• Artist: Moby
• Album: Hotel
• Track: Forever (full song, lyrics)

Heard a Moby song on the radio today, so now I’m listening to my favorite album of his – aka the only one I’ve listened to from cover to cover other than Destroyed – look, basically every single song from this album is a banger (“Come back to us, spiders!” is an amazing line (from the unsurprisingly titled track Spiders)) and choosing a single track was incredibly hard. Ultimately I have to go with Forever because Moby’s voice was the thing that clued me in that he was on the radio and it's brilliant here.

Those perfect moments: the velvety gruffness of Moby’s vocals at 00:32 (and any time “we could feel this way, forever” is sung tbh)

• Artist: Simon & Garfunkel
• Album: Sounds of Silence
• Track: I Am A Rock (full song, lyrics)

This is the pure philosophical opening & closing of a certain point of view, for me. I quote it directly 4 times over 7 years in my digital journal and TBD number of times in my as-yet-un-digitized handwritten journals, because it was absolutely one of those songs I would listen to in high school as I curled up in bed and cried for not feeling that I fit in or had any friends. I would hang onto rock-ness, hoping that high school didn’t matter, that none of them mattered, hoping that “books & poetry” would indeed protect me.

The outro lines give away the game, of course:

And a rock feels no pain, And an island never cries…

That self-isolation and individualism are avoidance and coping mechanisms for feeling (often social) pain and suffering, and not solutions.

Now years away, I appreciate the song for Simon & Garfunkel’s gorgeous harmonies!

Those perfect moments: the opening little riff at 00:03; the rhythm of the lyrics at 01:36; the softness of the outro at 02:30.

• Artist: Elizabeth & The Catapult
• Album: Taller Children
• Track: Golden Ink (full song, lyrics)

In high school I spent a lot of time in the blogosphere of art journalling, and I’m positive I discovered this song via a Blogspot blog with a golden yellow background, around 2010, with the blog's author relating to the feeling of losing creative inspiration, and a youtube embed at the bottom of the page to this song – a page which is likely lost to link rot now. It didn’t end up being my favorite song from the album, but it’s pivotal for the memory of discovery sticking with me for so long.

Those perfect moments: the little interlude around 01:48; at 02:25 the intonation on "never to let go"

• Artist: Cara Dillon
• Album: Hill of Thieves
• Track: The Hill of Thieves (youtube, lyrics)

First entry pressure! We'll get to the song that inspired my username here, the song I consider to be the start of having my own individual music taste (rather than listening to whatever my parents played), and others, but for now, this popped into my head as I was walking today and I think it's a fine place to start. Lyrics with love and longing for the land, the Irish whistle and drums, and as always Cara's gorgeous voice make this a highlight of its album for me.

Those perfect moments: at 00:50 when the drums kick in & “murmuring stream;” at 02:35 with the vibrato(?) accent on “I’ve been a stranger here…”