Songs that Make me Pull my Car over

1) Tears for Fears, "Break it Down Again."

This song takes me back to DC in about 2007.  It was about the height of my "spinning my wheels" phase (a phase I am not quite sure I have yet grown out of).  The lyrics about "sitting on a time bomb" and "the beauty of decay" particularly spoke to me.  I'm not sure why entirely, but if I had to venture a guess it had to do with elements of the Pyrrhic victory or the lost cause.  Either way, after I was fired from my job as a barista that year (and by "fired" I mean "came into work to find a padlock on the front gate") I pretty much wore out "Elemental."

2) The Magnetic Fields, "No one Will Ever Love You."

I think it's pretty self-explanatory why a song titled as such would make one weepy.  For me, however, it's the addition of the final word "honestly."  That is to say, "no one will ever love you honestly."  I guess the reason why that final word feels like the ultimate stake through the heart is that almost every human relationship, at least to me, invariably involves some degree of deception.  This goes double for me; I do not see how anyone could ever love me without at least some corner of my eternally fucked-up personality being concealed from them.  Does this mean I'm just plain un-lovable, or that every human on the planet is plain un-lovable?  Or, does love generally involve some level of deception, self and/or otherwise?

3) Counting Crows, "Round Here."

For some year, ever since the year 2006, the lyric "round here/we roar like lions but sacrifice like lambs" sends me bawling like an infant.  I cannot for the life of myself say why.

4) New Order, "Bizarre Love Triangle."

There are a couple of reasons this song affects me.  First, it involves the intellectual exercise New Order seems to insert into all of their songs and albums.  None of them ever seem to fit with their titles, and there seems to be the additional element of trying to match which titles seems to better fit which song.  Second, there is the fact that the song's chorus seems to involve attempting to invoke a higher power for the benefit of another person, and this song wormed its way into my consciousness at about the same time I began losing my faith in any sort of interactive deity.  Finally, I cannot believe that the most mainstream of New Order songs (and an upbeat dance-able one at that) has such a lachrymose affect on me.

5) Radiohead, "True Love Waits."

Because, quite simply, this song reminds me of all of my failings, past and present.

That is all.