Music and Memory

 Music has always been a big part of my memories for most of my life, even before making music became a large part of my life 

1. As I mentioned in my last post, I really love One Direction, but the first person I knew that was obsessed with them was my childhood best friend. I lived in a tiny town in Pennsylvania until I was about 9 and moved to South Carolina, but it was the kind of town where everyone knew everyone and everyone on my street was super close. I probably spent more time at her house than I did at mine and one day, probably soon after the Midnight Memories album came out, she brought me over to play it with her, and I still have such a vivid memory of me trying to sing a song I’d never heard before and my best friend badly playing guitar along with me. I’m sure we both laughed so much after we finally gave up since we never tried again and I have no idea if she remembers this, but I think about it often. Even though we lost contact years ago, every time I listen to this song I think of her. 

2. This song is originally by Jason Isbell, but I’ve always listened to the Noah Kahan and Wesley Shultz version. This song was introduced to me and my best friend (shoutout Scout!!) by their ex-boyfriend a couple years ago and even though they broke up ages ago (and he sucks) we always joke that introducing us to this song is one of the few good things he did. I think this song is beautiful and so reflective, and I always remember the first time I ever heard it and how much has changed since that time, but also thinking about the constants that have also been a part of my life.

3. I’ve known this song for most of my life, but I developed a closer relationship with it at a summer camp after my freshman year of high school. The camp was a week long and there was a choir of people from different groups that performed a couple times throughout the week and this was one of the songs that was chosen for that year. I remember one of the music leaders that year was a big U2 fan and after talking to us about what we were going to sing he said “Everyone needs to know at least one U2 song, so I guess this can be y’all’s.” While there’s nothing anywhere close to profound about that statement, it has stuck with me for years since that moment, and even though I am familiar with other U2 songs, this is always the one I come back to. We did more elaborate arrangements that week, but this one had very simple harmonies and at the performance we all just sat on the edge of the stage to sing. Even though we were singing in front of more than 1,000 other people, it really just felt like I was singing with my friends, and it was more special since it was on the last day of camp so it was the last time I saw most of those people. While I do love the U2 version, the Sarah Jarosz version is the one we based our performance off of, so that version feels closer in my memory than the original.