Friday Fun: The soundtrack of your life

[Thomas Schlegel]

Music, at its essence, is what gives us memories. And the longer a song has existed in our lives, the more memories we have of it   -  Stevie Wonder 

 This week's Friday Fun is exactly about this: music and memories. Let's talk about the soundtrack of your life. Are there albums or songs  you associate a story with? Unforgettable memories forever connected to a special piece of music?  Maybe music that changed your life?

The one who asks is the one who has to confess first... this is the soundtrack of my life:    (Although this would be much nicer with album covers, I will not add any of these images here, because of copyright reasons. You can easily find them online.) 

• "Fade to Grey" by "Visage" - this is the first record I bought by myself. I listened to this song for weeks, again and again and one more time. I'm sure, my parents went crazy. I loved the song, I still love it. My teenage years are the 80s (now, you can guess, how old I am...)  
• The 80s music was not too bad, but there were really strange pieces of music, especially in Germany. We listened to music we called "Neue Deutsche Welle" - most of this music is long forgotten and that's good... It was silly music with really crazy lyrics in German. Maybe you know "99 Red Ballons" - this came out of this "Neue Deutsche Welle" it was the biggest hit performed by Nena - but I liked the crazier ones, e.g. "Foyer des Arts" playing "Eine Königin mit Rädern untendran" - a stupid song about a queen on wheels  - another song I listened to for weeks...
• But then I discovered the first album of my life: "Our favourite shop" by The Style Council. It was the new band by Paul Weller after he quit The Jam (which I did not like btw). I still remember my fascination when I heard this album for the first time. It opened up a new universe of music for me: Jazzy tunes, trumpets, a little bit of Easy Listening and much more - all this mashed up into one album - the stupid Neue Deutsche Welle was gone. I still love this recording so much after all these years. One of my all-time-favourites.
• Teenage years are years of sorrow and pain  - I've seen the movie "The Wall" in the 80s and I thought, this is exactly what I'm suffering. I was fascinated by the artwork, the theatrical music of Pink Floyd and the idea of building a wall around yourself (and to break it in the end) - luckily it was just an idea... but a fascinating one - I started painting in the style of "The Wall" in these days. 
• My next personal milestone was the album "Sign of the Times" by Prince. I saw him live on stage in the end-80s and it was the biggest concert I have seen up to that point in my life. Years later, I saw him performing in a small club in Cologne. It was the aftershow and this is by far the most memorizable concert of my life, standing just five meters in front of HIM and he performed until it was no, not 1999, but until dawn.
• My marriage and the opening dance - of course, this is an unforgettable memory. We chose a song, you might not know, if you are not from Germany: "Für mich soll's rote Rosen regnen" - we mashed up two versions of this song, the original one by Hildegard Knef from 1968 (now you might guess, how old I am) and a newer version by Nina Hagen, a German punk singer recorded in 2006.

I could add a lot more, but now it's your turn - what is the soundtrack of your life? I'm so curious. Come on, grab your keyboard and tell us!!

[Daniel Eads]

Going with the theme from the favorite video game console thread, I'd have to say Chrono Cross. Lots of other video game music is super interesting, but this particular game holds what I think is perhaps Yasunori Mitsuda's best end-to-end soundtrack. It's super high quality all the way through. 20 years later and this music still occupies the empty spaces in my mind.

And for it's 20th anniversary, Mitsuda announced a live tour in 3 cities in Japan this fall!

You might bump into me if you happen to be in Tokyo in November :)

[Kat Warner]

I find it fascinating how many songs I remember from years gone by - especially songs sung at school. 

I a a huge fan of ballads and enjoyed a lot of antsy rock in my teens and early-twenties.

I walked down the aisle at my wedding to Still into you by Paramore. This was a cheeky nod to getting married after 4.5 years together.

I have posted here before that I've lived by One Republic sums up my parenting goals.

[Matt Doar]

Soundtrack of my life? That's tricky! I think my way of listening is to take one band, album, or track and then play it over and over. Then play it some more. For weeks.
Sometimes when I'm debugging code I wrote a while ago I play the same music again.

Then there is the music we played for our children when they were small. That stays in your ears forever. Probably because they wanted it played over and over too.

[Karen O'Keefe]

Me too! My college dorm mates begged my roommate to get me to buy some new music. I played Three Dog Night, the Eagles, Janis Joplin, and the Doobie Brothers over and over.

[JP _AC Bielefeld Leader_]

Hmm, maybe I should focus to music I listened then and still today. For me, like @Thomas Schlegel the 80s were style-forming...

• Depeche Mode - Enjoy the silence - Still a happiness maker & my ring tone ;-)
• Cure - Charlotte sometimes - My daughter was named Charlotte...
• The Mission - Like a hurricane - Remake of Neil Young. What a love song!
• U2 - Joshua Tree - Album of a decade
• Dire Straits - Brothers in Arms - One of the first digital mastered CDs - Groundbreaking!
• The Clash - London calling / Should I stay or should I go - Well, at least some sort of revolution...

Later, certainly, the rather grungier 90s:

• Nirvana - Come as you are / In Bloom - When I need a push...
• Smashing Pumpkins - Bullet with Butterfly wings - When I need an EXTRA push
• Metallica - Seek & Destroy - Still on tour & becoming better & better
• Alice in Chains / Soundgarden / Pearl Jam

And then the story of the band of my life...

