My Soundtrack

I love music and especially song lyrics.

I have a song for every situation and have been known to talk in song lyrics from time to time, especially after a few too many drinks.

So when I saw that the prompt for Mama Kat’s Writer’s Workshop was to write about the songs that tell your life story, I couldn’t resist.

I decided to make this list more of a soundtrack, picking out the songs that have been the background music to different times in my life.

So with out further ado here is The Life and Time’s of Jul Hunter Vol 1 (cause this story is far from over).

Life and Times of Julia Hunter Vol 1.

Jersey Girl – Bruce Springsteen

“cause down the shore everything’s allright”

It would be hard to have a soundtrack of my life without paying homage to the state that I call home and what better way to do that than with Bruce’s Jersey Girl.

Waterfalls- TLC

“I seen a rainbow yesterday but too many storms have come and gone”

Oh, how my friends and I loved to act out this video while swimming in my pool when we were 13 years old. Fights regularly broke out over who got to be Lisa “Left Eye” Lopez. I think this was because we all wanted to get the chance to bust out the rap chorus.

All I Really Want – Alanis Morissette

“Do I stress you out, My sweater is on backwards and inside out, And you say how appropriate, I don’t want to dissect everything today, I don’t mean to pick you apart you see, but I can’t help it”

I can still remember the first time I heard the opening guitar chords of this song. I was 14 and on a bus to New York the day after Christmas with my family, and I had just popped the Jagged Little Pill CD into my new Sony Discman. The moment I listened to that CD my life was different, for the first time I felt that someone had put a voice to all the angst and confussion I had been feeling. Every track on this CD could have a place on my soundtrack but I choose this one because it’s still the song I blast from my car when I’m having a bad day.

Don’t Look Back in Anger – Oasis

“Step outside cause summer time’s in bloom….So, Sally can wait she knows it’s too late as were walking on by, my soul slides away, we don’t look back in anger”

High School was never an easy time for me, but I loved the summers in between those school years. They were filled with long days on the beach, nights on the boardwalk and boys. Oh those boys of summer. From 15 -17 summer, was all about nights spent on the boardwalk picking up boys. But once the summer was over life in my small town returned to its stand still pace, with me and my BFF’s waiting for summer to arrive again.

Crush – Dave Matthews Band

 “Am I right side up or upside down, is this real or am I dreaming”

The night John and I shared our first kiss I blared this song on repeat the whole way home from his house. And, yes, we were 18 when we started dating.

Changes in Lattitude – Jimmy Buffett

 “I didn’t ponder the question too long I was hungry I went out for a bite, ran into a chum with a bottle of rum and we wound up drinking all night…if we couldn’t laugh we would all go insane”

Picking a song to sum up college is hard. There were days when we sang Only the Good Die Young and an apartment who’s bathroom we covered in Ja Rule lyrics. And a time when memorizing the words to Ludacris’s, What’s Your Fantasy, seemed like a great way to pass the afternoon. But college is when I fell in love with Key West, after having spent spring break there. It was also a time when everything was changing and yet so much still stayed the same and when it was over this song just always felt like the one.

Ignition – R. Kelly

 “Sippin on coke and rum, I’m like so what I’m drunk, it’s the freakin weekend baby I’m about to have me some fun”.

Whenever I hear this song I’m instantly 21 years old and sitting in the back seat of, my friend, Steve’s white Ford F-150. The music is up and the sub woofer is bouncing, the girls and I are singing and we are flying down the road on our way to the next bar.

Sweet Caroline – Neil Diamond

“Where it began I can’t begin to know it but then I know it’s growing strong.”

This song was the anthem of every drunken night of my early to mid 20’s. Every cover band in the land would play this song and every time my friends and I would make our way on to the dance floor to raise our bottles in a drunken sway. This was also the last song played at my wedding, because what’s a wedding without a good drunken sway.

In My Life – The Beatles

“But of all these friends and lovers there is no one compares with you… In my life I love you more”

Just the lyrics to this song bring a tear to my eye, which is why I walked down the aisle to it at my wedding.
 

Rapunzel – Dave Matthews Band

“I think the world of you with all of my heart I do, blood through my veins for you, you alone have all of me, from you my strength is full to carry your burdens too, I give my world to you, to you I will be true”

For John and I’s, two year dating anniversary I wrote the lyrics to this song in a card for him. Five years later these words became our wedding vows.

Dodo – Dave Matthews Band

“Why would you play by the rules, who did, you did, you”

This song is Jackson’s lullabye and I’m fully aware that a song about the extinction of the Dodo bird is an odd song for a lullabye. But the whole time I was pregnant the words to this song kept popping into my head. Maybe it’s because it begins with the words, “Once upon a time”, maybe it’s because it sounds whimsical, or maybe I’m just a little crazy. Whatever the case it came naturally for me to sing this song to Jack and he’s never complained.

Bonus Track – Mr. Brightside – The Killers

“Coming out of my cage and I’ve been doing just fine, gotta be down because I want it all”

Because what great cd doesn’t have a bonus track and because this is MY SONG, as in jumping up and down screaming it at the top of my lungs, mine.