I’ve honestly enjoyed doing this enough that I might keep posting every once in a while just for fun. But for the purposes of wrapping up the assigned portion of this blog, I wanted to do a little musical roadmap of my life—an extremely broad one, with minimal song analysis, but I think it’ll be a lot of fun (for me at least) to revisit.
I mentioned “Horizons” as one of my earliest musical experiences, but that wasn’t so much a conscious memory as more of a cradle experience that I had the pleasure of being re-introduced to almost two decades later. So there’s nowhere for me to begin other than with The Beatles. My family are all rabid Beatles fans, and I learned their catalogue extensively throughout my early childhood before really familiarizing myself with any other artists. The thing I love most about The Beatles is their variety; my favorite songs are so much different now than they were when I was really little, and they have a breadth of work that allows me to feel like at every stage of my growing up, there was a new song or album to fall in love with. A true childhood favorite, however, was “Helter Skelter” off of The White Album. It epitomizes what must’ve been a truly chaotic little Evan.
The next major group in my life was Coldplay. One of the many groups my family would play around the household, Coldplay was the first band I really personally latched on to—I was young enough that The Beatles were kind of handed to me, so my newfound love of Coldplay when I was around 12 years old felt like it was really my thing. I remember lying in my bed listening to A Rush of Blood to the Head and X&Y over and over and over again. The representative song I will pick here is called “Speed of Sound”. I don’t currently regard it as a favorite, but it really entranced me six or seven years back.
As you know from reading this blog, there are an enormous number of artists that mean a great deal to me, but only a few of those have been consistent giants over the years, even if I didn’t have as extended of a phase of my life devoted entirely to them. One such artist is Pink Floyd, and I realized that their epic song “Comfortably Numb” off of The Wall is the only one of my top 4 or 5 songs that I never wrote about on this blog (accompanying songs like “Even In the Quietest Moments“, “Carry On Wayward Son“, and “Supper’s Ready“). Here’s the song that I’ve on-and-off considered my favorite song ever since I first heard it in middle school; unlike “Speed of Sound” and “Helter Skelter”, my deep love for this one hasn’t really lessened over the years.
My next true obsessive phase after Coldplay happened throughout high school: 90s jam band Phish. I wrote a whole blog about Phish last semester, detailing how I’ve been to double-digit number shows (seeing a jam band is typically a multi-show experience, since the setlist is 100% different each night). The entry point into my obsession with Phish was their musical story of Gamehenge, based on their lead guitarist’s senior year thesis, a fictional story called The Man Who Stepped Into Yesterday. Gamehenge’s songs follow along with that narrative musical-style, which I found SO cool when I first heard it as a freshman in high school. Here’s one such song, the intro to Gamehenge entitled “The Lizards”.
My last true phase, which I have been very much in the midst of throughout my freshman year here at PSU, has been focused on Supertramp. You’ve heard plenty about them reading these posts, because I’m a total fanboy. I can’t help myself; discovering their catalogue has been so fulfilling and exciting for me, and I feel more with them than pretty much any other artist that they’re writing songs just for me. Everything falls into place so perfectly. Here’s a Supertramp favorite of mine, “Fool’s Overture”.
Who knows what artist will emerge next, which of these songs will settle down over time and which ones will speak to me more deeply than ever as the years go by. But from when I was a little kid pretending to play along to The Beatles’ guitar parts on a tennis racket, to just a few months ago, walking across campus late at night, laughing with pure joy as the bells of Old Maine rang along to “Fool’s Overture” perfectly timed to the chimes of Big Ben in the recording, music will always be special to me. It’s where I find my spirituality, my strongest sense that magic really does exist in the world in some way, shape or form. It’s the language of emotion for me. And in turn, it’s something I really can’t put into words. I wish you all the best and I hope you all have wonderful experiences with your own music for the rest of your lives. And please stay in touch—you’re all wonderful people who I’ve genuinely enjoyed getting to know throughout this semester. Thank you for reading.
—Evan
The Beatles were a lot of my early childhood too. It’s what my dad listened to, so I have a lot of memories of us in his various mustangs in the summer listening to the Beatles! As for Helter Skelter, I think it is one of the Beatles more stand out songs simply because it is so different from a lot of their other music. The other band you talked about is Coldplay. Coldplay is a big part of my early middle school days. I love that you categorize times of your life with songs/artists because I do too. Most recently, Harry Style’s “Golden” always reminds me of our first semester of college! I really love that my mind does that with music and it seems like you do too!
I’ve really enjoyed reading your passion blog and I hope you continue to post every once in a while because I might need song suggestions in the future lol.
All the best, Maddie