Songs of Love and Loss

Led Zeppelin - Stairway to Heaven

Once a month on Friday nights, your middle school hosts a dance in the school gym. You wear as much makeup and as little clothing as your mom will let you get away with, shedding layers and borrowing lipstick in the girl's bathroom once you get there. Your dad ruins your life by volunteering to chaperone every single dance.

That's probably why none of the boys will ask you to slow dance, you tell yourself. But you suspect it's because you're not as popular or pretty as some of the other girls, the ones who always have a partner to dance with, even during the faster rap numbers. Your dad breaks up the couples who get too handsy and they frown at you for the rest of the night like it's your fault.

There's one slow dance each night, and it's always 'Stairway to Heaven.' Usually you lean against the sweaty wall with the other unlucky, unchosen ones and wonder if the song is really a metaphor for sex like some of your friends say. Finally, one of the boys you're desperately crushing on (there's a horribly long list) asks you to dance. The song is about six minutes too long, and when it speeds up, the gentle swaying you've been doing gets awkward. Your hands are getting sweaty against his back and you've run out of small talk. When the musical interlude really gets going he bows out and you're half hurt, half relieved.

Ingrid Michaelson - The Way I Am

You only ever learned how to play one song on the guitar. That song is 'The Way I Am' by Ingrid Michaelson. The summer after 8th grade, a friend teaches you the one tricky chord, E-flat. He's really cute and he's way cooler than you. He gifts you with your first kiss that's more than just lips moving against each other, and it feels like the sun parting storm clouds.

This must be what love is, you think. You want someone who will love you the way you are, just like she says. He doesn't ever say that to you, but when you sing it to him you think he's looking at you in a way that means it. You like how the song talks about getting old together, and helping each other through hard times.

You go to boarding school and lose touch. You briefly reconnect in college, but the timing isn't right. He has a girlfriend. He tries to kiss you anyways, and you let him, but it doesn't feel good anymore. He keeps the AC too cold in his truck and drives too fast. It's not what you thought it would be.

The Shins - New Slang

Your first semester of high school, you get slut shamed during a skit for an all school meeting. You dated a Junior for all of a month and that was enough to derail your reputation. The writers were supposed to get permission from everyone they roasted, but they named your ex-boyfriend and not you. They got his permission. He didn't even give you a heads up.

You fall hard in love with a new, wonderful boy and date him for the next four years. He's safe and kind and he plays the guitar. He learns 'New Slang' to play for you because you love it, and he loves you. It's cheery to the ear but the lyrics are kind of sad. They're full of coulda-shoulda-woulda. You think you'll marry him, you really do, but you get scared and sad at college without him. Your aunts convince you to break up with him and you feel so guilty, you think you'll never deserve love again.

You can't listen to this song anymore without thinking of him, but it's happy enough. He was really good to you. You hope he's doing well.

Monsters of Folk - Map of the World

You're only a sophomore in high school, but your mom makes you go on college tours with your older cousin and his best friend. It's awkward at first because you thought the friend hated you, but you're surprised to find that you actually have a lot in common. For two weeks, you drive across the country and listen to the same playlist on repeat.

Your favorite song on that playlist is 'Map of the World' by the Monsters of Folk. It's a moody tune that hums like the miles and miles of pavement under the car's tires. It speaks to the itch inside of you that wants what isn't good for you. You become really good friends quickly and for a second you consider doing something rash, plotting a new course on the map of your life, breaking up with your boyfriend and choosing this nervy, quiet person instead. You don't, and even though he never asked you to choose him, he stops speaking to you. He goes on to date your cousin and you always wonder if you made a mistake.

Later, you learn that Conor Oberst wrote this song. It doesn't surprise you, because you've really liked a lot of his other music. Two years after the trip, two years after the boy stops speaking to you suddenly, Oberst is accused of sexual assault and you delete his songs from your playlist. He is exonerated but you've moved on already. Your cousin dates the friend for years, and later she tells you how abusive he was. You don't think you made a mistake anymore.

