MEMOIR
The Albums Carrying Me Back to First Love
Rewinding the soundtrack of my coming of age
Love is the most challenging feeling to translate into words.
I’ve written lyrics and love poems for most of my life and have never even scratched the surface of the iceberg of love.
Love plays at our heartstrings and we become mere puppets on someone else’s stage.
I was sixteen and heartbroken when I spent all my savings on my first electric bass guitar.
Heartbreak is one of the main reasons why so many of us turn to music.
Music seems like an escape valve or maybe the perfect compass, when you try to find meaning in something that baffles reasoning.
The heart has its reasons that reason does not know — Blaise Pascal
The thing is, we all have our favorite albums, and for some of us, there’s even a special song that plucks at our heartstrings every time it plays.
So, yesterday I was going through my gargantuan collection of music tapes and CDs.
In this ocean of music, some resonated more than others and a wave of nostalgia came flooding in.
Why this sudden musical gold rush?
Well, I was trying to come up with the perfect soundtrack for Valentine’s Day. The plan was to play the songs we loved back in high school.
The backstory is that my soon-to-be wife and I were sweethearts twenty-five years ago. We had a silly fight and for two decades we drifted apart and never spoke to each other again.
Long story short, true love always finds a way and destiny works in mysterious ways.
Thanks to an old poem and a bit of Instagram serendipity, here I am today, engaged with the love of my life and about to share with you three music albums that played a significant role in helping me discover love.
If music be the food of love, play on.” — William Shakespeare
Bush: ‘Sixteen Stone’
Bush’s Sixteen Stone was by far one of the most influential albums of my youth.
Released on December 6, 1994, the release coincided with a time when I was still mourning Kurt Cobain’s death earlier that year, in April.
When Nirvana disbanded following Kurt’s death, I turned to Bush, not the most obvious pallbearer of the “Seattle sound” like Alice in Chains or Soundgarden.
When it felt like I was going under, the lyrics from Sixteen Stone played a crucial role in helping me cope with loss and rise above those teenage angst days.
Back then, critics labeled the band as post-grunge wannabes.
I couldn’t care less about opinions. I had mine and time proved me right.
Songs like “Everything Zen,” “Glycerine,” and “Comedown” became unavoidable references in nineties rock music.
Back then, the existential love crises of youth were the primary source of inspiration for my poems and Bush’s music.
These feelings resonated in the anguished hearts of teenagers worldwide and the two of us were no exception.
My fiancée was more into Bush’s sophomore album, Razorblade Suitcase. She even walked the catwalk at our school’s beauty pageant to the sound of “Greedy Fly.”
What a sigh for soared eyes!
I stuck to Sixteen Stone.
There’s no love like first love, right?
The album is packed with powerful ballads. “Glycerine” is one of the most memorable love songs from my teen years.
I wrote countless verses while listening to this song.
Curiously, Gavin wrote “Glycerine” while dating model Jasmine Lewis. Their five-year relationship came to an end because long-distance love can be troublesome, and the song cycles through the ups and downs of living apart from the one you love.
Looking back, the same happened to me one too many times and that was the reason why I left Brussels and came back to Portugal.
I gave it all up for love.
The Cranberries: ‘No Need To Argue’
The Cranberries released their sophomore album, No Need to Argue, in the fall of 1994.
I was 16 years old when the album came out on October 3 and had just moved to a new school, thus closing a chapter in my young life.
Meanwhile, a whole universe of new challenges opened up in front of me.
No Need to Argue was the first music piece I ever bought.
Until then, all the music I owned came from bootlegs shared among friends. Money was scarce, and I couldn’t even afford to buy the album, so I had to settle for the cassette version.
There were countless times I listened to those songs on my old Sanyo MGR-701 cassette player, to the point where I can say that the songs helped shape my real personality on the one hand and my poetic persona on the other.
The explosive single “Zombie” projected the album and the band to a broader and intrinsically rock audience. A song inspired by two children killed in an IRA terrorist attack on March 20, 1993.
However, the second album by the rock band formed in Limerick, Ireland, in 1989 is not only a manifesto against the horrors perpetrated in Ireland during that time.
No Need to Argue is the perfect soundtrack for all souls drawn by love and poetry. Take “Linger,” for instance, this is undeniably a break-up song.
Dolores O’Riordan wrote the lyrics following her breakup with her first boyfriend.
The song works as a placebo to deal with teenage love and the infatuation that usually comes with it.
The third single, “I Can’t Be with You,” links back to “Linger” and is an anthem for lost love and the avalanche of feelings that come with it.
“Linger” will always find echoes in teenage hearts falling for an impossible love or after the epilogue of a relationship.
Nirvana: ‘Unplugged in New York’
Nirvana’s MTV Unplugged, released on November 1, 1994, comes in the aftermath of the disbanding that followed Cobain’s untimely death.
Many fans argue that somehow this acoustic concert ends up misrepresenting the authentic essence of the songs.
If Kurt was with us at the time of the album release, he probably would just say the same thing all over again:
“I don’t blame the average seventeen-year-old punk-rock kid for calling me a sellout. I understand that. And maybe when they grow up a little bit, they’ll realize there’s more things to life than living out your rock & roll identity so righteously.” — Kurt Cobain
I have to agree with Kurt; I feel there’s something about the acoustic angst of the music that makes it even more relevant to the theme of love and my poetic vision.
Let’s take “About a Girl,” a song about fractious, fractured relationships that eventually resonate at some point in our existence.
During the recording of Bleach, someone asked Kurt about the untitled song’s meaning.
Blunt as usual, Kurt said:
“It’s about a girl.”
In hindsight, it’s funny how some of the most important things in life occur in connection to these defining moments.
As I look back, I can safely say a big part of my life was indeed “about a girl.”
Unlike other albums on this list, the pertinence of Nirvana’s music in my perspective towards love is not about what is said but rather “how it is said” and how music and poetry can take us down in mysterious ways.
Kurt Cobain’s lyrics sound hermetic but they guided me across the maze where I got lost while trying to find myself.
As Plato wrote in the Symposium, we are never whole until we find the better half of our soul.
So Kurt’s lyrics describe in their abstract way that subliminal craving to love and to be loved that we can’t express in words and fortunately, some among us can only translate into music.
Closing thoughts
There are relevant semantic links between these albums, released only months apart.
As I play them one more time, they are part of our life’s story.
These songs are the last remnants of teenage love.
Their lyrics remind me of the day I saw her looking at the class lists on the walls of our school. Who would have guessed the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen would be in my class?
These songs are about love at first sight. Songs about walking home holding hands, about smiles, and also tears.
For the critics, these albums stand as mementos of a generation desperately seeking meaning in life and love.
For me, they hold a special place in the inner sanctum of my heart.
These were the first songs on the soundtrack of our love.
These are the songs that will always draw me close to you, my forever Valentine.
May love never tear us apart, and let the music keep on playing…