from a car dealership in New Hampshire jamming to this song. It's so smooth. Every memory with this song is smooth. 

But my favorite memory I have of this song is the time E and I yelled at our friend Raini, telling him we had a question for him. He begrudgingly asked what our question was, and we waited for the approaching line, then shouted at him, "Now who else want to fuck with Hollywood Cole?!" Even though the line is "Hollywood Courts," it's clearly pronounced "Hollywood Cole" in the song, so that's what we hollered. And he sighed and let us have our fun messing with him, and we laughed and bounced, as we always have.

"That's just my interpretation of the situation."

89. They Don't Care About Us - Michael Jackson (1995)

I got this compliment fairly recently but it's definitely up there in the pantheon of "Best Compliments I've Ever Received" - my significant other (at the time of writing) told me she thought I was sexy because I reminded her of Michael Jackson in this song's music video. The long hair, the goofy dancing, the open button-down. Now, is she a biased source? Yes. Is it still a hell of a compliment? Literally absolutely. The man is leading like the entire country of Brazil in this music video and he's dancing around being sexy as hell to an amazing drum beat. It's a great song and it's a great compliment to receive. And I'll probably never be able to think of M.J. and this song the same way again. But, that's okay.

"Some things in life they just don't wanna see. But if Martin Luther was livin', he wouldn't let this be!"

88. Work Work - clipping. (2014)

This is the calling card for my college friend group. We have spent countless nights in the car or in our rooms or bending over a pool table rehearsing our lines and parts to this song. If you shout "Stop!" with six or seven of us in the room, you'll hear back a chorus, half of us shouting, "Red lights in the distance" and the other half shouting, "Whoop! Whoop!" If you play pool with us, you'll inevitably hear, "Live till you get it," with someone else responding, "Get it in." These are the small bits and pieces we've lifted from this song and adapted into our everyday lives to bring us closer together. Now, it isn't a song about bringing people closer together (not at all), and yet it has certainly become the litmus test for me and my original college friends. And the fact that we all still pass that test makes me so very happy.

"Stop! Red lights in the distance! (Whoop! Whoop!) You never been to that district they reference."

87. Fuckin' Problems - A$AP Rocky, feat. Drake, 2 Chainz, & Kendrick Lamar (2012)

I'm not even going to fact-check this, but I'm pretty sure this song is in one of the Hangover movies, because that's the only place I can imagine my dad found this song. And believe me, my dad knows this song. I will never forget the time he was driving my brother and I back to our house and he was playing his music, as he almost always does. Now, my father only listens to hard-house, that really intense club music from the '90s, the godfather of dub-step. (It's also a music genre I love very dearly. I probably know hundreds of hard-house songs beat for beat but could never tell you their names. It was a huge part of my childhood music development.)

But all of a sudden the loud bass thumping in the car wasn't the normal one produced by D.J.s spinning records; it was the beginning of this song. Next thing I knew 2 Chainz was cursing up a storm and the song was blasting in all speakers. (Now don't get me wrong. I already knew every word to this song. I was just shocked it was playing in this particular car.) Luke and I looked at our dad like "what the hell is this" and he proceeded to rap the whole song out. To be fair, that probably didn't happen. It was probably only the chorus or something. But I remember it as the whole song. My point is it was such a wildly playful deviation from my father's normal self I can't help but return to that shocking moment every time I hear the bass in this song kick in. 

"Yeah, I like to fuck, I got a fuckin' problem."

86. Wouldn't It Be Nice - The Beach Boys (1966)

It's so long ago it all feels like a dream, but there was an arts center my mom sent my brother and I one summer. This arts center had painting and coloring and playing outdoors, but what I remember above all else was doing short, easy theater games behind stage. The counselors would spread all the little kids out and then we would play games on this hard wood floor, artificially lit from the sides. I was young, really young, and I could probably find out more about this place if I wanted to. But I don't because it would ruin the nostalgia of it. It would tarnish the memory.

On this hard wood floor, while we played these games, the counselors would play a CD. And what I remember most about this CD was the Beach Boys. It was the first time I'd ever really heard them. They played the normal, fun, campy ones: "Fun Fun Fun" and "Surfin' USA." But what I remember the most was "Wouldn't It Be Nice." I don't know why. I just remember it. And I long for it. I long for those simpler times, before I grew up and shit got hard.

"Maybe if we think and wish and hope and pray it might come true. Baby then there wouldn't be a single thing we couldn't do."

85. Wild Horses - The Rolling Stones (1971)

This song reminds me so profoundly of Bojack Horseman, a show I could rave about for eons. They have so much in common, beyond the horse-factor. They're both mournful. They're both darkly looking towards the future. They'll both make you cry. Honestly, this isn't a memory. This isn't a moment from my life. This song, this show, both represent what life is truly about - perseverance. 

"I know I dreamed you a sin and a lie. I have my freedom, but I don't have much time. Faith has been broken. Tears must be cried. Let's do some living after we die."

84. Nikes - Frank Ocean (2016)

When I was recovering from my first break-up, a three year relationship that had become so addictive and toxic it was almost life ending, I fell at the feet of Frank Ocean. I'd heard Ocean before, of course, but when you're down and you can't find the words - he takes on a whole new life. His voice is magic and his words are poetry. I listened to his albums on repeat in the shower, and when I would get out I would write song titles in the steam on the mirror. Reminders for my later self when I inevitably felt bad and took a hot shower that those were songs that would make me feel better. "Nikes" is one of those songs. I'm so thankful for it, and I'm so thankful for Frank Ocean.

"We'll let you guys prophesy. We gon' see the future first. Living so that last night feels like a past life."

83. Straight Outta Compton - N.W.A. (1988)

The biopic Straight Outta Compton released on the day of my 18th birthday, and as one does, I went and saw the first screening of it at Atlantic Station that night. For anyone that hasn't seen the movie - see it. It's a brilliant depiction of 1980's race tensions, with motifs and stories that are still very relevant today. It's also a fantastic story of how these five young black men made what they could out of their lives in an era and city trying to stop them from doing that. The movie is ridiculously powerful, regardless of your personal music taste. 

I'll never forget sitting in the third row (every seat was filled) and looking up and down the theater rows during the credits, realizing my family was the only white family in the theater. It was a profound moment, because while the movie isn't about white people, white culture, or white struggles - it is wildly important for white people to witness and understand the stories of people of color and their culture. Not to take it but to take it in. And the next week, when the box office numbers were in, nine of the top ten theaters the film was most seen at opening weekend were in Compton. But the number one spot was held by Atlantic Station, Atlanta.

"Feel a little gust of wind and I'm jetting. But leave a memory no one will be forgetting."

82. Piece of My Heart - Janis Joplin (1968)

It was summertime (I think that's right) and I was between my final years of high school (I also think that's right), and I was sitting on my couch, waiting for my mother to finish "showering." I say showering with air quotes because this was one of the times when our gas, for whatever reason, was off. Or out. Or whatever happened. All I remember is we couldn't use the stove and we had no hot water. And instead of taking cold showers, we heated up bowls of water in the microwave and then used them to rinse and bathe ourselves in the shower. (You know, the more I think about that the more it begins to sound like something you would do during the winter rather than the summer.)

Regardless of when it was, while my mom was "showering" I was watching CNN's documentary series The Sixties, and the episode was covering music of that era. And they showed Janis Joplin performing at Woodstock (again... I think) playing this song. I already loved the song, knew all of the words, but to see the footage of that performance was so mesmerizing it etched the rest of that day into my brain.

"Have another piece of my heart now, baby. Well you know you got it, if it makes you feel good. Oh, yes indeed."

81. Fuck Up Some Commas - Future (2014)

This song is one of my guaranteed turn-ups. When I'm joking around with people and need to get super hype, I put on this song. When my debate team and I would win (yet another) tournament, we would put on this song. When I need to get rid of some energy for literally any purpose, I put on this song. I'm pretty sure this is the only song I've ever put on in the car with my brother that he's actually stopped what he's saying and hollered, "Oh yeah, we gotta turn this up!" That's such a rare level of hype. (Also, shout out to the time Luke and I saw Future perform this song live and all of a sudden thousands of dollars, cash, began falling from the ceiling of the amphitheater - that was dope as fuck.)

"I'm fucking with shorty. I'm loving the way that she fuckin' me, yeah. Give no fucks, yeah. We don't give no fucks, yeah."

80. Good Vibrations - The Beach Boys (1966)

This was the song that truly led me to discover the Beach Boys, the summer between 7th and 8th grade (this date I am sure of). I remember sitting on the loveseat in what was slowly becoming my family's sweatshop. I had headphones in, the older, classic Apple headphones, and this song was playing on repeat. I remember feeling the warm sunshine coming the window and the feeling of relaxation. I didn't have to do anything. I just had to listen. And that's a really perfect feeling.

"Gotta keep those lovin' good vibrations a-happenin' with her."

79. In Bloom - Nirvana (1992)

Rock Band was an incredible game (and Guitar Hero was even more so, but we'll get to that later). It  shaped my music taste and gave me the first taste for drumming, something I took on for many years and still would like to return to at some point in the future. And the crown jewel of that game, at least for me, was this song. I would go absolutely wild playing this song, and I would want to replay it over and over again. (My friends and brother kind of hated that. It's also really not a suitable song for children.) "In Bloom" will still make me wild to this day. I guess I've always had a taste for the dark and crazy. Old habits, huh.

"He's the one who likes all our pretty songs. And he likes to sing along and he likes to shoot his gun. But he knows not what it means, knows not what it means when I say..."

78. Ghost Town - Kanye West, feat. PARTYNEXTDOOR, Kid Cudi, & 070 Shake (2018)

Ah. I'm a stickler for form. (Compulsively, really.) Every song on this list has had significance to me for at least a year, most of them for many years. Only with time can you accurately assess how much a song means to you, where it ranks on your list. That eliminates recency bias, supposedly. So that's my rule, my form, for every song on this list - except this one.

When I heard this song for the first time, the night it came out earlier this summer, it felt like I already knew it. I'm not even gonna lie, I cried when I heard it, because it's nostalgic and mournful. It perfectly encapsulates a lifetime of feelings, of regret, without actively being depressing. It's a cry for help in a world where no one can help. So the artists, each of them, resolves to just let that be. They let go and accept what they cannot change, while mourning what they didn't. So that's what I'm going to do too. Not mourn what I didn't change (although I do that as well), but let go of my form and accept that this song is solidly in my top 100 and probably always will be. 

"Woah, once again I am a child. I let go of everything that I know. Yeah, of everything that I know. And nothing hurts anymore. I feel kinda free. We're still the kids we used to be. I put my hand on the stove to see if I still bleed. And nothing hurts anymore, I feel kinda free."

77. Just Like Us - Rae Sremmurd (2016)

This is my winter Rae Sremmurd song. I can't even recall how many countless times I've trudged around my college campus, kicking up snow as I walk, listening to this song. In those moments, whether I'm happy or sad or just plain cold, I feel at peace. I feel like everyone is going through this. I feel like she is going through this. Not any specific she, just she. Whoever she is that Swae and Slim are singing about. I'm less cold in those moments, and more than that, I'm less alone.

"She said, 'I can't slow down if I wanted to.' We live for this shit. We truly do. I know you do. Oh, I know you do. I know you do too. Cause you're just like us."

76. Welcome to the Jungle - Guns N' Roses (1987)

I am absolute maniac on this song on Guitar Hero, the beloved early 2000s game that introduced metal and heavy rock to an entire generation (or two). This song, much like "In Bloom," was a staple of my childhood, and it still is such an important song to me. While I'll always cherish my car rides with Raini where we blast Gun N' Roses, especially this song, the memory that comes to mind when I hear this song really is of Guitar Hero. I'm sitting on my bedroom floor at my dad's house, without the guitar that actually comes with the video game, but instead playing this song on a regular Play Station 2 controller, mashing the buttons and triggers, making the game significantly harder than it needs to be. But I remember mastering it, and I'm pretty sure if my life were on the line to play this song perfectly using a PS2 controller, I could do it. 

"And when you're high you never, ever want to come down."

75. Forever - Drake, Kanye West, Lil Wayne, & Eminem (2009)

"Forever," the first rap song I ever fell in love with. I remember sitting on the floor at the foot of my bed, using my mom's old work laptop, watching the music video for this song over and over again, trying to memorize every beat, every line. It was incredible - watching four artists, arguably all at their peaks (or at least near them), go bar for bar over a beat that reminded me so much of my father's hard-house. That twelve year old me did memorize every beat and every lyric and he still has them all memorized to this day. This song was a very early gateway on my road to loving hip-hop. And because I discovered rock n' roll the next year, that road was put off for a good few years. But during those years this was still the song I came back to, and in the long run I think it was a pretty good introduction to such an amazing genre of music. 

"Life is such a fuckin' roller coaster, then it drops. But what should I scream for? This is my theme park."

74. Love On Top - Beyoncé (2011)

There's this brief, elusive moment when you're falling in love where all you want to do is dance when you look at the person you're head over heels for. Sometimes it happens in a dance hall, behind a piano. Sometimes it happens when you're packed in the back of a Prius. But you dance. You dance and your heart flutters and for a moment everything around you stops. You're just there in the moment with the music and with your love. That's such a beautiful moment. You have your whole life ahead of you. You have all of that love ahead of you. The song has only just begun.

"Come on, baby, it's you! You're the one that gives your all. You're the one I always call. When I need you, make everything stop. Finally, you put my love on top!"

73. Hold Me Tight - The Beatles (1963)

I'm a sucker for good love songs. Like a huge sucker for them. I remember dancing around my home's make-shift sewing shop listening to this song in middle school. I was completely unaware of what it felt like to be held tightly by the woman you love, but I knew it was something I wanted. In the years to come I would listen to this song once I did know that feeling, and its magic was never lost on me. I've devoted much of the jewelry I have worn to being held by my partners: rings, anklets, bracelets, etc. There's something so reassuring about being embraced, constantly, by the person that loves you and the Beatles knew that.

"Feels so right now, hold me tight. Let me going on loving you, tonight, tonight. Making love to only you."

