Reigniting the School Girl Crush for Music

Perhaps this is something that happens as we get older.

I am admittedly in my definitive mid-thirties. It is less and less, seemingly, that I find full albums that I become completely enamoured of and attached to like I did when I was in my teens. It's rare that I even get to listen to an album fully, let alone hear it more than once or twice. Often, I'll remember a song but not the artist, which is a turn from who I was in my teens. Back then, it seems I had to know everything about the artists I liked.

I'm thinking of this because I chose The Cure's Album Disintegration (1989) in my Spotify list just a bit ago. Everytime I listen to the album, I remember being 16 or 17, dancing around to the tape that had been recorded for me by a fellow co-worker at my very first job. "Here," she said excitedly, "I love this and think you will, too."

I did love the tape as well as the other tapes she recorded for me. Sonic Youth's Goo, and Depeche Mode's Violator along with The Cure's album quickly became some of my favorite and most listened to music. I would turn the volume up dangerously loud when my parents and brothers were not at home and dance around the living room, feeling that I could ride on the music. I became obsessed just as I might have with a serious school girl crush. Robert Smith and the lushness of his music, Sonic Youth's course tones and experimentation, and the sensualness of Dave Gahan's baritone voice were features that I had never experienced before.

I grew up listening to my parents' music, like most of us do. It was good stuff. The Gap Band, Parliament, Marvin Gaye, Cameo, and Sheila E are some of the groups and artists that come readily to mind. We listened to the radio, as well. George Micheal, Madonna, Prince, Dr. Dre, and whatever other pop, rap, R&B, and Soul was playing at the time, permeated my consciousness.

I suppose at about that time, I was starving for something new. That is the time, afterall that we've begun forming our own views about the world and our own tastes. I just hope that I don't become stuck in an age when I am certain that there is so much wonderfulness happening in the world of music. It's time to be just as hungry again, to find new favorites that my heart and musical ear just won't let go of.

***originally published at Yahoo Voices.