The songs that saved

[usernamenumber]

Oh man. So, a conversation about Henry Rollins led me to dig up this goofy-ass video on YouTube. This goofy-ass video saved me. No lie.

I don't think I've watched the actual video since I first saw it some time in middle school (after which I acquired the album asap), and it's hard to see it now without smirking at Henry's "I AM GOING TO YELL AT YOU LIKE AN ANGRY GYM TEACHER ABOUT *FEELINGS*" thing, but at the time, it was exactly, _exactly_, what I needed.

I needed a model of masculinity that unapologetically had emotions, that yelled and screamed about them, and that told me it was going to be ok.

The post-guitar-solo pep talk (because that's a thing in Rollins Band music) at 3:30 still gets me, not because it doesn't seem silly and a bit too on-the-nose to me now, but because I still remember how 8th-grade me reacted to it. He was sitting on the living room floor crying at the TV. And he re-listened to that song a *lot*.

So now I'm wondering: if you have a song, one particular song, that did more than any other for you in your young life, what is it?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o28dyt7w3As

Comments

[lillibet.livejournal.com]

I was just thinking about this. There have been a number of songs that have been important over the years, but the one I just thought of recently was The Eurythmics' I Need You. I think I listened to that at least once every day for months during one of the lowest periods of my single life. Looking back now, I think I was listening to it ironically, in that I could hear how completely broken this idea of relationships was and was rejecting that, but embracing the tone of desperation--when you're that lonely, even a cracked head can sound good.