Tuesday Music Crop: Erin Music
Tuesday Music Crop: Erin Music
A sampling of my betterworse half's USB drive
This past week, I went camping with Erin on the North Shore of Lake Superior in Minnesota. Fantastic trip. People are saying it’s the best trip they’ve ever seen. They’re saying it, it’s true.
I’ll write a massive blog post on that… eventually. In the meantime, something else!
Erin’s exposed me to a fair amount of her music during the course of our relationship; most of it I could leave or perhaps take, as one might expect with dueling interests. Some of it I love!
What follows is a collection of Erin’s music (much of it found on her infuriating1 USB drive she plugs into her car) that I am thankful she has shared with me.
(Note: the Spotify preview seems cached at an earlier point where I was building it; opening the Spotify playlist itself should yield the full list of songs)
Yusuf / Cat Stevens - If You Want To Sing Out, Sing Out
A wonderful song that puts me in a good mood.
Cat Stevens changed his name to Yusuf Islam after converting to… Islam. He then seems to have changed back, or at least partially. I don’t have the time to write about it — and don’t really know enough to — but personal transformations are interesting to me and add color to a character, so I thought you might like to know.
Mark Ronson [but really Amy Winehouse] - Valerie
(The above video lists the authors as “Amy Winehouse ft. Mark Ronson”, which I think is more appropriate, but that is not the official credit for the song).
Mark Ronson (of Uptown Funk infamy) seems to have remixed this song, which was originally created by Amy Winehouse in 1968, from what I can tell.
Erin originally showed me the Mark Ronson version. I wasn’t even aware there were multiple versions until I started writing this post.
Considering Amy Winehouse died in 2011, and this song was released after, I consider this to be a “dick move” — especially considering the song is credited to “Mark Ronson ft. Amy Winehouse”.
It’s her song, dick. You don’t even appear in it. Weird! Rude!
The Avett Brothers - The Ballad of Love and Hate
Erin did not show me The Avett Brothers; our shared appreciation for their music was something we bonded over (and still do to this day).
Still, we have slightly different collections of our favorite music of theirs. This is a song that I’ve grown to love, but would’ve otherwise looked it over if Erin hadn’t shared it with me.
The Avett Brothers - I Wish I Was
This song’s a lil’ bit creepy tbh.
Bob Dylan - Forever Young
I had already heard this song before I met Erin2, but not in this form.
My appreciation for Erin’s appreciation of Bob Dylan is mainly on the meta-level: we both like musicians whose voices are traditionally… bad… but who make it work anyways.
Bob Dylan is one of Erin’s favorite artists, and she often claims she wants to see him in concert before he dies. Except, as I’ve discovered, not if the setlist for his current tour sucks.
Billie Eilish - bad guy
I like this song! Erin likes it too, obviously.
Honestly, the reason Billie gets to be on my blog today is because, on her podcast, she spoke highly of my favorite band, KONGOS, and I think everyone should love KONGOS.
Simon & Garfunkel - Cecilia
This song’s percussion is great fun to play along to on one’s chest, belly, steering wheel, or the part of the car where the airbag blasts out on the passenger side. Ideally all simultaneously.
I’m convinced this song is actually about a cat. Take note: he never actually claims to have made love to Cecilia, only that he was making love with Cecilia in his bedroom. It’s about the fickle love of a cat. You know I’m right.
Van Morrison - Brown Eyed Girl
This is the first real song I learned on guitar, and all because Erin suggested that it’d be a good way to test my newfound “skills”.
I don’t actually know how much Erin even likes this song.
Green Day - 21 Guns
Another song that Erin showed me for the purpose of tricking me into practicing guitar.
Recently, I learned how to play it on drums — which is a lot more fun than learning it on guitar, tbh.
Still useful practice for each instrument, and a generally good song.
That’s all folks. I should caution that this doesn’t exactly give a good impression of Erin’s musical taste — just the ways in which it intersects with my own.
She has, in her playlist, a good bit of Taylor Swift and some Olivia Rodrigo, both of whom annoy me (the latter far more than the former) and are intentionally absent.
It’s two things, really. First: every song on there is a YouTube MP3 rip of a song — and what’s worse, it’s often of the music video, with all its additional unnecessary length and sound. Insanity. Second: she didn’t use Spotify until I signed us up for a duo account. I both love and hate this about her, as I love and hate myself.
Erin objects to the inclusion of this song on the grounds that I had heard this song before I met her, but A) I had heard it only in the form of a significantly-different cover as the theme song of the show Parenthood, and B) it’s my blog