72. Hey Mama - Kanye West (2005)

I'm a mama's boy, through and through. This isn't even a specific memory (though many of these aren't) - it's just a feeling. It's an intense feeling of love, of gratitude, of peace and kinship. I don't always get along with my mama. God knows there have been times in the past when I've seriously jeopardized my relationship with her, and God knows I'm not the best at keeping in touch with her. (In this case, God is probably my mother.) She gave everything up to have me and my brother. She made a life where none was necessarily given. Every day I am inspired by her story, by her bravery, and dedication to us. There's not even words to describe how important she is to me. She once told me, not that long ago, that when she found out she was pregnant with me that one of the reasons, one of the primary reasons, she wanted to keep me was to give her life purpose. If that isn't stone-cold dedication, stone-cold love, I don't know what is. Thank you mama. Thank you, thank you, thank you. I love you. 

"Hey Mama. I wanna scream so loud for you, cause I'm so proud of you. Let me tell you what I'm about to do. You know I love you so. I never let you go. Wrote this song just so you know no matter where you go our love is true."

71. Call Ticketron - Run the Jewels (2016)

This is one of my angry songs! If I've got headphones in, if there's a scary look in my eye, it's because I'm listening to this song. I only hear the beats. I only see the words. I'm not to be fucked with when I'm listening to this song. When I put this on, it's momentarily my favorite song. It pulsates through my body. It takes control of whatever anger is hanging on in my head and it commands it to just be. Don't act out. Just stay and listen and Run the Jewels.

"Not a raper or a taker, bonafide heartbreaker. Hit her once, hit her twice, then tell her see ya later. Got head, watch Vice at her home in Decatur."

70. Whole Lotta Love - Led Zeppelin (1969)

In high school, one of my favorite times of the day (though it was an increasingly rare moment) was sitting on the bus after school while it was still parked at the school. Just going out and sitting there, waiting, waiting for people to get on, for the other buses to move, for my school day to be over, so I could go home. And while that sounds very odd, I know, that interim was one of my favorite times of the day. I listened to a lot of music in that interim. I could usually fit three songs or so into the period, and for some reason, I have a distinct memory of listening to this song more than any in that bus lane. I guess it was just the perfect way to begin unwinding after the day was over. It was the perfect way to ease myself back into my own personal, home life. Whenever I hear this song, it brings me back to that bus lane. Sitting on hot faux-leather seats, unwinding from school, gearing up to be home, waiting, waiting. 

"All the good times, baby, I've been misusing. Way, way down inside, I'm going to give you my love. I'm going to give every inch of my love. Gonna give you my love!"

69. I Am The Walrus - The Beatles (1967)

For the brief time I had a desktop in my room (in the middle of middle school), this was like my go-to song. I would just play it on Youtube, over and over again. It was unlike anything I'd ever heard before. It was weird, like actively weird as hell. I made Luke listen to it and he hated it. Right off the bat, he was like, "I don't like the Beatles. They make weird drug music." And I was like, "Yeah. It rocks." I know for a fact that we didn't move the computer out of my room for this reason, but I'm going to believe that we moved the PC because it was unhealthy how much I was listening to this song at the age of 13. 

"Man, you've been a naughty boy, you let your face grow long."

68. Ends - Everlast (1998)

I've done a lot of stupid shit in my life. A lot of nights sneaking out of houses through windows, out of hotels through fire exits, out of trouble through more trouble. I've been thrown in the back of cop cars and spent nights in telephone booths. I have lost a ridiculous number of friends to mental illness and, many more, to drug addiction. There have been more than a few periods in my life where I've lost myself to the same. I've cheated. I've lied. I've stolen. I've done things for a high I can barely wrap my head around to this day. I have dodged both figurative and literal bullets. Life is a scary fucking place when you're not trying to live it. But I'm here now, and I'm glad I'm here. So I send out a little prayer that I'll be here tomorrow, that those that I haven't lost will be here tomorrow, and that that those I have lost have found peace, if not in this world, than the next. 

"Some people will rob their mother, for the ends. Rats snitch on one another, for the ends. And sometimes kids get murdered, for the ends."

67. In the Air Tonight - Phil Collins (1981)

Literally everybody in America knows this song. Like everybody. I have never met a person that doesn't know the exact moment the world's greatest drum solo comes in. This song somehow transcends race, sex, gender orientation, class, everything. Everyone knows this song, and that's particularly beautiful. It's such a gentle song but it can rile up a whole group of people, and that's strangely beautiful. This song is just beautiful and it's so much fun to love it and know it and have it, as a person and, in a larger sense, as a world. (Woah. I know I'm the only person who feels this way about this song. Get off my back.)

"Well, the hurt doesn't show; but the pain still grows. It's no stranger to you or me..."

66. Buffalo Soldier - Bob Marley & the Wailers (1983)

This is probably one of the first political/historical songs I ever fell in love with, if not the first. I'd never heard music that incorporated history into its story before this song. Bob Marley wasn't just singing about his own identity, he was singing about the identities of thousands of Jamaicans. He was telling a story about how black people were taken from his island (and all over the Caribbean) and sent on to the North American continent to fight wars for white Americans. To convey such an important political history through song was and still is unbelievable to me. This song was like my Hamilton before Hamilton was my Hamilton. (Sidenote: No Hamilton songs are on this list because they'd constitute like a third of the list and that's ridiculous, but otherwise this is a pretty accurate Top 100). Anyway, I love "Buffalo Soldier," and more so, I love the message this type of music conveys. 

"If you know your history, then you would know where you're coming from."

65. I Heard It Through the Grapevine - Creedence Clearwater Revival (1970)

So, I know there's nothing more ridiculous than "I Heard It Through the Grapevine" being on this list and it not being the version by Marvin Gaye. And if this were a list of the best 100 songs period (of which it is not) and not a list of my top 100 favorite songs (of which it is), then it would be inexcusable to have CCR's version over Marvin Gaye's. But it's not that list, as has been firmly established. (And even if it were that list, this song wouldn't make it.) This song makes the favorite list because I used to walk home from middle school and before I had discovered Pink Floyd, this was the closest to jam band music I ever got. (Pink Floyd is not a jam band, obviously, but they have the longest instrumentals of any band I listen to regularly.) I prefer, even love, the ten minute version of this song where all four members of the band just play so intensely well together. I can't tell you how many times I closed my eyes while waiting to cross the street just listening to them go at it, and I was transported into a studio in 1970 watching them redefine a classic song. 

"You know that a man ain't supposed to cry. But these tears I can't hold inside. Losing you would end my life, you see. Cause you mean that much to me."

64. Rock 'N' Roll Suicide - David Bowie (1972)

I'm sure anyone who knew me well between the ages of 15 and 17 knew I never planned on living past 20. I don't mean my family members, who had (and still thankfully have) a very limited idea of what I was dealing with and doing to myself. I mean the people who saw the real me. The select few who were around me enough to know that I was not okay. I was not sober. I was not trying. To be clear, I tried to do well enough in school so that my mom wouldn't get on me or worry about me. I even tried to dabble in debate my sophomore year when I could stay lucid. I tried to do those things, with very limited success. But more than that, I was not trying. I didn't try to love myself. I didn't try to alleviate the pain I felt. I wasn't trying to die, but I certainly wasn't trying to live. All I was trying to do was get high, however I could, and stay low enough not to get caught. That was it.

To be honest, I don't know how I made it, nor why this song is on this list, but I think the answer lies somewhere in the middle. This song told of all that pain I felt, all the uselessness of life, but it told me those things from the other side. It told them to me from a place where the singer (Bowie playing Ziggy Stardust) hadn't exactly made it, but he had gotten there. And that really spoke to me, because for a long time, it felt like that was my best case scenario - that I would just end up being in the future. Not thriving, just barely surviving, but there. Luckily for me, I'm not Ziggy. I'm there, I got there, and I have more places I'm going to. Or at least, more places I'm finally trying to go to. 

"Oh no, love! You're not alone. No matter what or who you've been. No matter when or where you've seen. All the knives seem to lacerate your brain. I've had my share, I'll help you with the pain. You're not alone!"

63. When the Levee Breaks - Led Zeppelin (1971)

When I was in late middle school I had a drum set in my room. It was flush against the wall. I had to squeak behind the door, behind the high-hat, and then I barely had enough room to sit and pedal with my feet. It was so fantastic. I was never an exceptional drummer, but I did love having a drum set (despite the guilt I felt when I played so loudly in such a small house). And there were so many nights when I squeezed my way behind the bass drum, sat on my (really, really nice) stool and air drummed the living hell out of that drum set while this song blasted in my ears. This is by far my favorite drumming song. God, it's so good. And all those nights air drumming to it on repeat became my little after-hours secret, until about right now.

"All last night, sat on the levee and moaned, thinking bout my baby and my happy home."

62. Back to Black - Amy Winehouse (2006)

So, I have this fun thing I do called "Amy naps." If you're wondering if that means you nap and listen to Amy Winehouse, let me stop you right there - you're correct. I put on Back to Black, the album, and let it play all the way through in my headphones while I nap. It's less than 40 minutes long, which is like an ideal power-nap time, because you get a good recharge without going into deep, don't-wake-me-up sleep. I know, all this means is that most of the times I hear this song I'm unconscious. And while that may be true (I'd have to crunch the numbers big time), it certainly does not take anything away from this song (which is amazing, as is the album). I love this song to pieces, I love Amy to pieces, and I love my "Amy naps" to pieces. 

"We only said goodbye with words. I died a hundred times. You go back to her and I go back to..."

61. Banana Clipper - Run the Jewels, feat. Big Boi (2013)

I got really obsessed with this song many summers ago when I was with my dad's side of the family down in Panama City, Florida. I can't remember any particular reason why. It just happened. But I remember walking around the stuffy motel room listening to this song, going out onto the balcony to look out at the Gulf. I remember crowds and crowds of tourists, such as myself, flooding the parking lots of motels and hotels up and down the strip, the only strip Panama City, Florida is known for. I remember young teenagers hitting on each other awkwardly on the beach, hoping for a small fling, knowing they'd have to leave this little slice of "paradise" in a few days. I remember how the motel pool, out back between the parking lot and the beach, became a Crock-Pot of Southern accents. I remember mini golf and sand bars and late night card games. And I remember "Banana Clipper."

"We the old Atlanta, new Atlanta, future of the city."

60. Someone Like You - Adele (2011)

"I wish I could go back in time to one of those afternoons where I walked to your house after school and saw you bright-eyed, beaming under your red crown, ruffling your plaid skirt as you got out of your car. I wish I could go back and feel the warm air on my face and the heavy weight of, not my, but your backpack on my back as I held your hand and walked you up your driveway. I wish I could go back to that instant and just stand there, momentarily. I wish I could go back to that time and, for just a moment, stop and stare at your beautiful face as you turn back towards me and ask me why I'm stopped. If I could just take in that moment one last time. If I could take in that love from you just one last time. I think that's all I'd ever need." -Todd, in the days following the final break-up with his first love on their three year anniversary.

"Nothing compares, no worries or cares, regrets and mistakes, they are memories made. Who would have known how bittersweet this would taste?"

59. Slide - Calvin Harris, feat. Frank Ocean & Migos (2017)

I was walking around my little bit of the Hampshire College farm. It was early fall, still warm out but the leaves had begun to turn. I was falling in love. It was so blissful. Frank Ocean was showing off his range in my ears, and then Offset came on to the track and delivered the best verse of his career. It was such a short and sweet moment - that moment where everything was simply happiness. And I was bouncing and I was happy. 

"I know you got a past. I got a past. That's in the back of us." 

58. Parade - Kevin Morby (2014)

I was walking around my little bit of the Hampshire College farm. It was early spring, still snowing out but some of the ice had begun to thaw. I was falling apart. It was so painful. Kevin Morby was wailing in my ears, and my left hand was bruised and bleeding all over. It was such a cold and miserable moment - that moment where everything was simply burning down. And I was bawling and I was not happy.

"If I were to die today, slaughtered in that masquerade. The last that you'd hear me say, 'Put my body on display in the parade.'"

57. Daddy Lessons - Beyoncé (2016)

Now, I'm no expert on country music, but I'm pretty sure this is the best country song of the last ten years. Like I can't guarantee it, because I don't listen to enough country music, but I'm 99% certain that even if I did listen to country I would still be right. Bey could do a whole country album and I would buy the hell out of it, just because I know she can kill it in this genre from this one song alone. I know this isn't a memory - it's just a miniature rant about how Queen B. literally destroyed the genre of country music - but that's okay. Every time I listen to this song I fall back in love with it. I need more of this. More, more, more. 

"My daddy warned me about men like you. He said, 'Baby girl, he's playing you. He's playing you.'"

56. Five Years - David Bowie (1972)

I could not move. The only thing I could move were my eyes, and they were fixed on the screen themselves. I was out of my mind, stoned on Trainwreck, staring with petrified eyes as I watched North by Northwest. It was my first class of the day. I did not know how I was going to get through the rest of them. But I didn't worry about that in the moment. I just sat and stared, as my mind raced around and around and around. There's only been one other time I've been so immersed in the reality of the thing I was watching (and I was even less sober then). I was in this movie. I was terrified. I was thrilled. I was seriously locked in and being taken for a ride, regardless of what I wanted. Thankfully, it was an outrageously good movie and an outrageously good high. And it was exactly five years ago.

"I think I saw you in an ice cream parlor drinking milkshakes, cold and long. Smiling and waving and looking so fine. Don't think you knew you were in this song. And it was cold and it rained, so I felt like an actor."

55. Cash Machine - DRAM (2016)

I've listened to this song in more states than any other song. Facts. This album (and song) came out during the fall of my freshman year of college. I was separated from my family, alone, for the first significant amount of time, and to see them I had to travel. Now, I love traveling but I hate getting there. Buses, trains, planes, they all stress me out. But this song, this whole album, really calms me down. It's fun. It makes me feel good. So whenever I travel, even really smooth, lazy traveling, I listen to this album. I've been from Massachusetts to Brooklyn to Philly to D.C. to Baltimore to Atlanta to Harlem in 4 days, and you better bet I listened to this song like no other. I was ridiculously stressed, and, man, DRAM really kept me sane. Thanks DRAM. 

"I'm in the sky like all the time and now it's no layover."

54. This Could Be Us - Rae Sremmurd (2015)

This is my warm Rae Sremmurd song. It doesn't have to be summer. It can be fall or spring. It just can't be snowing. This is the song I listen to when I'm walking around, the warm air brushing my face, waiting to fall in love. Of course, falling in love hasn't worked out in my favor all that much. But still, I listen and I wait. And I go nuts when I hear this song at parties, which it is always played at, because it's just so good to go nuts to. So yeah. I listen and I go nuts and I wait.

"Spin the bottle. Spin the fucking bottle. If you're the reason why it's empty, baby, spin the bottle."

53. Young Americans - David Bowie (1975)

Mod 31, my Hampshire College apartment, is my home. At least 6 months out the year it is or has been. It's so comfortable and perfect. My roommates became my family. Despite our disputes, of which there have been many, we are always there for each other. It's a rare community I've never really felt outside of my actual home. Whether we're playing Mario Kart together or hiding behind overturned furniture in a Nerf war (we are literal children), they are my family, and I would do anything for them. And this song, it's kind of that same way. It brings me back to Mod 31. It brings me back to my college home. On more than one occasion, we've danced around the living room, as Bowie blasted from the speaker wedged between the water pipe and the ceiling, just lingering in our youth, in our home, with our family. 

"Ain't there one damn song that can make me break down and cry?"

52. King Kunta - Kendrick Lamar (2015)

After getting off a train or a bus, I walk to work. I walk down the street from the Marta station. It's hot outside, oppressively hot. I carry my work shirt over my shoulder so I don't sweat through it as I walk. Every day I pass a side street as I make my way to Moreland, and the first house on this street is a pink one-story home. It looks a lot like a smaller version of the house from the cover of 2 Chainz's Pretty Girls Like Trap Music. And outside this house, every day, is a white Bronco (like O.J.'s) with blue lettering on the side advertising a nearby church. And every day I cross this street, studying the pink house, studying the white Bronco, carrying my shirt. There's no rhyme or reason. There's just ritual. Until one day I walk by listening to "King Kunta" and I realize that I walk down this street, past this pink house, past the white Christian Bronco, to the exact tempo of the song. My foot falls on every beat. And now there is no rhyme or reason, but there is ritual and there is rhythm.

"Straight from the bottom, this the belly of the beast. From a peasant to a prince to a motherfuckin' king."

51. 29 #Strafford APTS - Bon Iver (2016)

There are no words to describe this song. I had insomnia the night I first heard it. I was rolling, tossing around in my bed sheets, trying to find any way to fall asleep in a dorm room so far from home. I was scared and tired. It had been about a month since I'd left home and I didn't want to be here anymore. I was turning, over and over, searching for a solution in my bed, searching for a solution in my head. But I couldn't find one, no matter how hard I searched. So I put Bon Iver's new album on. And I heard this. And it wasn't the solution I was looking for, but it was a solution nonetheless.

"Fold the map and mend the gap. And I tow the word companion. And I make my self escape."

50. Futura Free - Frank Ocean (2016)

So, first a warning: this is the second half of the list and, as Drake once said, "the second act is tragic." That being said, this is the second act - my favorite fifty. My tragic fifty.

"Futura Free," the perfect ending song. It's just a story. A life story (so far) in a song. It's this list in a song. And I love that. I love this fucking song. This isn't a memory. This isn't even a real feeling. It's a brief transition, an ending from the list of my fifty "favorite" songs to the list of my favorite fifty songs. These are the actual favorites. They are more than my "favorites." They sit atop another pedestal. It is a rarefied selection of songs that will always mean more to me than pretty much anything else. And this song is their gate-keeper. So that's what this song means to me. It means that a song has entered, I have entered, another realm of brilliance, love, and respect.

"I'm just a guy, I'm not a god. Sometimes I feel like I'm a god but I'm not a god. If I was I don't know which heaven would have me, mama." 

49. Revolution - The Beatles (1968)

I don't remember when I fell in love with musicals. I don't think it was seeing them at a young age (though that is certainly more poetic). I think it was probably around the time I was introduced to Moulin Rouge! and Across the Universe. (Fun aside - the first time I ever watched Moulin Rouge! I was nursing my right hand in a tub of ice water because I'd just blown off the side of my thumb with a firecracker. It was the 4th. I'm a little careless. Great movie but my hand hurt like sin.) Anyway, I was already well in love with the Beatles when I saw Across the Universe, so it was less an introduction to their music and more of a honeymoon. And what a honeymoon at that! I love that movie. They do so many fantastic versions of Beatles' songs. This being said, for some reason, the one that always comes to mind first when I think of the film is "Revolution." It's not the rooftop version of "All You Need is Love" or the moving version of "Let It Be." No, it's the wildly destructive depiction of "Revolution." Maybe it's because the film's depiction reminds me so strongly of myself or maybe it's because it looks like how I imagine the Beatles wanted the song to look like. I don't know why, but I do know it's one of the first moments I really fell in love with a musical. (And also that time I iced my way through Moulin Rouge!).

"But if you want money for people with minds that hate. All I can tell you is brother you have to wait."

48. You've Got the Love - Florence + The Machine (2009)

As I get closer to the bottom of this list, as I get further into this top fifty, I may as well become increasingly honest about my life and my memories. What's the point of this otherwise? Catharsis and biography are only as effective as they are honest. So, allow me a moment of unfiltered honesty. Anyone who knows me well, knows I went through a messy, messy seven month break-up with my first partner. And when it was all said and done, when she and I finally cut each other off, I realized something important: I didn't love myself. I had never loved myself. For years I had been substituting self-love for drugs and then for her love. I assume this isn't a revolutionary realization for anyone who's dealt with, lived with, or loved an addict before, but it's a pretty big fucking realization when you are one. I came to realize that there is no good, no safe, substitute for self-love. So, instead of loving drugs, I tried to show myself some love. I've been pretty successful. As of writing this, I'm running up on two years of sobriety. And instead of showering her in love, I tried showering myself. That's been a steeper learning curve. Because it's easy to love someone else, but it feels damn near impossible to love myself. Yet I try, every single day. Because there are no more substitutes. 

"Time after time, I think it's just no good. Cause sooner or later in life, the things you love, you lose. But you've got the love I need to see me through."

47. Sympathy for the Devil - The Rolling Stones (1969)

This has been my favorite Rolling Stones' song for so long (like for about as long as I can remember even listening to the Rolling Stones). When I was in high school I had the privilege of going to see the Rolling Stones perform live in Atlanta. Of course, it was a stadium concert, because they're the Rolling Stones. They aren't playing small venues. Anyway, I was loving the show - just absolutely loving it - and then about half way through the show, out walks Mick Jagger in a red boa and high heels, coming through the smoke, and they start to play this song. It was surreal. Here I was actually watching some of my idols perform one of my all time favorite songs decades after its release. And it was one hell of a performance - the smoke, the fire, the costume, all of it. It was more than lucky to see them perform it live, it was an honor.

"So if you meet me have some courtesy, have some sympathy, and some taste. Use all your well-learned politesse or I'll lay your soul to waste." 

46. White Flag - Dido (2003)

Here's a trope: I love too hard. Yeah. It's just a sad and cliched truth. I love far too hard. And even though as I write this I'm alone for the first time in over four years, I still love too hard. There isn't a person I have loved before that I don't still love. I would take a bullet for all of them. But they don't know that. Because the cruel irony of love is that when it's all said and done, it's our job to move on. But when you love too hard you kind of just have to fake it. Or maybe you have to fake it regardless of how you love. I don't know. But I know that, as someone who loves too hard, the hardest part of breaking up is listening to my head and not my heart. And I know that's what's best for my ex-partners. I know it's for the best that I pretend I don't love too hard, that I listen to my head. But that doesn't mean it's how I truly feel. It just means I know what I need to do to protect you.

"And when we meet, which I'm sure we will, all that was there will be there still. I'll let it pass and hold my tongue. And you will think that I've moved on..."

45. Learning to Fly - Pink Floyd (1987)

This is my cold morning song. My waking up in an unknown attic song. This is my wandering down the center of the road in the middle of the night song. Staring into the red lights above song. Staring down a pipe to the red flame at the end song. This is my long drags on a cigarette atop a stone wall song. My wandering alone and momentarily terrified through an empty, abandoned basement of a neglected mental hospital song. This is my first shooting star as I lay wrapped in the arms of the man I love song. My goosebumps song. My hair stands on edge, my spine straightens, my pupils dilate song. This is my "I see dead people," the ghosts of Christmas-past, song. Yeah. My ghost song.

"There's no sensation to compare with this. Suspended animation, a state of bliss. Can't keep my mind from the circling sky. Tongue-tied and twisted, just an earth-bound misfit."

44. Street Lights - Kanye West (2008)

I want to tell a story. It's one of the most pivotal moments in my life and few people know about it. But it's an important story, so I'm going to tell it. Please bear with me.

It was a summer night and, for whatever reason, my mom and brother weren't at the house. They had been gone all weekend actually. So, naturally, the teenage addict that I was, I invited my best friend over to my place and we got royally fucked up. We went out at some ungodly hour on a wild concoction of uppers and just decided to roam the streets. We had no plan, and besides guessing, I actually have no real recollection of how I got to where this story really begins. That being said, we found our way to this little road called Ponce. Now, if you're from Atlanta you know Ponce de Leon is not actually a little road; it's one of the main arteries of the city. And it's where my life changed.

So I decided, though I suppose it was mostly the *bleeped out drug* doing the thinking, that the middle of Ponce was an ideal spot and that the middle of the night was an ideal time to light a military grade smoke bomb (one of those that last like fifteen minutes and make it look like the world is ending). So I did that. While my best friend stood ten feet away on the sidewalk, I lit a smoke bomb in the middle of Ponce de Leon Avenue, under the street lights and trees of summertime. It only took it a few seconds before the whole road was completely covered in smoke, and I remember kind of freaking out as I made my way back to the sidewalk. And I swear to God, the first set of headlights to come down the road, moments before I could make it to the curb, were accompanied by the quick flash of blue lights above them.

So here I was standing on the sidewalk, feet away from a crime, feet away from a threat to anyone on the road, with a lighter in my hand and enough drugs on me to send me away for quite some time. And my best friend was freaking out. He tried to ditch the weed he had on him. I don't remember if he completely did or not. I know that I didn't try to ditch anything. I just stood there, lighter in my hand, as this police car rolled to a stop in front of me.

What happened next is blurred in my memory. From fear, from the drugs, from astonishment. I remember being asked to sit in the back of this officer's car while he talked to me. I did. I sat there. I didn't say much. (There's a surprise.) My friend stood a few feet away from the officer as he talked to both of us. He didn't search either of us. We were fucked up, there was no doubt about that, but he didn't search us. We waited for the smoke to clear. Fifteen minutes or so. And then he told us something to the effect of, "If you want to do this shit - do it in a parking lot. And don't ever let me see you two out here again. Ever."

And that was it. We walked. My memory goes blank again after that. Those fifteen minutes I remember because of the sheer terror I felt sitting in the back of that cop car thinking about how I was going to tell my mom what I had done with my one phone call. The sheer terror of knowing it was all over. I should've done better. I should've gotten better. But that call never happened. I was never arrested. He let us walk. I don't know who he was. I don't even remember his face, but he let us walk.

And that walk, under those street lights, saved my life. I was given another chance at life, probably for no other reason than that I was a white man and this officer didn't want to go through the trouble of arresting two teenagers. But, hey, I'm not complaining. I'm so beyond grateful. Second chances are not a given. They are the exception, an exception so rarely given, they're a slap in the face when they come. So, I took that second chance, and while I nearly squandered it many times, I did my best with it. That officer let me walk, so I walked. I walked under those streetlights. I walked, and when I got far enough away, I stopped to look back. And there was nothing there for me. So I kept walking.

"Seems like street lights, glowing, happen to be just like moments passing in front of me. So I hopped in the cab and I paid my fare. See I know my destination, but I'm just not there."

43. Blowin' in the Wind - Bob Dylan (1963)

One of the best debate cases I ever wrote was on a topic about the federal government paying reparations to African Americans. It was the fall of my senior year of high school, and I already had three years of debate under my belt. I knew how to write a damn good debate case. The problem was that my experience taught me that the best cases I wrote were when I wrote for the side I didn't personally agree with. So I thought and I schemed and I tore my hair out looking for a way to write a case against the payment of reparations. Eventually, I did find a way to write this case. And as I recall, my debate partner, Bailey, and I used it every round for a whole tournament. That ended up being seven rounds. So, for seven rounds in a row Bailey and I found ourselves advocating for the refusal of reparations to African Americans. There were rounds we debated black folks. There were rounds we were judged by black folks. There was even a round where we debated a black duo, with a black judge. But there wasn't a single round of that tournament that we lost.

And if you're wondering how we swept a tournament negating the premise that the federal government should pay reparations to African Americans, I'll let you in on the secret of my case. It's very simple. Be the bigger person. The crux of my case, of what became my beliefs over those months, was not that reparations aren't owed, it's that we owe more. When my opponents would bring up statistics and examples of discrimination and oppression of black communities, I would agree with them and give more statistics, more examples of continued discrimination and oppression. I allowed my opponents to define reparations, which they always defined as for past injustices, and then I pressured them to tell me why we shouldn't combat current injustice. By the end of the round, it came down to this: reparations should be given after the playing field has been made level. To give reparations now, when black folks are being gunned down in the streets, marginalized educationally and economically, and incarcerated at ungodly rates, is to pretend that the playing field has already been made even. Reparations are owed, without a shadow of doubt in my mind, but they should not be paid as a tactic to sweep current injustice under the rug and pretend that the past has stayed in the past. That was what we said. Our opponents offered sympathy as a consolation prize, and we offered passion for a solution. 

And that experience humbled me, because it was one of the first times I stopped ramming my head against a rigid ideology (even one I carried) and found that there is nuance in even the most brutal of dilemmas. More than nuance, there's empathy. There's an opportunity to be the bigger person.

"How many years can some people exist before they're allowed to be free? Yes, and how many times can a man turn his head and pretend that he just doesn't see? The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind. The answer is blowin' in the wind."

42. Hide in Your Shell - Supertramp (1974)

You know what's stupid? The fact that my high school didn't allow people to walk around with headphones in. That's so fucking stupid. I mean, I have long hair so I was rarely caught with headphones in, but the very idea of not allowing kids to listen to music between classes is incomprehensible to me. It recently occurred to me that I must come off as the most introverted person to people who don't know me or only know me very casually, because, while I'm extremely extroverted when I'm with people, I literally never go anywhere without headphones in my ears. I am always listening to music or podcasts. If I take my headphones out for you, you're important to me. Often I'll leave them in my ears, even when no music is playing, just because. I swear I'm not really that introverted. It's just that music is perfect. It is. It's the most perfect art form. If you don't listen to music, then I don't really fuck with you. And if you don't allow your students to listen to music between classes, then you're really fucking stupid. Stop disrupting art and let people be happy. 

"I, as a boy, I believed the single cure for pain was love. How would it be if you could see the world through my eyes? Too frightening, the fire's becoming colder. Too beautiful, to think you're getting older. You're looking for someone to give an answer."

41. Dream On - Aerosmith (1973)

So, this is my writer's block. After nearly sixty entries, this song is the one I hit my writer's block on. That's not to say I've been writing these non-stop. Of course not. There have been many, many long breaks, but I always know what I want to write for the song when I come to it. I know the memory. I know the feeling. I know the story. Sometimes they're long (see "Street Lights"). Sometimes they're really quite short. I used all the words I wanted to use for that story (see "Good Vibrations"). The plan was not for each of these to get longer necessarily, though it does feel like with each song after the half-way mark I have more to tell, more that I need to tell. But not for this song. I simply cannot find the memory. I can't find the story.

There's probably a story in here about dreams. There's likely a story about blasting this song with friends. Without a shadow of a doubt, there is a story about Haley somewhere in here. A story about a two-floor piece of art in Cabbagetown, Atlanta, where I sat surrounded by junk and drums, while a group of small dogs scampered around, toenails clicking on the hard wood floors. There's probably a story there. This song is probably in that story. But right now, I can't find it. Because this is my block.

"Half my life's in books' written pages. Lived and learned from fools and from sages. You know it's true. All the things come back to you." 

40. Open Book - Gnarls Barkley (2008)

Two years ago, I made a decision that would change my life. Actually, I made a few. On New Year's Eve, as the calendar rolled from 2016 to 2017, I decided to kill myself. Obviously, I didn't succeed because here I still am, but it's a choice I made nonetheless. But, I won't get into that story. It's a painful one, a lucky one too, but it's not a story for here. Not right now. It's only important to this story because it led me to make another decision. As I lay on the ground, drunk, high, and locked away from any windows, I decided I didn't want to die. I took a long look at the past few months, the past few years, and realized that killing myself was not the solution to ending the pain I wrought on so many people I loved. To kill myself would be selfish. It would only free myself from the pain I was (at least partially) responsible for creating. So, I decided I didn't want to die. I didn't want to live, don't get me wrong. I certainly didn't want to live. It was many, many months before I felt that desire, but, in that moment, on that floor, I realized I didn't want to die. And that was something.

It was more than something, actually; it was everything. Because it helped me realize that I didn't want to feel like this anymore. I didn't want to feel out of control. I didn't want to feel like I wanted to die, if that makes sense. And the only way to not feel like that anymore was to actually get sober. I decided that I would sober up, I would see daylight once again, and then I'd stop using. Rock bottom hurts when you hit it. I guess I should've known that. But scraping yourself off the bottom is not easy. Putting down the bottle, kicking the drugs, that's one thing. But to actually maintain sobriety, that's entirely different. Sobriety and "being sober" are two different beasts. Anyone in recovery can tell you that. Sure, I could sober up. I could operate without drugs and alcohol fine. But, I didn't have sobriety. That took work. That took a hard look at myself. That took goddamn soul searching.

And in searching my soul, I realized that killing myself was probably just the next logical step up from doing drugs for me. Because I don't like being high (on much of anything, though the drug of choice wavers). I certainly don't like being drunk. What I liked was being out of control. I was looking for a way to run away from my problems, from the pain I was causing myself and others, from my responsibility. And what's a more final form of running away than suicide? 

In the weeks following that suicide attempt, following my decision to get sober and "not die," I got honest with myself and I found a lot of lies. Lies to other people, sure, but mostly lies to myself. So, I decided one last thing - to tell the truth. And that's what changed my life. At the time of writing this, it's been almost two years since I tried to kill myself. Two years of sobriety. I haven't even had a puff of a cigarette. (God knows I want one though.) But, often forgotten about, it's been two years of telling the truth. I'm not talking about "making amends." I'm talking about wearing my heart on my sleeve, admitting to the damage I've done to myself and others, taking some fucking responsibility. And that's the difference between being sober and sobriety. Being sober means living without drugs. Sobriety means living with yourself.

"Karma, fight me! Come on, strike me! I am an open book! An open book!" 

39. Cocoa Butter Kisses - Chance the Rapper, feat. Vic Mensa & Twista (2013)

When I was in high school there was literally nothing more terrifying than getting caught with drugs by my mother. Like even the idea of it would send me spiraling with fear. Because I played really fast and loose with drugs and so did my friends, but my mama had none of it. If she even suspected that I was high, it was like a strip search. She was just as fast and loose about finding ways to catch me as I was finding ways to evade her. Now, it goes without saying, I lost more than I won. Not only is she smarter than me, she was operating sober. Basic reasoning will tell you, I wasn't. And, on top of that small disadvantage, she's my fucking mother. Mama always knows best. So, I'm using this song as a thread, a dedication if you will, to the ever-failing struggle that defined my adolescence. I present you with the Top 5 Moments in Mama and Todd's Drug War:

5. The first time I ever got caught using drugs. It was a pretty straight forward case. It was fall of my sophomore year, and I was on the bus, high as hell, when my mom texted me telling me that my best friend had just been caught smoking weed before school. Look, I was high. I don't remember a whole lot more than feeling profound fear. But I do remember thinking to myself, "Damn. He is so stupid. I am monumentally fucked. Well," and then I paused. I remember doing this. I paused in my thinking. I literally stopped thinking, looked out the window, went "pause," and then continued with this thought, "I might as well not let it ruin my high." Or something along those lines. The point is, I didn't worry because it would harsh my mellow, and I just dealt with it when I got sober. I don't remember much else. I remember having a gut-wrenching talk in the park that evening with mother, where (if I recall correctly) I successfully (for one of the only times) lied my way out of the situation. I think I might have bought myself like a few weeks, not much else. It's not a great story, but I will never forget that moment of terror when I thought my days of (simply) smoking weed were up, before I just willed myself calm. 

4. The time my mother pretended to be me to find out where I was hiding drugs. Yeah, so (shocker) I don't remember this one all that well. In fact, I don't remember it at all. My mom has given me all the details on this one, and according to her, the story goes like this: I was in trouble for something (probably drugs) and shut away in my room. She had my phone, cause, you know, I was in trouble (again, probably for drugs). And my best friend (the one from the last story) texted me about something. Anyway, long story short, she texted him back on my phone, pretending to be me, and he gave up information about drugs I had hidden in my backpack. Well, she went and checked. Of course, there were drugs there (and if I'm remembering the right incident, my pipe as well) and that was how she caught me. Then I was definitely in trouble for drugs. 

3. The time I passed a drug test high. Now, I've taken more drug tests than I can remember. With the gift of hindsight, it's actually really funny how many drug tests my mom bought. I'm fairly certain she got her first one at CVS, then (cause any good drug story has a road of escalation) she upped her game and got a bulk selection at Costco, and then (again, I'm only fairly certain) she just started getting them straight from the fucking warehouses China shipped them to. Cause she had so many of these things, and I know she was getting them by the box load because every now and then they'd be really inaccurate. Like the time I took a drug test high. I passed that shit. High. It remains one of the few times my mom ever got sloppy in trying to catch me and the only time I have ever believed there's a God. 

2. The last time I was sloppy. So, here's a true story. One of lies, drugs, and rats. It's basically The Departed, except it's stupider, moves in a linear fashion, and has no underlying metaphors or nuance. So it's not really like The Departed. But it could be. Kind of. Anyway, here's what happened. My drug dealer (my first one, but who's counting) texted me telling me he needed to move a lot of kush, real fast. He was offering a ton at a great price. I don't remember how much I paid, but it was next to nothing for quite a bit of weed. The problem was it was a really last minute decision on both of our parts, so we just decided he would drive to my house (which meant divulging my actual address to my drug dealer) and do the deal through his car window. Now, not only is the last time I was sloppy, it is by far the sloppiest I have ever been. So we did this deal, in broad daylight, basically in my fucking driveway, and I brought the weed inside and hid it in my stash box. Then, as any good teenage addict does, I went out front and called my best friend (same one) to brag about the great deal I'd just gotten. Now, while I was on the phone, my brother (who is a literal rat and who had also seen the whole deal go down - you know, obviously - in broad daylight) snuck into my room, found the weed, and sent a photo to my mother. I was still on the phone when she got home and (this is the best part) she let me finish my call! Like, I finished talking and then went inside to find her seething at the end of the hall. I didn't even have time to lie, though it wouldn't have done me much good. I just stood there, myself seething, knowing that the gig was finally up all because of my brother. (I'd just like to reiterate that my brother is a literal rat, not a metaphorical one like in The Departed, but like an actual, walking, talking rat.) And for all intents and purposes, the gig was up. My mom took everything I had and also something like eight or nine inches of my hair (not the six inches she claimed). And I learned my lesson and never did drugs again! The End. 

1. The brief overlap in time where I was still using and my mom had just begun to smoke weed, where we got high together and watched Planet Earth. Yeah, this happened. It was Thanksgiving break of my freshman year of college, just a month before I decided to get sober, and we straight up just packed a bowl on the back porch and then went inside to watch T.V. That's the whole story. I texted my best friend that night telling him what I was doing. I feel like this is obvious, but he was fucking floored. He couldn't believe it. Neither of us had envisioned a universe where my mother and I would sit down and bond over a pipe. But it happened. And it's the best, the best, moment in the many years of drug war between my mother and I. So, yeah. I don't remember much about that night. But I do remember passing the peace pipe back and forth with my mama, and that's just so goddamn beautiful. 

"Cigarettes on cigarettes, my mama think I stank. I got burn holes in my memories, my homies think it's dank. I miss my cocoa butter kisses. I think we all addicted."

38. Tears Dry On Their Own - Amy Winehouse (2006)

I was pacing the living room nervously when she arrived. Was this fleeting? Was this forever? I guess I'd know soon enough. She knocked on my door, her eyes splashing me with waves of familiarity as she watched me through the window. She was wearing a crown of dandelions. I, a crown of thorns. I made pasta while she read my little black book I've got some poems in. We danced. (Not to this song. To Francis Starlite.) We sat down on the couch, and she climbed into my lap. I held her. One hand on her thigh, the other around the small of her back. We talked. We laughed. I knew what we both wanted but weren't sure we could do. So instead we fell into a suspended silence. One of anticipation and longing. But we broke. We always did. We made love in the most familiar ways possible. Ways carved with experience. When it was over, we struggled to find our clothes, just as we always had. She slipped on her dress, pressing the wrinkles out with her hands. And as I pulled my shirt back on, I noticed her readjust the crown of dandelions to her head. Not a pedal lost. I walked her to her car. It was evening now, and the sun had ducked behind the tops of the trees. But she rolled her window down and I could see every inch of her face clearly, as clearly as the day I met her. We talked for a minute. I made a joke. She laughed, hands in her lap, not yet ready to grip the steering wheel in front of her. I leaned into the window and kissed her on the cheek. Then I thanked her. I thanked her for coming over, for the up's and the down's, for the three years we called ourselves "us." Then she left. I watched - heart in my hands, thorns around my head - as she drove into the sunset.

"I wish I could say no regrets and no emotional debts. Cause as we kiss goodbye the sun sets. So we are history. The shadow covers me. The sky above ablaze that only lovers see." 

37. Baby Blue - Action Bronson, feat. Chance the Rapper (2015)

This is the song that made me fall in love with Chance. There's no way around that. I saw the music video shortly after it came out in 2015, because it's a ridiculous video and Action Bronson is so easy to make fun of (though I love him too). But instead of simply making fun of the song and video, I actually fell in love with Chance's rhythm and flow. This was my Chance virginity song, and I don't care what you think about that. It didn't really make sense at the time. I was going on one full year in a committed relationship, so I wasn't hooking up with random people and I certainly had never gone through a break-up (which is the topic of Chance's verse). But still, I loved it. Now, looking back at it almost four years later, I still love it. Much like Chance's verse, this memory is simply short and sweet. It's one of the most important songs to grace my life and it rightfully belongs in my top forty.

 "I hope you happy. I hope you happy. I hope you ruined this shit for a reason. I hope you happy."

36. Alone / EA6 - 6lack (2016)

So, a quick explanation: This is a two-part, nine-minute song. The second part, EA6, held a special significance to me first in my life, and then many months later the first part, Alone, filled another spot. Therefore, in order to better preserve the feeling of the song and its role in my life, this is going to be two memories, cut and pasted into one story.

/

We'd just cut each other off. Three months of radio silence was the goal. It wasn't my idea, even though I proposed it. It was a plan being forced on to me by the people in my life who knew better than I did. And since we both trusted those people and their plan, we decided to do it despite not wanting to, despite really not wanting to. So, here I was, standing in the aftermath of a snow storm, using the cold to stop me from taking my fingers out of their gloves, taking my phone out of my pocket, and breaking radio silence. I missed her. I needed to talk to her. 