A friend of mine pushed me to listen to Runrig, a scottish folk-rock band with a great singer, Donnie Munro. I fell in love with the music, instantly, maybe because the live concerts were just amazing... Then they had this concert in June 1995 at the Lorelei, a high steep rock on the banks of the river Rhine, where a huge outdoor amphitheater is based. I was set to meet a friend there, but we somehow missed each other & then I met some girls waiting on the wrong side of the Rhine for a ferry to the other side, where the concert took place. We decided to ride only one car up to the venue... After the concert, I knew, I met my wife. We married two years later...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aYCI6fd9Cns

The 00s & late 90s didn't give me any push, maybe some late Prince.

But sometimes you hear a song or only parts of it & you're hook... Next thing, google it, shazam it, whatever. Nowadays, I really like Imagine Dragons, some Coldplay or Chainsmokers.

When thinking about soundtracks of movies, there're some which I still remember:

• Breakfast Club - Don't you forget about me
• Pretty in Pink
• Singles
• Ferris Bueller's Day Off

Yeah, I admit, little bit 80s, too...

[Jodi LeBlanc]

I know every word of Ferris Bueller's day off! :)

[JP _AC Bielefeld Leader_]

Bueller, Bueller, Bueller, anyone?

[Jodi LeBlanc]

OMG too funny!

[Jodi LeBlanc]

Hmm let's see, my first exposure to music when I was in Grade 1 was getting a ghetto blaster and 5 tapes: Madonna, Cory Hart, Bruce Springsteen, We are the World and Cyndi Lauper.

Later on I loved George Michael, Whitney Houston, and then Metallica, and Theory of a Deadman.

These days I have a spotify Treadmill mix that I created and have a huge mix of music, mostly from Spotify suggesting similar music to ones I have chosen and I add it and usually love it.

Music is very nostalgic, I remember being at a cottage party in grade 12 and Melissa Etheridge "Come to my Window" was blaring on repeat in the wee hours of the morning and I remember saying to my friends in that moment. You know when we hear this decades later we will remember this night - and it's true.

Oh and of course I love anything by Taylor. I saw her live when she was in PEI for Cavendish Beach Music Festival, and loved her ever since.

[Devon Henderson]

I recently got into a George Michael kick again after many, many years of not hearing his music (cleaning up your music library will do that haha). Faith was the #1 hit when I was born, and I still love that song!

[Jodi LeBlanc]

Nice! You have inspired me to go back and listen to George Michael, love that song so much :)

[Deleted user]

That's a hard choice!  I think I'll go with:

Chariots of Fire

[Scott Theus]

This one is tricky. 

It's tricky because I love music, of all types. Music gets me up in the morning, it drives my work day, and it rocks me to sleep. With iTunes, Spotify, Prime, and Pandora I can always find something to suit my mood, or even change it. I do have a couple of "old stand-bys" from growing up; mostly funk, blues, and Rush, with a bit of top 40 sprinkled in. 

Me, the early years. 

I'll blame my dad for this one..he had them both on 8-track

How can you listen to this bass riff and not put the guy in the Hall of Fame?

High school was a bit mixed up for me, IRL, and my music reflected that....

Start here:

Through in the Violent Femmes, The Clash, the Cure, The Ramones, any hair band, and close it out with Guns and Roses and you can picture most of high school.

In college I was not a fan of Grunge, but enjoyed Pearl Jam. I saw a few concerts...

...I think you get the idea.

Finally, for the last several years I've listened to whatever best fits my mood. Here is a sample of today's playlist:

Sunrise

Queen: Don't Try Suicide

Bury a Friend

[Teodora V _Fun Inc_]

Wow, such a lovely topic. I had a recent conversation about the music at work. My final words of wisdom were: "Oh well, I need to finish this task as soon as possible, so... Disturbed it is!" :)

I'm a in real mess with music styles, but some things never change:

Depeche Mode - It's no Good

Placebo - Post Blue

2Cellos - Shape of my Heart (tribute to Sting!)

And the other part of me, who can spend ages in some chillout zone :)

Faodail - Coalesce

[Scott Theus]

Disturbed is great for getting stuff done! Their version of "The Sound of Silence" is incredible. I'll also turn to Tool when I need a bit of a boost at work. 

[BiancaE]

Ooo great job @Thomas Schlegel _AUG_ , this really got me thinking! This was hard but I'll sum it up with:

• Against Me! - New Wave/ This really captures the anarchist inside me and the active political spirit I feel almost always
• Paul Simon - Graceland/ a reminder to always keep it fun, lively, grateful, and be keen to try new things with an open mind

[shiva sam]

It would be very tough to state one amongst so many. I can instead suggest some bands and singers such as chain smokers and maroon 5 which produce some really good music.

[shiva sam]

I use to play too many albums over and over again. I am a music lover!!

[Gabriela Costa {Appfire}]

When I was a little kid, in the 90s, my parents had this cassete mixtape. We vibrated on car rides when Modern Talking - You're My Heart, You're My Song played! When I hear it now, it brings so many good memories and a lot of nostalgia. Music really brings us together to create and keep memories.