A Songstories Prompt Response

She Used To Be Mine

Songs from Waitress

In playing around with this great soundtrack prompt by our friend Squeeze the Avocado, I simply couldn’t decide which soundtrack to write about.

I could go with an all-time favorite of High Fidelity, something nostalgic like Dazed And Confused or Empire Records. Then there’s the classics like Saturday Night Fever or even Forrest Gump, but all those seem like easy choices. There are Indie soundtracks and even cult classics with awesome soundtracks like Trainspotting or Clockwork Orange. And of course there are the classics with iconic film scores, but those aren’t technically soundtracks.

Then, I remembered on the way home from work a few months ago, the algorithm gods shined upon me with a diamond in the rough. Instead of writing about an entire soundtrack, let’s just focus on one piece.

Songwriting is a funny thing. When an artist sits down to write a song, do they ever have any idea how it will effect people, or do they just write it for themselves and let it out into the world to be free? Do they know it can change someone’s life? I imagine sometimes yes, sometimes no. Like any art, we never know upon creation how far the idea will travel. We don’t know how it will impact someone today, tomorrow, or in fifty years. We do it anyway, if only for the art of creation itself.

Just like yesnodunno, I chose music from a production that was originally a film but was adapted for a musical. Sara Bareilles wrote the music for Waitress that was based on the Indie film of the same name. The music was never in the film and was written later by Sara. I may not be following the exact protocols for a soundtrack response, but I rarely color inside the lines. It’ll be fine.

Sara is an amazing songwriter. Her career took off with her hit “Love Song,” which she wrote out of frustration due to her record label’s constant rejection of her submissions. Love Song is itself a musical act of defiance, which ironically put her on the map. Waitress was on the map as a solid Indie film in 2007, but Sara took it to a new level in 2015. To be fair, I haven’t heard the entire soundtrack. What I’ve heard has been awesome, but one song in particular hit me right in the feels.

“She Used To Be Mine” does just that. I love the melancholy of life. It’s magical, it’s still, and it’s peaceful. But I also love a good crescendo. A song that starts out as something and turns into something completely different. Sara does this in spectacular fashion with “She Used To Be Mine”:

The lyrics and the song are a powerful tandem, starting from a melancholic introspection and ascend to the powerful realization that we can keep going. Sometimes we don’t recognize ourselves; we look in the mirror and don’t know who we are anymore. We have love in our hearts and a hidden power within.

It’s the realization that we’re imperfect but we try. We get up everyday and keep going, working through all the things we must work through to survive. Sometimes we beat ourselves up and don’t ask for help. It’s about recognizing that we may have regrets and that we’d love to rewrite an ending or two. We experience pain and pleasure mixed together and all the experiences of life “baked in a beautiful pie.”

So, we must remind ourselves that there’s life inside us. To fight just a little to bring back the fire that we lost along the way.

I sent this to my good friend kasey sparks when it felt like we both needed to hold our heads up when things felt lost. It will remind you to keep going. To get back up and remember that there is love out there in the world.

Squeeze’s original prompt: