This will be a personal blog for me to keep track of songs that has helped me over the years to battle life’s trials and tribulations. Hopefully, they will continue to remind me not to repeat my mistakes and avoid negativity in thinking in the future. Spoken like a true cognitive therapist *v* Music effectively keep me alive during the darkest times of my life, I have great respect for songwriters. What makes a good song to me? It doesn’t have to be popular, nor indie, it doesn’t have to have strong lyrically or with special musical arrangement/singing technique. It has to mean something to me at that particular point in time when I hear it. It may resonate with my heart when I’m going through relationship woes, or I may have heard it with someone special at a concert. Special songs are like photographs, snippets of our life are captured in them.
I used to have a mantra – to never reminisce the past, There was a period of time when I made myself embrace the latest, most contemporary music. I didn’t want to grow old to be one of those folks who always listen to oldies radio. But eventually I realised the (cliche 
) good music, like fashion, never fades with time, and like a good book, great lyrics gives new meaning as we revisit them when we grow older, viewing them with new perspectives and learned temperaments. It is sometimes amusing, embarrassing and humbling to remember the songs that made a difference in the earlier stages of my life. To know that mundane or seemingly irrelevant issues could have such a galvanising effect on a younger me ;P. I may never experience the same pain or joy as I did when these songs were on repeat mode in my *cough* MP3 CD Player back in those days, but sometimes its amazing to learn how much more resilient I’ve grown from those angst-filled teenage years. Though sometimes, I wonder why I let myself wind up in a similar situation again.
This was probably my favourite song in 1997. I’m not sure if its true for all songs, but the songs I was exposed to then had lyrics that were more literal than today. I fell in love with the riffs and melody and the singer’s apparent angst. As an impressionable young girl I thought so by dying, the poor girl who had the abortion took the valium has immortalised her position in the guy’s heart, I loved the song so much I dated a guy with the CD in my teens. When I was in my freshmen year I was in a bad relationship and for the first time in my life, away from the comforts of home, I thought of hurting myself to remind him of the hurt he has caused me time and again. But logic triumphed. Or, quoting MGMT, love must be forgotten, life can always start up anew. Still, the song reminded me of the value of life and living for yourself and no one else, because, shit happens to relationships, and yes we all chose to fall in love in the first place, it is pointless to blame each other when things fall apart.
The Verve Pipe – The Freshmen
When I was young and knew everything
And she a punk who rarely ever took advice
Now I’m guilt stricken,
Sobbing with my head on the floor
Stop a baby’s breath and a shoe full of rice
I cant be held responsible
Cause she was touching her face
I wont be held responsible
She fell in love in the first place
For the life of me I cannot remember
What made us think that we were wise and
We’d never compromise
For the life of me cannot believe
We’d ever die for these sins
We were merely freshman
My best friend took a weeks
Vacation to forget her
His girl took a week’s worth of
Valium and slept
Now he’s guilt stricken sobbing with his
Head on the floor
Thinks about her now and how he never really
Wept he says
We’ve tried to wash our hands of all of this
We never talk of our lacking relationships
And how were guilt stricken sobbing with our
Heads on the floor
We fell through the ice when we tried not to
Slip, we’d say
