Thursday, May 10, 2007
The ride with you was worth the fall, my friend
Ever since I discovered yesterday in my finale frenzy that the title of next week's Grey's Anatomy finale is "Didn't We Almost Have It All?", the song has been swirling around in my head. That's not as bad as some of you may be imagining, because I secretly love that song. For one thing, it's really fun to sing at the top of your lungs. (As is Journey's "Open Arms." Just a little tip from me to you.) For another, it's the title of a section in one of my favorite books, Judy Blume's Summer Sisters, which I've made it a point to read at the beginning of each summer every year since my senior year in college. But the real reason I love the song is because it reminds me of my childhood, a fact that didn't hit home until I was finally forced to do what you have to do when you just can't get a song out of your head: download it on iTunes.
It was there that I became reacquainted with one of my favorite albums from my youth: Whitney Houston's sophomore release, Whitney. My family took a lot of car trips in my younger days, yet we had preciously few tapes that my sister and I could listen to on our red (hers) and pink (mine) walkmans, which meant that every single tape left an indelible mark on my young heart. While I somehow managed to come into possession of a few of these tapes (I still have and listen to the Big Chill and Dirty Dancing soundtracks, although I'm pretty sure I lost the Beatles compilation and Huey Lewis & the News's Sports somewhere along the line), Whitney was one that slipped through the cracks. So when browsing through the album on iTunes this morning, it was like being reunited with an old friend.
Although I loved "I Wanna Dance With Somebody," "So Emotional" and "Didn't We Almost Have It All?" beyond all reason, my hands-down favorite on the album was "Love Is a Contact Sport," which was perhaps the most stupidly named song until Britney Spears came on the scene in the late '90s with "E-Mail My Heart." The reason for this love was simple: When I was in second grade, a new dance and gymnastics studio opened up in my town. My sister and I, despite having no indications of gymnastic talent, immediately ditched dance (we had already been taking tap and ballet for a couple years at a studio in another town) and signed up for gymnastics. We were so bad at it that we didn't make the cut to perform in the big recital at the end of the year, and therefore we had to sit in the audience while all of our friends who had smartly stuck with dance got to perform. The crowning performance that year was a number featuring the "big girls" (i.e., the few high-schoolers who still took dance) and the "little girls" (our friends) as opposing football teams, set to the tune of "Love Is a Contact Sport." They got to wear really big T-shirts that looked like football jerseys--the big girls' said "Big Angels," and the little girls' said "Little Devils." Oh, how I coveted those big T-shirts! The only thing that could comfort me during this dire time was listening to the song repeatedly on my walkman and imagining myself on stage with the big girls, too.
You know, I think I probably need to cut off this musical trip down memory lane before I start downloading Mariah Carey and Celine Dion, both of whom nursed me through many an adolescent heartbreak.
Ever since I discovered yesterday in my finale frenzy that the title of next week's Grey's Anatomy finale is "Didn't We Almost Have It All?", the song has been swirling around in my head. That's not as bad as some of you may be imagining, because I secretly love that song. For one thing, it's really fun to sing at the top of your lungs. (As is Journey's "Open Arms." Just a little tip from me to you.) For another, it's the title of a section in one of my favorite books, Judy Blume's Summer Sisters, which I've made it a point to read at the beginning of each summer every year since my senior year in college. But the real reason I love the song is because it reminds me of my childhood, a fact that didn't hit home until I was finally forced to do what you have to do when you just can't get a song out of your head: download it on iTunes.
It was there that I became reacquainted with one of my favorite albums from my youth: Whitney Houston's sophomore release, Whitney. My family took a lot of car trips in my younger days, yet we had preciously few tapes that my sister and I could listen to on our red (hers) and pink (mine) walkmans, which meant that every single tape left an indelible mark on my young heart. While I somehow managed to come into possession of a few of these tapes (I still have and listen to the Big Chill and Dirty Dancing soundtracks, although I'm pretty sure I lost the Beatles compilation and Huey Lewis & the News's Sports somewhere along the line), Whitney was one that slipped through the cracks. So when browsing through the album on iTunes this morning, it was like being reunited with an old friend.
Although I loved "I Wanna Dance With Somebody," "So Emotional" and "Didn't We Almost Have It All?" beyond all reason, my hands-down favorite on the album was "Love Is a Contact Sport," which was perhaps the most stupidly named song until Britney Spears came on the scene in the late '90s with "E-Mail My Heart." The reason for this love was simple: When I was in second grade, a new dance and gymnastics studio opened up in my town. My sister and I, despite having no indications of gymnastic talent, immediately ditched dance (we had already been taking tap and ballet for a couple years at a studio in another town) and signed up for gymnastics. We were so bad at it that we didn't make the cut to perform in the big recital at the end of the year, and therefore we had to sit in the audience while all of our friends who had smartly stuck with dance got to perform. The crowning performance that year was a number featuring the "big girls" (i.e., the few high-schoolers who still took dance) and the "little girls" (our friends) as opposing football teams, set to the tune of "Love Is a Contact Sport." They got to wear really big T-shirts that looked like football jerseys--the big girls' said "Big Angels," and the little girls' said "Little Devils." Oh, how I coveted those big T-shirts! The only thing that could comfort me during this dire time was listening to the song repeatedly on my walkman and imagining myself on stage with the big girls, too.
You know, I think I probably need to cut off this musical trip down memory lane before I start downloading Mariah Carey and Celine Dion, both of whom nursed me through many an adolescent heartbreak.
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