mix: songs/stories

Some days, you hear a song and you automatically go, Damn that's a good story there.

Songs under cut

Your ex-lover is dead | Stars
Choice cut: "And all of that time you thought I was sad, I was trying to remember your name." ¹


We looked like giants | Death Cab for Cutie
Choice cut: "When every Thursday, I'd brave those mountain passes, and you'd skip your early classes, and we'd learn how our bodies worked."²


Casimir Pulaski day | Sufjan Stevens
Choice cut: "I remember at Michael's house, in the living room when you kissed my neck, and I almost touched your blouse."³


Prom | Sugarfree
Choice cut: Parang atin ang gabi.⁴


A place aside | Beth Orton
Choice cut: "We drive along these empty streets, the same old ones they've always been."⁵


Motorcycle drive-by | Third Eye Blind
Choice cut: "Visions of you on a motorcycle drive by: The cigarette ash flies in your eyes, and you don't mind; you smile."⁶


Don't you want to share the guilt | Kate Nash
Choice cut: "And so we sit in the garden, touch the grass with our hands."⁷


Cross my heart | Everything But the Girl
Choice cut: "Drunk and on the end of your phone."


Signs | Bloc Party
Choice cut: "I see signs now, all the time."


That's me trying | William Shatner
Choice cut: "I got your address from the phone book at the library..."

FOOTNOTES TO THIS MIXTAPE:
¹ Yes. This story always.
² Actually a toss-up between this and Photobooth ("And our clothes in a pile on the ottoman" and "all that's left/empty bottles, spent cigarettes/so pack a change of clothes, because it's time to move on") -- though this one gets plus points for its title. Yep.
³ Oh my god, just. Everything about this song. ("And He takes, and He takes...) *tears*
⁴ Para bang wala tayong katabi. Yihee. Song makes me wish I had a better prom/knew I was into girls in high school/etc.
⁵ Driving through empty streets and ghosts of old habits? Shoo-in.
⁶ Far too many 3EB songs with good stories; had considerably hard time deciding between this and a few others -- The Background ("The plans I make still have you in them"), God of Wine, Blinded. But the detail about sleeping on the couch when he visited this girl in Motorcycle drive-by -- SOLD.
⁷ I love this crazy song. It starts with barbecue, and ends rather breathlessly. Classic narration of tentative intervention and falling into awkward evasiveness, etc.
⁸ Choice videoke song c. 2005. Too true, and am always glad to measure and re-measure, time and again, how far I've come from that place. Haha.
⁹ Either this, or Sunday (giant proclamations are all very well, but our love is louder than words), but the intro to Signs kills me every time.
¹⁰ Too honest, too raw, and something about the way Shatner talks. Of all the heartbreaking songs I have managed to listen to all these years, this one stands on its own in its own heartbreak topic (that one where the dad tries to reconnect with his estranged daughter.) Here, take a look: lyrics