/

It'd been months since we talked. Radio silence had worked, more or less. We considered staying together one final time but decided, in the end, it would be for the best if we broke it off. So we did. We stayed friends for a few weeks before she cut me off. She stopped responding to my texts, she blocked me on social media. She went completely AWOL, and while I was confused and hurt at the time, I know now that it was for the best. So, here I was, sitting at dinner with my partners, enjoying their company, enjoying the love we all brought to the table, when I feel my phone buzz in my pocket. And it's her.

/

It shouldn't still be snowing. It shouldn't still be dark. It's the spring. No one warned me that spring is just a word in Massachusetts. Here, April is really still winter. Which made the silence before me seem impossible. Because when you can't see the earth, the flowers, the leaves, the birds, the life, then you begin to lose hope. How could I do what's for the "best" for me, if I didn't have hope?

/

I was curled up in a ball on his bed, still reeling from a simple text message. The man I loved was consoling me the best he could. He didn't understand why a one-word text was sending me into a panic attack, and I have to say, I can't blame him. I didn't understand it either. It was like seeing a ghost. She was supposed to be gone. Why'd she come back? Why now?

/ 

"No, you have to be strong." That's what I kept telling myself. "Even if you don't have hope, stay strong. This will work. You'll be able to talk with her again soon. Just don't text her and you'll be together soon." 

/

"You don't have to respond if you don't want to," he said. I knew that. He knew I knew that. That's why he said it. I was getting annoyed. I was panicking. I had a headache. I was just wishing she'd stayed buried. "Just don't text her and she'll disappear." That's what I kept telling myself.

/

"Soon" came and went. The snow melted. Massachusetts showed its spring for a few weeks, and suddenly I had hope. I could stay strong. I could get through this.

/

She didn't text me again. Not for many months, at least. Eventually her message faded from the front of my memory. I had other people to love. Other things to get through.

/ 

So, I did. I got through it.

/

"Contemplating on if I'm really as strong as I thought. Bitch, I might be. Quick to pull me down, but as much as I've seen, I can't fall. It's unlikely."

/

"Shit hard but you gotta try. If I can do it, you can do it too. Time to be a better guy."

35. Mr. Tambourine Man - Bob Dylan (1965)

We were all piled into J's Lexus, headed east on the interstate towards Martha's Vineyard. It was a few days before Halloween weekend our freshman year, and for no reason in particular, the four of us decided we needed to get away. We needed to leave. So we did. We went to Martha's Vineyard, Astrid's home and the island J has spent most of his summers. Colin and I had never been, but I think we both had more than enough problems back at school to run away from, so we said, "Sure. Why the hell not?" We ditched the Lexus in a driveway on Cape Cod and took the ferry over. Astrid's sister was waiting for us when we arrived. She was young, bright-eyed, and (much like her older sister) far too eager to see us all. She was overly warm for someone who'd lived their whole life on a cold, windy island. But it was nice. It was nice to be welcomed, to be wanted.

We spent the weekend at J's summer home. We barbecued, played, smoke, drank. We had a blast. At some point, as I tipped back my bottle of tequila - and don't get me wrong, it was my bottle of tequila - J told me that Elijah Wood had summered in this very house a few years earlier. That shook me to the core, cause I've always had a soft spot for that small, fantastical, hobbit man. I distinctly remember asking him if he thought I was getting drunk in the same room Elijah Wood did. I don't remember his response, but it was probably a snicker and a hesitant, "Yeah." That's how he answers most of my questions. 

One night, as J and I drove his mother's car to meet Astrid and Colin at some beach, I asked him if he would ever kill someone. I was very stoned, mind you, so I don't remember if it was a serious question or just a hypothetical. But I do remember him batting the idea around a little, before turning the question back on me. I sat with it a minute, unsure of my own answer. I watched as the dead trees came and went in the headlights of his mother's car. I wasn't sure. I've always said I'm a pacifist. (Of course, anyone who's ever seen me angry knows that's a lie.) But, staring down that dark, midnight road, knowing there wasn't another soul within a few thousand feet of us, I found the answer. "I don't know what I'd do, but I know if anyone touches her, I'll kill 'em." And then I began to cry. And he didn't console me, because how does one console a stoned teenager who's suddenly choked up at his own worst thoughts? So, we just drove ever on into the darkness ahead, never knowing there would actually come a time when he'd need to console me for just that. 

Astrid and I sat in shock in the backseat as J shot down the pitch black dirt road. His mother's car had seen better nights, but that didn't matter right now. The only thing that mattered was finding a way out of this forest and back onto a main road. J was terrified. Colin was trying to calm him down from the passenger seat. "You didn't hit it that hard. It'll come out pretty easy. Let's just get home and I'll take a look at it." Ah, Colin, always the dad. The problem was, J had hit it pretty hard, but we were all too freaked out to realize that in the moment. We'd turned down a dirt road a few minutes earlier, thinking it might be the right way, but we quickly realized we were wrong. After a minute or so of Astrid and I getting thrown around in the backseat of a car unequipped for the deteriorating dirt roads, J turned a corner. And even though it was late October and most of the leaves had fallen from the trees, we were in the middle of a forest in the middle of the night - we couldn't see shit. So, that's why it came as a great surprise when around this corner, not even fifty feet away, was an open garage door. The car stopped moving. It was frightened. The single light bulb hanging from the garage ceiling was eclipsed by the stopped car's high beams. And then (and I swear to God every part of this story is true to life) we saw the man with the shovel. A man, a big man, dressed all in black, with what looked like a coal miner's hat on - you know, the kind with the light - wielding a shovel. The clashing lights from his helmet and our car shielded his face. We didn't even have time to briefly consider asking him for directions, before he started towards the car, shovel in hand, light on his head. Astrid and I screamed. J threw the car in reverse and put his foot down. Colin turned around to try to help him reverse, but J's eyes stayed locked on the shovel-wielding man. And that's when we slammed into the tree. We stopped for only a second, long enough to register that he had just rear-ended a tree with his mother's car, and then we were gone. Was the man a psychotic, coal-mining, shovel-toting killer with his eyes set on his next victims, four helpless teenagers lost in a world not meant for them? Almost definitely. But we got away and found our way home.

Somewhere, in some box, there's a Polaroid of me, Colin, and J on a beach on an island in the middle of the night. Astrid took it on our last night of the weekend. It's a cool picture, because it's a double-exposure, which means it's actually two pictures taken on the same piece of film. The pictures aren't strikingly different. In both, the three of us are simply trying to stand side-by-side and smile for the camera as the midnight wind slaps at our faces. But neither of the pictures are clear either. So, what I ended up with was a six-inch, double-exposed artifact. Proof that the weekend was not merely a day-dream nor a nightmare conjured in my sleep. It was real ,but only to a degree. Because the picture also shows me that it wasn't quite real. It was fantastical. For a few days, a few nights in late October, we were able to leave our lives behind and dig our toes into the sands of a different world, a different life. 

"And take me disappearing through the smoke rings of my mind, down the foggy ruins of time, far past the frozen leaves, the haunted, frightened trees, out to the windy beach, far from the twisted reach of crazy sorrow. Yes, to dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free, silhouetted by the sea, circled by the circus sands, with all memory and fate driven deep beneath the waves. Let me forget about today until tomorrow."

34. The Fletcher Memorial Home - Pink Floyd (1983)

I was walking home from middle school, beneath a blue sky and the power lines running into Piedmont Park. I had my iPod on shuffle. Haley had recently given me a suitcase of CDs from bands I didn't really know. I'd uploaded the music to my iPod, which made the shuffle feature suddenly a whirlwind of the undiscovered. So, here I was, walking on a dirty sidewalk, cars to my left, an overgrown building to my right, when the most important moment in my musical life thundered into my eardrums. It was the drum solo from this song.

It is said that there are moments that forever changed the course of history. While this is certainly far from that moment in history, the sentiment nonetheless rings true for this moment in my life. I had never heard Pink Floyd before, or if I had, then I hadn't really noticed. But in this moment, I noticed. They swept me away. In an instant - a single drum solo - they became my musical saviors. It's fitting that a song about a memorial home immortalized this band in my own self-history. To this day they occupy the upper echelon of my musical canon, but it all began with this song, with this moment.

"They can polish their medals and sharpen their smiles, and amuse themselves playing games for awhile. Boom boom, bang bang, lie down you're dead."

33. Birmingham - Shovels & Rope (2012)

It's impossible to capture the magic of the moment. I can use words, adjectives, verbs, superlatives, to describe it, but they will fail to capture the emotions of the memory. So, I apologize in advance. I apologize to you, reader, as well as to myself. I'm sorry I am unable to translate wonders to words. Though I will certainly try, please forgive me. 

I was fairly certain I'd never heard of them before. I was surrounded by hundreds of people eager to see the country-rock couple known to everyone but myself as Shovels & Rope. It was a cloudy summer day, and I was accompanying my mother and her new friend (my soon-to-be boss) to a music festival in downtown Atlanta. I got my ticket free, and it seemed to be just what a heart-broken boy like myself needed. So, I stood with them, surrounded by skyscrapers and screaming fans, under the grey sky as the duo took the stage. 

What I saw astounded me. This couple gave it their all. They were playing multiple instruments, belting out lyrics, never once giving into the rock, always grounded in their country roots. They were completely and utterly alone on stage. They weren't performing to us. They were performing to each other. I imagined it was very much like how Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham must have performed for each other following the release of Rumours. And then, with the kick of a bass drum, they started playing this song, and the heavens opened.

They gave the most heartfelt, intensely emotional performance I may have ever seen, as the skies above Centennial Olympic Park flooded down on the hundreds gathered at the feet of these artists. And I realized in that moment, dripping wet, surrounded by strangers, listening to a tune I had never heard, that I knew the song. I knew it on an instinctual level. It was the hope I was looking for. It was the story I didn't know how to tell. It spoke for me, as it still does. 

"From the Crescent City to the Great Salt Lake, it ain't what you got, it's what you make."

32. Roses - Outkast (2003)

In the throes of my (Great) depression during my first break-up, my best friend J would drive me around the Massachusetts' countryside to calm me down. Sometimes these drives would have destinations, like the farm that makes my favorite chocolate milk or my favorite store in the world. Often, these drives had no destination. And it was on one of the first of these drives that J and I got talking about this song. I had put it on because sometimes dancing (or bopping up and down in a passenger seat, in this case) to a break-up song is just what I need to feel better. Anyway, we were talking about this song, and J began a diatribe about how he thought this song was about going down on a girl. Now, if you've heard this song, which I'm sure you have, you'll know that makes no goddamn sense. We argued about it. I honestly don't remember how that went. I think it was mostly just me laughing at his explanation. But after that, I put this song on nearly every time we went for one of those rides. At some point he stopped me from putting it on. But I was fine with it at that point. Even in the midst of my anguish, I'd had my laughs. I'd had my fun. 

"Better come back down to Mars. Girl, quit chasing cars."

31. St. Elsewhere - Gnarls Barkley (2006)

It's raining. I'm sitting in the backseat of a car, listening to the rain bear down on the windshield. My mother, brother, and I are parked outside a Borders. We're waiting. I don't know what we're waiting for, (maybe for the rain to calm down?) but we are waiting. It's very dark. The only light in the car comes from the blue glow of the stereo. I had the Bone comics seated next to me. It's what I'd gotten at the bookstore. I'm sure it wasn't exactly what my mother had wanted when she told me to get something to read - a set of graphic novels for the nine year old with hair beginning to get a little too long - but it was what I got. And now, with the comics and my little brother sitting next to me, I listened to the rain drown out the soulful tunes of Gnarls Barkley coming from the speakers. My mama was playing the whole album, the most memorable CD of my childhood, but I specifically remember this song that night. I remember looking out the front window and seeing nothing but darkness and rain.

And, for whatever reason, that moment has always stuck with me. Every time I hear this song, this album - the album that defined my childhood - I am reminded of that car drowning in a bookstore parking lot. I remember the dejected hopelessness of two children sitting in the dark, their mother's hands on a steering wheel of a car that isn't moving, their faces illuminated by a blue screen of music. Of course, this was probably but a small moment. Obviously we drove on that night. Things weren't all dark. They weren't hopeless. But when I close my eyes and listen to this song, I return to that moment. And that drenched, hopeless car, is actually nice to return to, because I know what the elsewhere is now: a moment, soon to be a memory.

"Same rules apply on a rainy day, and it's not such a pretty place to be. It just rains, and rains, and rains on me. Send a simple sign I can understand. Then, a flower grew out that sand. Before you know it, I was back out on that sea." 

30. Let It Be - The Beatles (1970)

I stress too much. I stress over little things. I'm stressed right now about this blog. I use the term "blog" very loosely here, of course. This is far beyond a blog at this point. It is my magnum opus. And my magnum opus stresses me out.

"You're the type of person who would be stressed trying to figure out the top thirty movies of this year," my brother said to me before I began writing this. He isn't wrong. That's stressful. (His taunt almost makes me want to make that list. I won't. Don't worry.) My point is, I stress over simple things, over self-created things - like this list. I don't know where this list is going. I'm in the top thirty now. These are the end songs. Stressful. And, to be really honest, I'm scared. I'm scared to get near the bottom, to reach the end. I'm not good with goodbyes. Endings are always the hard part for me. They stress me out and scare me. To end something is to finish it, and I always feel better when there's more to write, more to say, more to tell. I don't like endings. I don't want to be finished. I'd rather be stressed, I'd rather be scared, than to be finished. 

But that isn't how this works. We have to reach an end at some point. So, let's get on with it.

"I wake up to the sound of music. Mother Mary comes to me speaking words of wisdom. Let it be."

29. Goodbye Stranger - Supertramp (1979)

I like memories. Obviously, I like looking back. I think it's important. See my Socrates quote from earlier, "The unexamined life is not worth living." The sentiment still rings true, even a few thousand years later. Honestly, what's the point in moving forward if you aren't going to look to the past to learn? It might sound bleak, but we need to look back at our good and bad histories to learn how to maneuver forward in our lives. And while I clearly enjoy telling my memories and feel the importance of my past, I can't visually look back upon it.

