The Songs That Shaped Me: The First 10 Years
I turned 51 this year. It’s a year past the round-number milestone, sure, but I am old enough to realize two things:
a) I’m in the last half of my life
and
b) Plenty of people don’t make it this far.
My friend Chuck Small over at tnocs.com is working on a list of songs that have influenced his life, one for every year he’s been earthside. His brilliant idea inspired me to consider my own. Music provides my entry into my core memories and all the things that root me to my personal history. I find, in many cases, that the songs that most stick with me are the ones that provide backdrops to particular memories, and that those are the ones that move me most (as opposed to the ones that I or critics might call objectively best). Without further ado, here is the first set of songs that shaped me.
1972: “G-Man Hoover” by Van Dyke Parks. This one is … not exactly a Billboard hit. It was, however, on heavy rotation in the Cagle household when I was a kid, and the album on which this is was a big part of my childhood soundtrack. I loved this song, in part because most of the lyrics are easy to remember. The chorus goes like this:
A-rat-a-tat, tat
A-rat-a-tat, tat
A-rat-a-tat, tat
A-rat-a-tat, G-Man Hoover.
I never stood a chance at being a conventional child.
1973: “Superstition” by Stevie Wonder. This year has many honorable mentions, many of them by Stevie Wonder. His masterpiece Innervisions came out this year, which is one of those albums that grabs my heart every time I hear it. If “Visions” and “All in Love Is Fair” don’t destroy you, make sure that all is in working order with you. I could have picked Gladys Knight & the Pips’ “Midnight Train to Georgia,” which sparked my initial childhood career goal of being a Pip. (“Superstar! But he didn’t get far!”) There’s also “Us and Them” from Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon and “Space Oddity” by possibly my favorite all-time musician, David Bowie. Both those songs exerted their power on me later in life.
1974: “Time in a Bottle” by Jim Croce. When I was in elementary school, my dad had to drop me off at school early to get to work. One teacher kept her room open for the early arrivals and every morning, we watched a rerun of “I Dream of Jeannie” on TBS. During the show, Time/Life Music ran commercials for several of their musical compilations. They ran the same commercials at the same time, day after day, for months. One was for an album of Jim Croce’s Greatest Hits. I begged, but Mom wouldn’t let this album into the house because Jim Croce was “cheesy.” (It was the same reason John Denver wasn’t allowed into the house. A few years later, when she was forced to play “Annie’s Song” and “Sunshine On My Shoulders” for a wedding and I spotted the sheet music on her piano, I taught myself to play it, much to her consternation.)
For years, the only part of “Time in a Bottle” I knew was the first few measures: “If I could save time in a bottle/The first thing that I’d like to do — ” because that was where the commercial cut it off. WHAT? WHAT WOULD HE LIKE TO DO? It wasn’t until I met my husband, an unabashed Jim Croce fan, that I heard the rest of it. I cried. A childhood mystery resolved in the most beautiful, sentimental way: “The first thing that I’d like to do/Is to save every day ’til eternity passes away /Just to spend them with you.”
Honorable mention to “Don’t Eat the Yellow Snow” by Frank Zappa, which is the best advice one can give or receive.
1975: “Wish You Were Here,” Pink Floyd. I spent a horrible drunken night in college (sorry, Dad) with this album on loop, and I still love it and could listen to it, sober, on loop right now. Its lyrics speak of alienation from someone formerly close, realizing that you both want the same things and maybe you can’t get them from each other, and wishing things were different. The complexity of this push and pull, longing and distance, combined with David Gilmour’s subtle and wistful playing, falls squarely into “masterpiece” territory. Some songs, you turn up. I like listening to this one quietly, as if it’s a private moment between me and the band.
1976: “Convoy” by C.W. McCall. Damn if everybody and their brother didn’t have to make a disco song. Even David Bowie came out with a four-on-the-floor disco hit (“Golden Years”). This song made it into my early childhood thanks to my grandparents’ CB radio, into which I used to call myself Rubber Duck and yell, “We got us a CONVOY!”
I am tempted to say “Turn the Beat Around” by Vicki Sue Robinson because I spent a Christmas in the early aughts tormented by an infomercial for I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter! and its cover called “Turn the Tub Around,” which is still how I sing this song. But I’m not going to.
