Olllllllld music meme

[liv]

Back when I first started blogging, there used to be a thing called "Friday Five" where you would answer a series of five questions as a way to generate content when you couldn't think of much else. I never did this Friday Five four years ago when it was doing the rounds, and for some reason it popped up into my brain recently. I think it's because I've been expanding my music collection a bit via emusic, and because the listy format appeals to that part of my brain.

Five songs you're embarrassed to admit to liking
It's customary to babble about not being embarrassed by low-brow tastes, so take that as read. But these are untrendy and not great works of art either:

• Jon Bon Jovi: Always
  Yay soppy soft rock love songs! Thuggish Poet and I used to run through the streets singing this to eachother, loudly and tunelessly.

  And I'll love you
  Till the end of time
  Till the heavens burst
  And the words don't rhyme...

• The Bangels: Eternal flame
  Liked it when I was just discovering pop music, and I still have a soft spot for it.
• Alanis Morissette: Mary Jane
  Alanis Morissette is utterly uncool, but this song is a story with some characterization and I rather like Alanis' voice, even though the music is extremely derivative.
• Black Sabbath: Iron man
  I love how bad the scansion is in this, it's almost McGonagall levels of awful. It's also somewhat cool that there is a metal song based on Ted Hughes' novella, even if the song is really bad.

  Can he walk at all
  Or if he moves, will he fall?

• Lou Bega: Mambo No. 5
  The Most Adorable Boy in the World loved this when he was a tiny baby, presumably because of the strong rhythm but MK claims it's because he recognized his mother's name in the list of women that the singer is involved with. And it's sexist and trashy and all that but it's so very catchy!

Five songs that turn you on

• Indigo Girls: Blood and fire
  Associated with an extremely memorable incident.
• The Cure: Lullaby

  Don't struggle like that
  Or I will only love you more

• Tori Amos: Leather
  Or pretty much anything of Tori's for that matter, I have a huge crush on her voice.
• Inkubus Sukkubus: I am the one

  I am the angel of your desire
  Burning into your soul
  I am the pyre, I am the vampire
  Come to set you alight

• Tindersticks: Milky teeth

  Hey you know I'm a kisser
  And I loved you for that mouth
  Hey you know I'm a listener
  And I loved you for what comes out.
  See these teeth, they're so milky
  You could trust them with your neck...

  Actually putting that lot together suggests a much more kinky sensibility than I would normally associate myself with. But hey.

Five songs that make you cry

• Édith Piaf: Milord

  Il emenait avec lui
  La douce aux yeux si tendres
  Qui n'a pas sû comprendre
  Qu'elle brisait votre vie
  
  [Taking with it / the sweet one with the gentle eyes / who could hardly understand / she was destroying your life]

  Apart from the melancholy words, it's a breakup song.
• Indigo Girls: Get out the map
  This song made me cry over a breakup months and months after it actually happened and I had refused to cry, because of associations more than because the words are actually relevant to anything.

  I'm gonna clear my mind
  I'm gonna drink the sun
  I'm gonna love you good and strong
  while our love is good and young

• Levellers: Another man's cause
  At least, when I heard this live recently it made me cry about the state of the world.

  Now your brother he was killed in the Falklands
  Fighting for another man's cause
  And your daddy he was killed in the last war
  And your mother, now she's lying home alone

• Simon and Garfunkel: For Emily, wherever I may find her
  My best love used to look into my eyes and sing along to I love you girl. It's sort of happy tears though, cos I associate the song with being happy in love, not with breaking up.
• Renaud: Mistral gagnant
  No particular associations, just a very sad song about impermanence.

Five songs that make you happy

• Turtles: Elenore
• Mr Big: To be with you
• Was (Not Was): Shake your head
• The KLF: Justified and ancient
• Bowling for Soup: I don't wanna rock

Five songs you really care about

• Red Hot Chili Peppers: Under the bridge
  I loved this passionately when I was being an emo teenager and it was in the charts.
• Nirvana: Lithium
  Pretty much everybody my age likes Nirvana, so I'm not claiming any originality here. But the whole of Nevermind was a big thing in my teenage years and I haven't grown out of it at all.
• Sisters of Mercy: Under the gun
  This probably stands as the representative of all the new exciting music from outside the obvious commercial charts that doseybat introduced me to. There are lots of others that could fit here too, Levellers: Carry me, Alice Cooper: Poison, All About Eve: December, Hazel O'Connor (whom I've just rediscovered, woo!): Will you, Metallica: Unforgiven, Puressence: I suppose and several of the songs in the earlier sections too. Yay Bat.
• Beth Orton: She cries your name
  This one comes from lethargic_man and it just makes my hair stand on end, it's as close as human endeavour gets to perfection.
• Tindersticks: Tiny tears
  Got me through some tough times, and I come back to it when I need spiritual refreshment. It's a very, very down-beat song which I think is about suicide, and even then it manages not to be the most depressing thing Tindersticks have come out with. But it's also powerful, and sometimes when the world is just too inexplicably horrible the only comfort I can find is that there is art which outlasts the pain. Tiny tears is that kind of song.

  Tiny tears make up an ocean
  Tiny tears make up sea
  Don't let them pour out, pour out all over
  Don't let them pour out, all over me

Five songs you're really digging right now

• Hem: Radiation vibe
  I heard this on Pandora just before it was blocked to US only, and the singer's voice grabs my heartstrings while the melody is really catchy.
• Catie Curtis: People look around
  I don't normally bother with songs about US politics, but Curtis' voice made me sit up and take notice, and then I realized that the lyrics are very clever too. Another Pandora find.

  If they can keep us fighting another endless war,
  How many tears before the truth cannot be ignored?
  And the truth is bigger than these drops of rain, falling,
  Falling in the ocean

• VNV Nation: Chrome
  Both Judgement and Matter + Form are on emusic, to my great delight. I love both albums, probably the most recent, Judgement, more as an album but some of the tracks on Matter + Form from 2005 are absolutely sublime. I thought Futureperfect was great until I heard these. It was rysmiel who introduced me to VNV Nation.
• Peter and the Wolf: Killing Time
• Modernaire: Faites tes jeux [sic]
  I've been scouring j4's and blue_mai's journals for music recs, and those are the two tracks that have grabbed me most just now. There are several others though, so thank you both.

I'm not a great believer in pressuring people to do memes. If you like this one, you're very welcome to it. I think I probably picked it up from darcydodo, but I filled it before going back to look up the details so my memory wasn't precisely accurate. The same goes for some of the lyrics, they might be a bit misheard or misremembered.