There's a reason there are no pictures in this. Believe me, it isn't a formatting issue barring me from using pictures. No, my computer can use pictures. I, however, can't. When I look at pictures of myself, of my loved ones, and of ones I've loved, I see a different world. Often it is a sad world. A world seeped in unspoken pain hidden behind intoxicated and forced smiles. But more often, it's a happy world. A world where those frozen in time are genuinely happy. And that is utterly devastating to me. I don't like to see that happiness. I don't like to return. Because that happiness is naive and innocent, and to return to it is to taint it with hindsight. This is exactly why I won't include pictures here, because they only capture a moment. However much hindsight skews my interpretation of events, it is hindsight with which I write these episodes. They are very much alive in my mind, constantly being worked over, and processed, and learned from, and, most importantly, relived. A photo does them no justice. It merely traps the moment. It traps the emotions. The happiness in most photos is staged, and that's fine. But the photos that aren't staged, those that are truly happy, are the ones I find the most unbearable. Because that happiness can't be returned to. It can be sought - hell, it can even be obtained and exceeded - but, it can't be returned to. It's special. It's in that moment, and that's where it should stay. 

So, that's why there are no photos. Don't get me wrong. I have plenty I could use. In fact, I don't really delete photographs. I have hundreds of myself over the years, and hundreds more of my significant others that I've never even deleted off my phone. I carry them with me all the time. They're important reminders of another time. But they stay in those times, for better or for worse. 

"Feel no sorrow. Feel no shame. Come tomorrow, feel no pain. Sweet devotion, it's not for me. Just give me motion and set me free."

28. Space Oddity - David Bowie (1969)

Before there were drugs, there was the mental hospital. It was my escape to another world.

It's not there anymore, but you can still get to its resting place if you try. Start at the bottom of Zimmer Drive. Bushwhack your way down to the dirty river at the bottom of the hill. Then follow the river, hopping along the sandy embankments, going right. Eventually, you'll hit a large brick wall covered in graffiti. Go up and around it to the right. You'll see the back porches of a few small houses. This is where you have to be careful. While this little neighborhood appears to be nothing more than a small nuke town, it's actually home to some very angry folks who don't like strangers who wander through their complex. But you have to. Just go through, out into the cul de sac, then hang a right on the road's inside the enclave. You'll see another dead end street pretty quickly. At the end of that street is an opening through someone's yard, and if you're quick enough you can make it to the avenue outside the neighborhood with no trouble. Once you're on the side of the road, safely removed from the minefield of a neighborhood, stop and catch your breath. You're gonna need a moment. While you're catching your breath, crouched in the brush on the side of the road, scan the large brick mansion with the elaborate stone garden in its backyard across the street. If there's no one obviously watching, dash across the street and up the mansion's driveway. Quickly - very quickly now - fly up the stone steps in their backyard. There's a rusty chain-link fence at the top, whose gate is overgrown but still works enough to slip through. Once you're on the other side, just jog up the deserted road for a minute. You should be far enough away to not get caught at this point. Once you're out on this little service road, one that clearly hasn't been serviced in years, walk up the hill. There will be some grass embankments to your left and an abandoned 18-wheeler up on your right. Someone was doing construction on this area at some point, but that became just another project put on hold. If you make your way to the 18-wheeler, the hill recedes and to your left you'll see what you came for: two concrete buildings, windows dirty but mostly intact, stairs and doors overgrown with vegetation. In the distance is an Emory research building, but right here in front of you is the abandoned mental hospital. You can get in easily enough. I left some doors "open" for you. Pay no mind to the destroyed filing cabinets, still full of patients' records, or children's drawings lining the walls, or the room filled with hundreds of empty cardboard boxes. It was like that when I arrived for the first time, as well. Try not to get lost. Certainly, try not to get caught. And whatever you do, do not go down into the basement. The basement is where this world that no longer exists ends and the tunnels to another world begin. 

"I'm stepping through the door and I'm floating in a most peculiar way. And the stars look very different today."

27. Tiny Dancer - Elton John (1971)

Puppy love is an interesting thing. It's simultaneously the most overwhelming feeling in the world and really a mere fraction of what true love feels like. When I was in middle school I felt - as do so many middle school students - a sort of puppy love for one of my best friends. She and I did just about everything together. We talked every day, day and night. I mean that. It was every day and night. We had classes together, we had homeroom together, we ate lunch together. We even went to Florida together on a band trip. And while I could tell all sorts of stories from that trip, there's only one important one. We were on the bus headed back, driving well into the night. It had been a busy weekend, and we were all exhausted. She and I talked until we were two of the last people awake on the bus. Eventually though, we shut up and went to sleep. And as she fell asleep on my shoulder, I thought to myself, "Is this love?" 

I still don't know the answer to that question.

"Oh, how it feels so real lying here with no one near. Only you and you can hear me when I say softly, slowly, 'Hold me closer tiny dancer. Count the headlights on the highway. Lay me down in sheets of linen. You had a busy day today. Hold me closer tiny dancer."

26. Ultralight Beam - Kanye West, feat. The-Dream, Kelly Price, Kirk Franklin, & Chance the Rapper (2016)

I'd pretty much stopped doing drugs by my senior year of high school, the year this song came out. Sure, I'd have the occasional cigarette or drink, but at that time I was focused, largely, on trying to right the ship I'd let sink earlier in high school. And I did a pretty damn great job. (If you can't already tell - this is my humble bragging bit.) I shed myself of toxic friends, instead spending social time learning and working with some of my favorite teachers. After years of dabbling in theatre classes, I finally put on public performances, starring in a two-man show, as well as directing (dare I say) the best one-act of the year. And I poured my heart and soul into debate. I worked hard as hell, writing, arguing, and coaching. My partner and I were a top five public forum team in the state, I took second at the state tournament in student Congress, and I took third nationally in world's debate. It's an impressive resume, only heightened by the sheer fact that I didn't see it coming. I knew I could be good if I put my mind to it. I didn't ever think I'd be one of the best in the country. Oh, and I did all of this while maintaining a major, long-term relationship. It was a great year, and I'm still extremely proud of the changes I made in my life.

But... (See, you're waiting for the kicker now, right? I just started a new paragraph with a "but," so it's gotta be coming.) There is no "but." I'm just gonna let this be. It was a great year. There's no need to spoil it. Congratulations Todd, you did it. 

"This is my part, nobody else speak. This is my part, nobody else speak."

25. Hurricane - Bob Dylan (1976)

If you've never seen a trial, you should. Many years ago, my mother served on the jury for a homicide case. It was the summertime, and it must have been late middle school or early high school, because I still had aspirations of becoming a lawyer. I went to the trial with my mama every day. It was a gruesome case. A young black man was being accused of shooting another man in the head with a shotgun, killing him instantly, and then running down the deceased's girlfriend with his car, attempting to kill her as well. The trial was a mess. The stories made no sense. The witnesses were unreliable because they were strung out and high during the altercations being asked about. Even the specialists, like the blood expert, couldn't make a compelling case. It was chaos, controlled chaos. Or, as our legal system calls it: justice.

It was one of the hardest things I've ever had to watch, because in all that chaos, there's still one clear thing that reigns supreme: pain. I felt the palpable pain every day. I could see the pain in some of the witnesses' eyes when they got on the stand, especially the young woman who was run over. I could certainly feel the pain of the grieving mother seated beside me as the prosecutor showed autopsy photos of her slain son. But the pain was perhaps most shockingly evident in my mother. She wasn't absolutely certain this man had committed the crimes he was being accused of, and even though the jury found him guilty in the end, I know she struggled with her doubts during and after the trial. And that pain, that chaos, that "justice" is not special to this one trial. It's happening all across our country every day, and while we hear about it, you really need to see it. You need to feel it to believe it. 

"Now all the criminals in their coats and their ties are free to drink martinis and watch the sunrise, while Rubin sits like Buddha in a ten-foot cell. An innocent man in a living hell."

24. Same Drugs - Chance the Rapper (2016)

Peter Pan,

"When did you change? Wendy, you've aged. I thought you'd never grow up. I thought you'd never. Window closed, Wendy got old. I was too late, I was too late, a shadow of what I once was...

Where did you go? Why would you stay? You must've lost your marbles. You always were so forgetful. In a hurry, don't wait up. I was too late, I was too late, a shadow of what I once was...

Cause we don't, we don't, do what we say we're gonna. You were always perfect, and I was only practice. Don't you miss the days, stranger? Don't you miss the days? Don't you miss the danger?

Don't forget the happy thoughts. All you need is happy thoughts. The past tense, past bed time, way back then when everything we read was real and everything we said rhymed. Wide-eyed kids being kids, why did you stop? What did you do to your hair? Where did you go to end up right back here? When did you start to forget how to fly?"

- A Kid Waiting by the Window

23. To Love Somebody - Janis Joplin (1969)

My mother married Haley when I was in 8th grade. It was the fall, and they had a beach(ish) wedding, so that meant Luke and I were taken out of school to spend the week down in Florida. It was a beautiful wedding at a beautiful venue on one of the most beautiful beaches I've ever been to. The beach cottages our family and friends came together in overflowed with love. Everything about that week and that wedding was simply divine. 

But... (There really is a "but" coming this time.) I didn't tell any of my friends that beauty when I came back home. See, I grew up in rural/suburban Georgia, and as a young kid conditioned in the South I learned to keep the secret of my mother's sexuality. Now, she didn't keep it a secret. In a fucked up, backwards way it had become my secret to keep. Because kids are mean and their parents closed-minded, I was bullied for my mother's sexuality. It was seen as a punishable offence, one that I was somehow seen as responsible for. I didn't tell my mother this until many years after that beautiful wedding, because I never really understood that I was subconsciously keeping this secret. But, I was. So, when we came back from Melbourne Beach, I lied about where I was without even realizing it.

Of course, I didn't need to lie. Not only were my friends significantly more open-minded and mature than those who bullied me growing up, many of them came from LGBTQ+ households or were queer themselves. Therein lies the heart of this problem. The bullying was awful, but that my fear of  stigmatization stopped me from telling everyone about the beauty of my mother's wedding, that's the saddest part of this story. Because it's important to talk about that kind of beauty, that kind of love, as conditioning people to equate fear with "unconventional" love strips so many people of the opportunity to share that love and beauty. I'm proud and glad to see that the world and country has moved far beyond the type of homophobia I experienced growing up and even further beyond the type my mother grew up with, but we must continue to strive towards a world where that beauty is not seen as "unconventional," and love is not tied to fear. Love needs simply be love.

"You don't know what it's like to love anybody. Oh honey, I wanna talk about love and trying to hold somebody the way I love you babe."

22. A Day in the Life - The Beatles (1967)

As it stands right now this "blog," this masterwork if you will, is over 21,000 words long. That's nearly long enough to be considered a novella. For reference, Hemingway's Old Man and the Sea is only 27,000. So, watch out Ernest. I'm coming for the crown. And when I look back at those thousands of words I wonder how I got this far. (To be honest, I wonder much more about how I'm going to get through all that I have left, but still - I wonder how I've gotten this far all the same.) But, after months of writing and pondering, I think the answer has shown itself through habit.

Listen. Shower. Cry. Write. Therapy. 

Listen. Shower. Cry. Write. Therapy.

Listen. Shower. Cry. Write. Therapy.

That's how. Sometimes I have to do those steps a few times for a single entry, but I've found no other way to complete this and I never skip a step. The shower is my sanctuary. Any of my roommates and family members could tell you that. I take extraordinarily long showers, because in many ways, it's where I do all five steps. I often cry there. I always listen to music there. And it's where I sit and write outlines. It's where I talk through things in my head, where I begin (and sometimes end) my own therapy. None of these vignettes would be completed had it not been for a shower, either at my home in Atlanta or back in Massachusetts. (Shout out to my shower in Massachusetts. It is literally my favorite place in the world. I mean that.) In fact, it was in the shower that I realized what I wanted to write about for this song - a tribute for one of the most monumental parts of a day in my life and my creative birthplace. So, as a final nod to the place and the process that's helping me come closer to Hemingway's crown, here's five more words: Listen. Shower. Cry. Write. Therapy.

"A crowd of people stood and stared. They'd seen his face before."

21. "Heroes" - David Bowie (1977)

"What?" That's what I asked myself as I lay on the concrete, my left leg seeping blood into my jeans. Even though I can still recall every detail of what happened to this day, I was too high in the moment to realize what had happened. I'd thought I was invincible. It turns out I was wrong.

There's a scene in The Dark Knight that very accurately depicts what happened to me that fall afternoon on the BeltLine. In the scene the Joker is walking down the middle of an avenue as Batman charges towards him on his heavily armored motorcycle, and the Joker is hysterically screaming, "Hit me! Hit me!" But Batman doesn't hit him. He skids off to the side, risking his own safety in lieu of killing the Joker. Now, what happened to me was surprisingly similar to The Dark Knight (you know, minus the mass murder and rampant destruction of New York). I was walking to my best friend's house, listening to music very loudly in my headphones, when I noticed another good friend of mine, let's call him Mr. Wayne, biking towards me. And, well you can guess it. I must've thought I was the Joker. Wildly, I dared him to hit me. So, he did. It was a game of chicken gone wrong. He thought I'd move, and I thought he'd just skid around me. In fact, he did start to swerve when he realized I wasn't going to move, but it was too late at that point. 

He clipped the left side of my body, spiraling both of us to the pavement with the crashed bike in between us. And as I lay on that concrete, dazed and bleeding through my jeans, I couldn't hear Mr. Wayne cursing me. I couldn't hear my friends laughing at me from the side of the crash. I couldn't even hear my own intoxicated thoughts trying to answer my own question, "What?" All I could hear was this song, "Heroes," rattling from the headphones laying next to me. 

"We can be heroes, forever and ever."

20. (You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman - Carole King (1971)

Do you remember that story I told about the night I was put in the back of a police car? The night I thought was the end of my life? The night where I was granted a second chance? That night was one of the most pivotal moments in my life trajectory, and it makes for a great story. But every night has a next morning. This is that next morning's story.