1977: “You Light Up My Life” by Debby Boone. I listened to very, very little popular music in my childhood because my parents were jazz musicians and had no contemporary popular music in the house. My mom had every single Beatles album, and a babysitter STOLE them. I am not sure when I heard this song, but I can tell you it grabbed me by my wee lapels. I can still sing every single lick from this song. I won a first-grade sleepover talent show for my rendition. Big bragging rights! (I also still know all the words to the B-side, “Hasta Mañana.” You’re not crying, I’m crying.)
Honorable mention to the entire Saturday Night Fever soundtrack, which I wore out. I can still sing every word to “How Deep is Your Love” and “More Than a Woman” (the Tavares version, please) and “If I Can’t Have You” by Yvonne Elliman.
1978: “Hopelessly Devoted to You” by Olivia Newton-John. This was about the time I realized that my minimal exposure to popular music was causing me social problems. The popular girls at school all knew every song from the Grease soundtrack and I, meanwhile, was singing “You Light Up My Life” at their talent show. After they gave me the homemade award, they asked me if I could sing “Hopelessly Devoted to You” and I’d never heard of it. My moment in the sun passed quickly.
My parents wouldn’t let six-year-old me see it, and I just didn’t understand. They did buy me the soundtrack so I could catch up with my peers. When I finally did see it in a second-run theater, a lot of it went over my head, but at least I could sing along with it. When I screened it for my own kids, I realized I was confused because it is all VERY ADULT.
1979: “We are Family” by Sister Sledge. In the last half of the year, right after my only sibling was born, you couldn’t escape this song because the Pittsburgh Pirates used it as their theme song when they won the World Series. My best friend (who is still a big part of my life and more like my brother) sang this song as such: “We are family/All my ugly sisters and me.” I am still unsure of the actual words to this song. He is the only person in my life outside my nuclear family who remembers my sister as a baby. I smile when I hear it because it reminds me of the family into which I was born, and also the family I have created for myself, and how all these bonds tether me to the earth. I sang this song to my kids when they were babies. “We are family, all my ugly sisters and me.” (Note: My own sister is beautiful and amazing.)
1980: Tie: “Never Knew Love Like This Before” by Stephanie Mills and “Keep On Loving You” by REO Speedwagon. I tried really hard, in the making of this list, not to do ties but in this one, I couldn’t choose because these songs hit me equally hard.
In this year, a small part of my life centered around radio. My father did a radio show on Sunday nights called “Just Jazz,” and I listened to him and all the songs that played around our house while I was falling asleep. I listened not only for him, but also for a radio commercial I made the year before. It was for Duffy’s Pizza, a local chain that happened to be my favorite, so I could speak about it with genuine enthusiasm. When it crossed my mind, I would turn on my slightly wonky Mickey Mouse radio, hoping for independent proof of my fame. In this year, there were two times when my music alarm came on and I didn’t hear commercials, and these two songs were the ones that came on. They both blew my mind. I find myself carried by a wave of nostalgia when I hear them because they signaled a musical reckoning within me.
Honorable mentions: “Too Hot” by Kool & The Gang, to which I did my first holding-hands slow skate; “Hey You” by Pink Floyd, which transports me to my alienated high school years; “Another One Bites the Dust” by Queen, to which my best friend and I walked around singing at the New Hanover County Fair; “9 to 5” by Dolly Parton; and “Ashes to Ashes” by David Bowie.
Did I ever hear my radio commercial? No. No, I did not.
1981: “Centerfold” by The J. Geils Band. Before fourth grade, my best friend moved from our sleepy coastal town to the state capital. I channeled all my sadness and loneliness into jumping rope. I became a master. I could do all the tricks. I could skip, I could twist the rope, jump in and out when two people were holding the rope, double-dutch, you name it. That is how much sadness and loneliness was in me.
When Jump Rope For Heart (the fundraiser for the American Heart Association) came around, I was prepared. I was determined to jump rope for as long and as hard as I could. I wanted to win. Our whole very small private school participated, and we closed down the parking lot and all jumped rope. “Centerfold” played loudly over all of it and I sang along with gusto: “My blood’s running cold/My memory has just been sold/My angel is a centerfold, my angel is a centerfold.” Now, I laugh hysterically.
The real winner of Jump Rope For Heart was the American Heart Association. Or it would have been, if only I’d remembered to collect pledges.
What did I get right? What did I get wrong? Look for the next decade to drop in a week or so!