Kanye West ft. Caroline Shaw - Say You Will

In college, you reinvent yourself. You want to be edgy, you want to be unique, so you become a remix. You meet a boy in your dorm who makes it his mission to change your mind about Kanye West. He promises you that his collaborations with classical composer Caroline Shaw will win you over. When he plays this version of 'Say You Will,' you get chills. He wins. It's mysterious and emotional, it's deep and desperate. Her harmonies wash over you like his hands do, later. The plinky 808 beat, he explains, was inspired by his time in the hospital after a bad accident.

There aren't a lot of Kanye songs you still listen to. Most of it is too unapproachable, or too hardcore. That's not you and it never will be. The boy gets bored of you and you can't let go. For four years, you wind in and out of one another's lives with varying levels of love and sadness. Your senior year, you have to spend a week in the hospital for an infection. He doesn't show up, but you dream that he does. You dream that he apologizes to you, and you fight and you make up, and you graduate together and move in together. Asleep, you live the best six months of your life.

A nurse wakes you up to check your vitals. The heart monitor beeps steadily. You start to cry, and she asks if you're in pain, but you're crying because you finally realize that if you ever want that kind of love it will never be with him, because he said he would come to see you and he didn't.

Von Sell - I Insist

In October of your senior year, your best friend invites you to her parents' cabin upstate for a long weekend. You drive up the Taconic at sunset together and she plays your music the whole way. The songs are sexy, jammy, electro-heavy. She likes the vibes you curated. You like being a tastemaker.

That night, you're making an apple crisp together and her boyfriend arrives with his friends. They're a few years older, working their first big city jobs in finance. They drank the whole train ride and show up loud and loaded. One of them has beautiful blue eyes, but he doesn't say more than a couple of words to you the whole weekend.

On Saturday, you all load up into the van to go to a pumpkin patch. Your friend pops on your playlist. 'I Insist' comes on. The blue-eyed boy sighs from the front seat. "Can we please listen to something that's not sad-boy electronica?" From the back seat, you cringe with embarrassment. There's one boy I never have to talk to again, you think.

R E L - Plateau

That Spring, you meet a stunning man at a coffee shop in Boston. He's an actor and he floats where the work takes him. He chats you up and you send him a short story you're working on. He showers you in compliments and begs you to go on one date with him. On the Amtrak to your first date in Providence, your mom calls. She's run a background check on him. Did you know that he's 37? Did you know that he has a wife?

He tells you he's divorced. He tells you that age is just a number. A few weeks later, he comes to visit and asks you to tell him what love is. You tell him it's a feeling, and he's disappointed in you. He tells you that you're too young to know. He tells you that he loves you. He refuses to sleep with you until the next weekend, and you can tell he feels weird about it, which makes you feel weird about it. You introduce him to your friends and he gets very standoffish. "I didn't realize just how young you were until I met them," he tells you coldly at the train station.

During your finals period, he goes off the deep end and sends you terrible things by text. He accuses you of not supporting him enough. He refuses to answer your calls. You have to write 60 pages in four nights and you listen to 'Plateau' on repeat, letting the time slip away. You break it off in the middle of your second all nighter. On your birthday, the day after everything is passed in, he drives to New Haven and makes you get up to see him at 7AM. He makes you promise that you will never write about him. You may not know what love is, but it's not that.

Foxygen - Shuggie

A week after you graduate and a week before you move to New York City, your friend with the cabin invites you to her birthday party. You take the MetroNorth in and listen to your playlist. The blue-eyed boy who hurt your feelings is there and you sit next to him at dinner. That night, you make out in a German techno disco. You take the train back to New Haven without getting his number.

When you move to Brooklyn, he texts you. He got your number from your friend. You double date all summer, and by September you've made it official. You may not agree on music, you may not agree on books, you may not agree on whether an adult person needs a dresser or two pairs of sheets, but you agree on a lot of other things that start to feel important. You realize you love him in a Crate&Barrel while buying him a french press for his birthday.

On the first day of the New Year, you leave his apartment to pick up croissants for breakfast. You put on your yearly Spotify rewind and the first song that plays is 'Shuggie.' At first you think it's the perfect vibe for your day, but you listen a little closer to the lyrics and realize it's actually not. The singer is talking about realizing someone doesn't love you back. You consider changing the song. But it's ok. You don't need a song to tell you how you're feeling anymore. You know what love is now, and you're in it.

Four years later, he asks you to marry him and you say yes.