I woke up in my brother's bed. My mother and brother were still on their trip and would be gone for at least another day or two, so I had plenty of time to make his bed before his return. I stumbled out of my brother's room, still feeling the effects of the drugs that hadn't completely left my system, and tumbled through the doorway of my room. My best friend was passed out on my bed, which (relatively) explained why I was in my brother's room. I stood there, nodding in and out of consciousness, trying to find my balance and figure out a plan, when I noticed a black guy I didn't know asleep on my couch. So, that was the first thing I needed to deal with - get the stranger out of my house. I woke my friend up and asked him who the stranger was. He was also clearly still fucked up from the night before, but he muttered something about how it was a guy he knew. So, I told him he needed to get the guy and leave. I had places to be.

We woke the stranger up. He was friendly and as we talked, some flashes of the night before came back to me. I thought I could vaguely put my finger on meeting up with him. He wasn't much older than us, and I was sure I'd seen him around school and at parties before. So, that was reassuring. I poured us all glasses of water. We sat in the living room for a minute as they put their shoes on and drank, all of us trying to sober up before we had to take on that Monday morning. It didn't work. By the time they left, I was still solidly straddling the line of inebriated and hungover. But I threw on a nice button-up, I brushed my teeth and rubbed out the dark circles from beneath my eyes. I didn't have time to shower or eat. I had to catch a train. It was my first day on the job.

I made the train, despite my late start, and then I caught a bus. I'd checked out the route a few days earlier when I was sober, so even now in this state, I was confident in my ability to get to the building. And I did. I hopped off the bus, on the side of an industrial road, not too far from the farmer's market my mother dragged me to as a punishment growing up. I was about half an hour late, but I would blame that on the bus or the train if necessary. I'd blame it on anything but myself. It didn't seem like my running late was going to be a problem, however. The parking lot wasn't very full, and even then, I noticed there was another girl running late. "So, I'll be fine," I thought to myself.

I picked up my pace and made my way inside. I was a few steps ahead of the other late volunteer, and I wanted to make sure I wasn't the last one to come into the "training meeting." I could hear the voices from that meeting coming from past the ticket counter, down the hall. I quickly rubbed my eyes again and tried to press out any wrinkles in my shirt. I made it to the doorway of the small room. I was met with a hearty welcome. "Please join us!" my boss cried. But there wasn't a lot of space in the room, so I just propped myself up in the doorway and tried not to make myself seen. (There's a surprise.) 

But, thanks to my long legs and quick pace, I wasn't the last one to enter the room. The girl running late elbowed past me in the doorway, pushing me against the wall. "Bitch," I thought. She made her way across the room, into an open space in the circle and turned around.

And I fell in love. And I was saved.

"When my soul was in the lost and found you came along to claim it. I didn't know just what was wrong with me till your kiss helped me name it. Now I'm no longer doubtful of what I'm living for. Cause if I make you happy I don't need to do more."

19. Blood on the Leaves - Kanye West (2013)

My first partner and I would fight about rap all the time, and I really do mean "all the time." Like, it was our favorite thing to fight about, because we were both stubbornly absorbed in our own opinions and basically unwilling to hear the other out. (Healthy, right?) I would throw out a ton of great rap songs to show her the genre's artistic merits, and she would hurl out arguments against those merits and point out the genre's cons. It was always such a petty argument, one I truly wish we didn't have as many times as we did. However, that being said, it was always nice to spar with her. She was a musician, a singer-songwriter type, so rap was about as stylistically far away from her wheelhouse as possible. And the best part of these spars was that after she made all of her base claims (rap is misogynistic, it doesn't require skill, the beats are lazy, etc. - all of which are patently false or at least over generalizations) I could put on a rap song and feel an even greater appreciation for its art. And that's what this song is. It's an ultimate appreciation for the art of hip-hop and rap. It's a Nina Simone inspired tour de force, with some of the best production in hip-hop of this decade. And I don't know if I would have ever been able to appreciate that had I not had all of those silly, nonsensical arguments with my ex about this beautiful, transcendent genre of music. So, in a strange way, I'm grateful for that argument, because it opened my eyes to a wider scope of art and beauty. 

"So let's get on with it."

18. Stars (Live at Montreux) - Nina Simone (1976)

-a love letter to the man he loved; Todd, in the midst of a mental breakdown and breakup; circa Feb. 2018.

"Some make it when they're old. Perhaps they have a soul they aren't afraid to bare. Perhaps there's nothing there. But anyway, that isn't what I meant to say. I meant to tell about a story. Since we all have stories..."

17. Crazy - Gnarls Barkley (2006)

I was a bad kid. Like straight up, I did not behave well. As I look back over these entries, I can't believe how many examples of my bad behavior I haven't documented. We've missed some truly great displays of juvenile delinquency, such as the time I broke out of my daycare to prove a point to my mother - my point being that the daycare workers didn't truly watch us. Clearly, I was correct. I've also missed the time my mother called the police on me after I went into self-destruct mode because I didn't want to eat dinner. That was a super fun time. I've also failed to document any of the shenanigans I got up to in 7th grade, perhaps the most rebellious year of my childhood (although it was technically early adolescence at that point I suppose). That was also the year I got into my first fist fight, if we aren't counting all the scraps I've been in with my brother or in martial arts (none of which I count). Man, looking back, it must have been absolute hell to raise me at times. And if the apple tree adage holds any truth whatsoever, I'm sure one day I'll have hell to pay myself. 

"Ha, ha, ha, bless your soul. You really think you're in control?"

16. Redemption Song - Bob Marley & the Wailers (1979)

I've always had dreams of performing. I've always had dreams of standing on stage, behind a microphone and performing. Of course, I can't sing. I'd be terrified if I were ever actually asked to sing anything in front of anyone. But, it's something I've always dreamt about nonetheless. So, when I heard a young lady perform this song at a political fundraiser I was at, I gave her all of my attention. I think I was the only person in the room watching and listening. People tend to wait for the big politician to come speak at these kinds of events, but I was just enamored by her. Her ability to play to a crowd of people who couldn't care less that she was playing astounded me. It was breathtaking. If there was ever a way to find out, I wouldn't be surprised to learn I'm the only person from that fundraiser that remembers her playing this song. 

But, that's kind of how it goes most of the time, right? This isn't The Truman Show. Very, very rarely does anyone see what you do. Unless you are in the 1% of people who can't get away from the cameras, your life, your story, is not on display. You and you alone live with all of your decisions. When you do something bad, something wrong, something immoral, you, first and foremost, live with those consequences. And when you do something good, something right, something redeeming, you live with that too. But, if you're lucky enough to take the stage and be seen, by even one person, make sure you're doing the right thing. Because to be seen is a blessing.

"Won't you help to sing these songs of freedom? Cause all I ever have, redemption songs."

15. What It's Like - Everlast (1998)

We were 3,000 miles apart when I got the call. "Todd, I was sexually assaulted last night," she whispered into the phone. "I'm okay. Don't worry..." Her voice trailed off in my ears. She kept talking but I don't remember what she said. I was in free fall. I was helpless.

You have no idea what that moment feels like until you're in it. I'd like to say I was immediately supportive, that I knew how to handle myself in this situation, but that's not the truth. I had no fucking clue what to do. When we got off the phone, I had the sense enough to put on my shoes and hold back the tears until I got outside. But once outside, I found the first bush I could crouch in, out of sight, and I bawled. I cried until I couldn't cry anymore. My mother was consoling me in my headphones. She was the first person I told. That's all I knew to do in that moment - call my mom for help. Then, she called her mom. And so I sat in the brush, head in my hands, as my mother and grandmother consoled me from across the country.

She had assured me she was okay. "This isn't the worst thing that's happened to me. It's okay," she'd said. But that wasn't good enough for me. The existence of higher injustices does not excuse this one. It doesn't diminish the assault. And even though she said she was okay, it was still my job to be there for her, but I felt like there was nothing I could do. In many ways, there wasn't. I couldn't hold her. I couldn't call her whenever I wanted. I couldn't report this guy, this 30 year old man, to the authorities the way I wanted. I couldn't do all of the other things to him that I wanted. I was utterly helpless.

That is a profoundly disturbing feeling. To have your hands tied and watch someone you love and care about silently suffer is the most upsetting feeling in the world. No words do that feeling justice. And the worst part is that the feeling of helplessness never goes away. I will never be able to do anything about what happened. There will never be justice. And while she will be okay, she will always live with what happened. We both will.

"God forbid you ever had to wake up and hear the news, cause then you really might know what it's like to have to lose."

14. Sandcastles - Beyoncé (2016)

On the night of September 8th, 2017 I was asked a simple question. "Why did you come to Hampshire College?" I'd never been asked that. I was over a year into college, and yet no one had asked me why I came. I'd never thought about it. And when I finally did think about it, when I was asked that question as I walked my college's quad, I was stunned and saddened at the answer.

I followed a girl to Hampshire. That's the answer. That's the truth. I followed a girl to a college she didn't even end up going to. And we paid the price for it.

Of course, no one, including myself, expected that to be the answer to the question. But it's true, and it's how I answered. Coming to college was the first step on a precipitous path to heartbreak. No one likes that answer. I know I certainly don't. People don't like it because it's sad, but okay - you have to understand, college hasn't been happy for me. These have not been great times. It's sucked. College has scarred me. But I'm so eternally grateful for it, because it's hardened me into the person I am today.

So, yeah, I followed a girl to college. She didn't come. Things didn't work. Hearts were broken. I don't know if I'm better off for it. I don't know. But I do know that's the truth.

"And your heart is broken cause I walked away. Show me your scars and I won't walk away."

13. Sunday Candy - Donnie Trumpet & The Social Experiment (2015)

This song is tangible proof that love is boundless. Allow me to explain.

Example One: It's the only rap song my first partner would listen to with me, and she loved it so much she learned it on piano.

Example Two: Despite my mother's objections, my grandmother and I jammed to this song on the back porch of our house. She smiled as I howled out lyrics about loving my grandma, and my mama just sat back and rolled her eyes, laughing.

Example Three: Everyone I live with knows like every lyric to this song (and none of us have the same music taste). We will regularly put this song on blast in the car and break it down bar for bar, singing over each other. I mean this. We do this regularly. It probably happens like once a week. 

Example Four: There was this beautiful moment E and I were bouncing around my dorm living room in the dark one night. I'd brought my speaker in there, and I was just blasting Chance the Rapper while we danced. And then I put on this song and we went wild. We smiled and laughed, and when it was over, E stopped for a second and asked me very politely if I would replay it. So I did. And, as I recall, he and I just stood there listening. We soaked it in. We basked in its love.

Example Five: I've had the great, great fortune of seeing Chance perform live. It was a summer night. I was pouring sweat, loving every second of the concert. Bailey and I never stopped dancing. We never stopped singing along. And then, when Chance started playing this song, I felt a part of my spirit rise from deep within my chest. I'm so sure my feet never touched the ground while he played it. I just floated there, suspended by my own love. It was a fantastical experience, and just as sweat is water, it was a baptism. 

"You gotta move it slowly. Take and eat my body like it's holy. I've been waiting for you for the whole week. I've been praying for you, you're my Sunday candy."

12. Just a Thought - Gnarls Barkley (2006)

I owe my life to six people: my mother, my brother, my high school debate coach, my first partner, my best friend from college, and (for the sake of consistent anonymity, let's call him) Iggy. Iggy saved my life, and while I'm sure he knew that in the moment, I doubt very much he remembers it that way, if he remembers it at all. I was probably 15 the night he saved my life, and if my memory is right (which I'm fairly certain it is in this case), I was actually sober when he saved it. 

It was late one night, and I was home alone. (Why do so many of my stories involve me being home alone? Where was everyone when I was a teenager?) Okay, so technically I wasn't home alone the entire night. I had been chilling with my best friend earlier that day, and we watched horror movies well into the evening. We'd been together all weekend and hadn't slept for at least two days, but he went home around sunset. And then I was alone. I remember watching the shadows grow long on the clothes in the closet at the back of my house as the sun set outside the backdoor. After fucking around for a few hours, still not sleeping, I heard something coming from the back of the house. It wasn't the dog. It wasn't the cat. I knew that much. It was really late by now, and my mind was fluttering in and out of consciousness. I was supremely tired. At first I dismissed the noise as nothing, but then I heard it again. Then again. And again. And it didn't stop. So, I stumbled into my kitchen. Every time I passed a light switch I flicked it on. I wouldn't say I'm afraid of the dark, but when you're alone in the middle of the night, you haven't slept in two days, it's pouring rain outside, and you keep hearing a noise from the back of a dark house, you turn every light on. The noise wasn't coming from the kitchen. So I checked the laundry room, attached to the kitchen but also half-way outdoors. I felt the warm air rise from the rain in the dark outside. The noise wasn't coming from the laundry room though. This meant it really was coming from the back of the house. So, now I'm absolutely petrified. The back of the house is completely dark, and I begin to convince myself that maybe the noise isn't even real. Maybe it's all in my head. Maybe it's a by-product of the sleep deprivation and if I got some sleep, it would go away.

But that isn't what I did. Instead, I found the biggest knife we had - this nearly foot-long stainless steel knife - and I slowly worked my way towards the back of the house, turning every light on as I crept by. I turned on my bedroom light - no noise there. I turned on the bathroom light - still no noise. I turned on my brother's bedroom light - again, no noise. All that was left of the house was the back bathroom and closet where I had watched the sunset earlier that night. Honestly, I don't remember going back into the closet and turning on its light, but I know I did. I know, because it's where I was, knife in hand, when I heard the noise again. But this time it was coming from the front of the house. And that's when something in my mind snapped. I couldn't do this. I was terrified. I couldn't face whatever it was making that noise, and if it was in my head, then I certainly couldn't make it stop. So, I took out my phone and called the only person I was sure would be up past midnight: Iggy. 

