Eight Desert Island Tracks-Songs From My Early Childhood
I like a lot of different types of music and it was hard to pick just eight
BBC Radio 4 has a podcast called BBC 4 Desert Island Tracks. I live in the United States but I found out about this podcast from a fellow writer, Belcairn. She’s tagged me in her story and I definitely wanted to take part in my own list of songs I’d take with me to a desert island.
I’m going to start by saying that I had trouble paring this list down to just eight songs. I’d have massive lists depending on the genre, the decade, and whether the song was by an artist, group, or a few individuals. The list I’ve decided to share today was from the 1980s, and mostly the 1990s, which were the early decades of my childhood.
My list will mostly consist of ballads as I not only love singing along to those but also because I’m a huge lovey sap. I tried to capture songs from several different genres. I didn’t capture them all and I’ve doubled up on some of my favorites, especially in the era of my life I’m capturing. Here’s the list in chronological order:
“Right Here Waiting”-Richard Marx (1989)
I was six years old, nearly seven when this song came out on the radio in the summer of 1989. This song holds a special place in my heart as I grew up loving this song. My mom would always play the radio and it would be stuck on the dial of the adult contemporary station. I had a lot of these songs get stuck in my head. This was still well before I was even allowed to listen to my own music, including hip hop and rap, which my mom didn’t quite approve of. This song was mom-approved though and would also be one of my American Idol audition songs when I got older and tried out for the show.
“Unchained Melody”-The Righteous Brothers, re-released for the movie, Ghost (1990)
Okay, so I cheated for my number two song to follow the timeline but that was my first major exposure to the song. Yeah, my parents somehow let that movie slip through the cracks and I was able to watch that movie at the age of eight years old. We had that VHS copy in our living room for years. I’m almost certain that my mom still has that copy somewhere lying around somewhere in her house in California. We always watched that movie together as a family. Thinking back, that is still odd to me, but whatever, it was a good movie.
“Tears In Heaven”-Eric Clapton (1992)
This song came out in January 1992. I was nine years old at the time. Eric Clapton wrote this song about his son, who was also a child at the time, who had died. I knew that all around the time this song was released and I still connected with it. I felt connected to the song, possibly because I was already so morbid at that age, or just because it was a beautiful song with a lot of emotion behind it. What? I was a sensitive child and I loved songs that tapped into that. This song is also special to me as an adult as it was my very first audition song for American Idol and also one of my first karaoke songs as an adult. The version on MTV Unplugged as a kid was my favorite version of the song and made me cry.
“Creep”-Radiohead (1992)
This song right here also came out the same year like the Eric Clapton song. I was ten years old when this song came out as it came out in September, a month after my tenth birthday. This song instantly connected with me as I’d always felt like an outsider, even as a kid. I was the smartest and nerdiest kid in my class. I was also a bit of an overachiever and had very few friends. I would sing the lyrics as gospel for my life, “I’m a creep, I’m a weirdo, what the hell am I doing here? I don’t belong here…” This song had also become one of my regular karaoke songs as an adult as I’ve always been able to connect emotionally with the song.
“I Will Always Love You”-Whitney Houston (1992)
This one is from another movie I thought I would be too young to watch at the time. My mom loved Kevin Costner so I got to watch the Bodyguard as a kid. I was ten years old when this song came out in November 1992. I had already known the Dolly Parton original song from 1974 since my dad had gone to high school in the ’70s and that was his preferred era of music when I was a child. It was almost as if for a time he was stuck in the ’70s himself. To my ears, even though Dolly Parton’s song was sung so tenderly and sweet in the original country version, I loved the way Whitney Houston elevated that song and knocked the socks off of the original. Every time she goes up in the song and belts some of the song’s most powerful notes, I’m taken on an adventure. I would have to say this version of this particular song is probably my favorite song of all time if I had to pick just one.
“The Power of Love”-Celine Dion (1993)
This song came out on the radio in November 1993, when I was eleven years old. This was the anthem of my sixth-grade year. Celine Dion was my favorite singer as a young kid. I was a fan of the 1990s divas, Whitney, Mariah, and Celine, in general. I would’ve never admitted that to any of my classmates. They would’ve seen me as way too sensitive and just added to the list of reasons to further isolate myself. It’s not like I had many friends, to begin with, but I didn’t want to willingly give them ammunition. I honestly could’ve picked many of Celine’s songs from my childhood, but this one is the longer power ballad that I had been accustomed to enjoying as a young boy.
“One Sweet Day”-Mariah Carey & Boyz II Men (1995)
Well, you had to know looking at my previous selections that the third in my favored trio of 90s pop divas had to be in here. Mariah Carey was definitely the one in my song list that has the most versatile vocal range. I’d love how she could effortlessly go from singing super low and hitting that sweet mid-range and then just jump up to those impossibly difficult whistle notes she had become popular for. She had already established herself as one of my favorites before she combined her efforts with one of my favorite boy bands of the 1990s. This was even before the boy band resurgence of the late 1990s, which coincided with my high school days. This song came out when I was 13 years old in November 1995. I was in eighth grade and that was when I started listening to more music than just what my parents were listening to. My mom was always a fan of Mariah Carey so this one was still mom-approved. I didn’t know if she’d actually like it or not because of a heavier R&B influence that she normally didn’t gravitate towards. I think it was the powerful vocals and moving lyrics that got to her with this one.
“If I Ruled The World (Imagine That)”-Nas & Lauryn Hill (1996)
Last, but not least, in June 1996, Nas and Lauryn Hill released a track at the end of my middle school run called “If I Ruled The World.” This track was definitely the hip-hop track I gravitated towards going into my high school years. I was still an overachieving nerd and had some huge ambitions of changing the world. I even believed that someday I would be able to run for President of the United States. For someone as smart as I was, I was certainly naive and idealistic. Simpler times. This song definitely appealed to that sense of wanting to make things better for the people around me. Plus, it was an election year. Bill Clinton was running for re-election and I was hyped for the Presidential election that year even though I couldn’t vote until four years later in 2000.
This isn’t a complete list of songs that were the soundtrack of my young childhood before high school but it’s definitely a good start. These would be my eight songs because these tracks would take me back to those days and remind me of much simpler and happier times.
This was a great writing prompt and I want to thank Belcairn again for tagging me in this. I know we’ll never be famous and that’s who this podcast normally asks this question of but it’s nice to get to participate in something so cool.
I’d like to see what Adrienne Beaumont, JoAnn Ryan, The Garrulous Glaswegian, Sally Prag (AKA Saag Paneer), KiKi Walter (Mama Ki), Linda Ng, Christopher Robin, Sreese, (Canadian Idol) Bernice Puzon, (Indian Idol) Gaurav Jain, Preeti Ramachandran, Kathy Copeland Padden, Sandra Jasionowska (I wonder if your list is mostly going to be Polish or a variety of songs, I can’t wait to find out), Ira Robinson, Michael L Butler, and Scott Younkin.
