Three songs to the wind.

I feel like you're asking a lot of me by limiting the song choice to three. So I'm going to try by best to choose three good ones. I scanned through my iTunes to pick three epic songs that people would admire me for loving. But then I went a little further back then any of those songs would have taken me.

Billy Joel was one of my dad's favorite artists from the seventies. In the early days of High School I found his greatest hits album and fell in love. This shared love of his piano driven rock melodies and brilliant lyrics provided us with ample bonding time. I have distinct memories of driving around downtown Calgary listening to our favorite tunes and talking about how great we think he is. Scenes from an Italian Restaurant was and remains one of our favorites. It fills my heart with the joy of a shared father daughter experience in a way that can and should never be traded.

My best friend Karlie and I spent a lot of time driving in our last year of High School. We lived about forty minutes outside of the nearest city and were involved in music theory lessons in that city. This required us to spend at least eighty minutes a week together in a car. Beyond this, we liked to just go in, see a movie, go to Burger King, maybe do some shopping, drag AJ along if we wanted. We truly loved him and he survived a lot. Because of all of this time, a playlist developed making these songs forever reminiscent of the time, age and general angst. Alanis Morissette's Ironic was one of our favorites. We made up a story about one of the line's that I'm not going to tell. This songs takes me back to everything that we ever felt, planned, did and didn't do. High School wasn't the best four years of my life but those times, in that car, on that road, with Karlie, have to come close.

This last one is just for me. It doesn't involve any bonding experiences and doesn't take me that far back. In the last year of my undergrad degree, a professor told me about how his brother took a music fast for two weeks. He didn't avoid the music others were listening to but stopped putting it on for himself. He said that after the two weeks, music became entirely new for him. I took this on for myself and miraculously survived. I'd never survived any sort of fast before. The first album I listened to was Sufjan Stevens' Seven Swans. To Be Alone with You continues to change me, every time I listen to it.

So I seriously suggest you follow these links and listen to the songs. The whole songs. And while you're at it listen to Sia's Lullaby, The Killers Good-night, Travel Well and Ingrid Michaelson's The Chain. These were all songs that didn't have the story behind them to include in this post.

So what about you, Suz? Speak your experience of music.