He could hear the fear in my voice. I told him I had a knife and needed the noise to stop, but I couldn't find it. I told him I needed to leave. So, he helped me. I left out my back door, taking a pair of shoes from the back closet before I left, and I trudged up my street in the pouring rain. I was soaking wet and terrified, my knuckles white around the handle of the knife, when Iggy found me. He'd brought an umbrella, and he quickly ushered me under it. He pried the knife out of my hands and stashed it in his coat. He walked me through the midnight rain to his house, where he quietly snuck me into his attic. I so vaguely remember all of this. He told me later the next morning that my hands had been bleeding when he found me and that I was muttering nonsense. I don't remember that myself, but I take his word for it. I slept that night in his attic, an attic I had and would come to have more and more memories in. But none of those memories would be as important as that night. And while this story is wildly childish and reeks of an immaturity even I can detect, it's such an important moment in my life. There's truly no telling what I might have done that night, and sometimes it's good to know that you have people, even when the only problem in your life is your own mind. 

"It's even dark in the daytime. It's not just good, it's Great Depression. When I was lost I even found myself looking in the gun's direction. And so I've tried everything but suicide, but it's crossed my mind. But I'm fine."

11. Wish You Were Here - Pink Floyd (1975)

i wanted this to be a poem

but i dont write poetry

i dont know how

i wanted to write about ghosts

about seeing them wherever i go

about being haunted them

but i cant

because there are no ghosts

because i never let the past die

so im consigned to this

whatever this is

this non-poetry

this purgatory

"Did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? How I wish, how I wish you were here. We're just two lost souls swimming in a fishbowl year after year, running over the same old ground. What have we found? The same old fears. Wish you were here."

10. Don't Think Twice, It's Alright - Bob Dylan (1963)

So, I'm single for the first time in about four years at the time of writing this. My last relationship fell apart a few months after I began this project. The distance got to us. And life had other plans for us anyway. I didn't talk about the break-up much in the days and weeks following. I just didn't want to. I didn't want comfort. I needed to be hurt for a while. I needed that pain. 

It wasn't a good relationship. I mean, we weren't dealt the best hand from the outset, but at the end of the day, we were both responsible for the circumstances the relationship was born out of. And she's a great person. She deserves the world. But she wasn't great to me. And I'm going to say some things here that I'm not sure I should. I don't know if I want this out there, but at the same time, I don't like having it bottled up; and what is this for if not for the liberation I wrote about in the introduction?

It was a sexually abusive relationship, and it really fucked up my sense of worth. Couple the abuse, the assault, with my already greatly diminished value of self-respect beforehand, and here we are. So at the end of the relationship, I wasn't exactly keen to remind myself of it. I didn't want to relive any of it. More than that though, I didn't want to tarnish the good things about the relationship. I just wanted to let it be. For once in my life, I just wanted the past to stay there. I just wanted to focus on the good, but then the bad gnawed away at me until I broke down and told those closest to me. 

And while I want to say it was a relief to tell them about the break-up and the abuse, it wasn't. It still hurts. It still makes me feel worthless. But that's fine. Because I'm going to keep focusing on the good. I'm going to go forward on my own and leave this to lie. I'm done letting this abuse me.

"So long, honey babe. Where I'm bound, I can't tell. Goodbye's too good a word, babe, so I'll just say, 'Fare thee well.' I ain't saying you treated me unkind. You could have done better, but I don't mind. You just kind of wasted my precious time. But don't think twice, it's alright." 

9. 715 - CR∑∑KS - Bon Iver (2016)

Crouched in the dark, on his knees, is a boy. It's April, and here he is, on the worst night of this boy's young life, praying for God to send him a sign to not kill himself, a sign to stop him from vaulting over his bed and out his window. The boy has just cut off the girl he's loved for nearly three years. He's submitted himself to a test of sheer willpower and self-love, both of which he is dangerously close to losing completely. And all he can do is pray. All he can do is stay on the floor and pray until his prayers are answered or a swift fall ends his tears.

He's crying so hard, he's practically hyperventilating. Air comes in gulps that are few and far between. The boy cannot stand. His legs are too weak to support the emotionally decaying body above. But then, in between gulps and still on his knees, the boy answers his own prayers. He reaches out into the dark and finds his phone. When he finally grasps it, the screen momentarily illuminates the boy's dark world. In a matter of seconds, the boy has a song playing. "Down along the creek," an electronic voice wails into the receding darkness.

And just like that, as if he could not get any smaller, the boy collapses. He is no longer a boy. He is merely broken. The phone's screen fades to black as Bon Iver's voice joins the chorus of the broken boy's sobs. The boy will not vault over the bed that night, nor any other. He will make it.

He will make it.

"Oh then, how we gonna cry? Cause it once might not mean something? Love, a second glance, it is not something that we'll need. Honey, understand that I have been left here in the reeds. But all I'm trying to do is get my feet out from the crease..."

8. Oh! You Pretty Things - David Bowie (1971)

It's strange to think that one day my children may be reading this. Like, they may be reading this very sentence. If that is the case, please know that I love you. And if you are not my child but you're reading this anyway, also know that I love you, but you are not beholden to read this entry. However, kids - you have to stay. 

I'm writing this on the morning of January 15th, 2019. Today would have been Dr. King's 90th birthday had he seen it. The country is currently in the longest government shutdown in history. Millions of households are living and working without pay. In other, better news, Samuel L. Jackson performed slam poetry with the Roots on The Tonight Show last night, Marvel just released the trailer for the second MCU Spiderman film, and Future is gearing up to release his seventh studio album. Oh, and after years of waiting, I'm seeing my first NBA game live tonight (the rebuilding Hawks versus Westbrook and PG13's Thunder) There ya go. That's a little snapshot of history for you. 

It's important to know where you come from, and hopefully this "blog" has given you a better sense of my roots, of who I was growing up. If you've learned anything from making it this far, please let that lesson be that it is okay to make mistakes, it is okay to tell the truth, it is okay to be you. I'll love you regardless of your past, because you are the future. 

"I think about a world to come where the books were found by the Golden ones. Written in pain, written in awe, by a puzzled man who questioned what we were here for."

7. Somebody to Love - Queen (1976)

I met my Dearest at lunch early one September afternoon. I was sitting with who would come to be known as my Sweet, and he walked over and introduced himself. He was happy, bubbly even. He seemed a little too enthusiastic about things, but I kind of liked it. It was cute. Over the following weeks I got to know my Dearest. I spent so many nights with him. I peeled back his layers. He truly was an enthusiastic person, but underneath that mask of happiness was a deeply troubled man, one I could relate to, one I could love.

Then one night, a few weeks later, as we laid on his bed, he across my lap, he asked me a question I was not prepared to answer, "Todd, what's your sexuality?" So, this was it. I was finally being asked the question I'd been searching for an answer to for the last month. I didn't immediately answer, just laid there stroking his hair instead. "I think..." I began. "I think I love who I love." He chuckled and buried his face into my chest.

Later that night, far after I had vowed to go home and go to sleep, he and I wrapped ourselves in his blankets and went to watch the meteor shower from the empty quad. Outside, I laid in the arms of my Dearest as we stared up at the stars. And, as a shooting star dashed across the sky, so close we could reach out and touch it, my Dearest asked me another question. And this time I knew the answer.

"What do you think the constellation we're a part of looks like?" he asked softly.

"I don't know," I whispered. "But I hope it's beautiful."

"Anybody, anywhere, anybody find me somebody to love."

6. No Woman, No Cry - Bob Marley & the Wailers (1974)

I'll never forget seeing my Sweet's smile for the first time. She was crouched down, petting a dog in the doorway, smiling up at the owner. She didn't see me, but I watched her every move from the wall of the overcrowded apartment. At some point during dinner, my friend Raini introduced us. Later that night, my Sweet and I would wander into the dark fields of Hampshire College to pick flowers together. We got to know each other, walking, talking, climbing trees. At the end of the night, as I walked her back to her dorm, she gave me her phone number. 

Although the chemistry between us was apparent from the minute we met, we decided to be friends moving forward. But our hearts didn't listen. And while I can tell it well now, I told it better in a love letter I wrote my Sweet later:

"I don't know if you remember this but there was this one time, shortly after our Hamilton nights, that you and I were eating dinner at the table in the corner of the library. And we started talking about our pasts and all sorts of nonsense, and I was staring at the videotapes on the shelf near us, because I couldn't look in your eyes. I mean, I really couldn't. My heart was beating so damn fast, I was sure that anything more than a moment's glimpse at you would be it for me. Eventually we made our way around to talking about 'love.' And while we were talking you finished eating your salad and took my hand. I remember that exact moment, because my heart definitely did momentarily stop. It must have. Then, and I swear I will remember this moment until the day I die, while squeezing my hand you whispered softly, 'I want to fall in love again.' And, despite my heart's best effort to stop beating at that exact ecstatic moment, I was able to whisper back, 'Me too.'"

So, we did. We fell in love. Within a month or so, my Sweet, my Dearest, and I were walking an unspoken emotional tightrope. We ran together, we spent nights together, and by early December, my Sweet had packed up her belongings, ready to move into my apartment. And she did, and the fire that was our relationship burned bright, and it was glorious.

Then, one early February day, as my own mental and physical well-being was crumbling around me, my Sweet pulled me out of bed and took me on a walk through the snow-covered woods. We walked passed the fields we had picked flowers from the night we met. We walked down the farm trails we had run together last fall. When we finally stopped, it was at the bed of a frozen creek. We stood there in silence, watching the water trapped beneath the ice flow through the ground of this still forest. And then my Sweet turned to me. "Do you remember when we first met, you told me you had feelings for me?" I looked up from the stream and nodded. "Do you still?" she asked.

I looked down at her, the beautiful face I'd absolutely come to know and love and need, and I lied. "No," I said. I saw tears begin to well up beneath her eyelids. She turned away and trudged up the sunny, snowy hill, and I stood there watching her leave me in the forest, leave me by the frozen creek where the water beneath the ice fought to break through. But, when she got to the top of the hill, she stopped. She stopped beneath the low-hanging branches of the dead trees, as she heard my question reverberate off the snowbanks and hills surrounding us. "Why?"

"Because I have those feelings for you," she said back down to me. And I heard that ring down through the trees, staying in my ears, until it faded and all I could hear was the soft flow of the water that had found a hole in the stream's ice. She turned around to crest the hill and leave me.

"I love you!" I shouted. She stopped and turned around. And once again, I saw her smile.

"In this bright future you can't forget your past, so dry your tears I say. No woman, no cry."

5. Oh! Darling - The Beatles (1969)

I was hungover and late to my first day on the job the morning I met my Baby...

Oh, wait. I've already told this story. But then again, I've told damn near every story about my Baby and I. I guess that tends to happen when three years of your life are defined by the relationship you're in. So, what do I write here? We don't really need another story about heartbreak do we? I can't do that to you. How about a rehashing of the best parts of three years? Do we need that? Honestly, I don't think I can do that to myself.

So, what do I write here? How about this: I'm grateful for those three years I spent with my Baby. I'm grateful for the many life lessons she taught me. She taught me patience. She taught me pain. She taught me how to love and laugh and cry and experience the full range of emotions that life comes with, because only when you open your heart can you truly experience this world. I'm grateful for the years we spent watching T.V. and movies and listening to music and seeing shows. I'm grateful for the years I spent nestled up next to my Baby on the piano bench, listening to her belt out song after song. I'm grateful for the ring and the sweater and the anklet and the bracelet. I'm grateful she brought me to the college I've come to know and love and hate. I'm grateful she had the strength and courage to cut me off when things got too toxic. I'm grateful that we found happiness or as close as we can get. And more than all of this, I'm sorry for everything I did that hurt her. 

I'm sorry I hurt you, Baby, but I'm not sorry we loved. I'm grateful.

"Oh! Darling, please believe me. I'll never let you down! Believe me when I tell you I'll never do you no harm!"

4. Runaway - Kanye West, feat. Pusha T (2010)

If you've made it this far, consider this a warning.

You know me. If you've made it this far, you know me for better and worse. In fact, you know me better than anyone. And I like that. I like that you know me. But I don't want you to be close to me, cause we'll get hurt. And I can't hurt again. Not you.

So, please leave. Please. If you've made it this far, just take my secrets and go.

"Baby, I got a plan, run away as fast as you can."

3. Bridge Over Troubled Water - Simon & Garfunkel (1970)

This is the best moment of my life. This is my favorite memory. This is mine. So, I'm going to leave it that way. Sorry.

"Sail on Silver Girl. Sail on by. Your time has come to shine. All your dreams are on their way. See how they shine. If you need a friend, I'm sailing right behind. Like a bridge over troubled water, I will ease your mind. Like a bridge over troubled water, I will ease your mind."

2. Time - Pink Floyd (1973)

I have maintained from the outset of this piece that this list is dedicated to music, first and foremost. While this has been a deeply personal experience, these vignettes are merely but a fraction of my story. My real story lies in the songs that have guided the way. These songs serve as more than just stepping stones to tell my story; they are my story. If you've gotten this far without listening to the music, well then, you don't truly know me. 

Music saved my life. In the moments of my life where I'd given up hope and lost all conceivable reason for living, it was music that kept me going. In fact, I've often said that I would rather be dead than deaf. I simply don't know what I would do without music. So, this is for all of the songs that have gotten me through life, because there have been thousands of songs that have gotten me to where I am, right here. This list could truly be endless. These 100 are by no means the end all, be all. They are simply the apex of my story. They are quintessentially me.

"The time is gone, the song is over. Thought I'd something more to say..."

1. Hurt - Johnny Cash (2002)

As I look back on my life I am astounded to find that I do not, in fact, hate myself. There have been things I have done in just over 21 years, things that I am not proud of, things that I should hate myself for, and things that I have hated myself for. Of that, I am certain. I have loved many people and lost nearly all of them. And, in a very real sense, I have spent too much of this lifetime lowly grovelling under the influence of my highest highs. These are certainly not points of pride. They don't make me feel better about myself. No, I shoulder this baggage because I have to. I wear this crown of thorns because it is simply what I have made for myself. My life is not without regrets; in fact, the way I see it, my life is nothing short of a list of regrets.

And yet, I do not despair. I do not hate myself. I wouldn't change a thing about the life that I have lived. The tears I shed now are not for my future. They are for my past. This is not a story of who I am. This is a story of who I was. These songs are merely the soundtrack of what once was. I get to decide who I am becoming. And that is not something I despair.

It's something I cherish.

"If I could start again, a million miles away, I would keep myself. I would find a way."