I was thinking about this the other day.  How come albums find you at certain points of your life even though they may have been out for years (if not decades) already?

Some albums are just great period, but for some reasons, certain albums find you at certain points of your life and just become that much more meaningful.

Here goes:

1993: Zooropa.  My first U2 album and the first real rock album I ever bought.  I got it at the Hollywood Mall after borrowing it from Mike Carroll in freshman year of high school.  I think I liked it because of Numb, but I started to appreciate the simplicities and complexities of U2 that still stand with me today. I own the very same copy of it today.

1994: Wildflowers.  I already knew and liked Tom Petty, however, this album was a pure masterpiece.  I also started getting into it heavily at the same time as I started learning the guitar.  Even at an early age, I could appreciate the production quality and overall amazing songwriting ability that was present on the album.  I remember coming home from school and playing the songs and relatively easy solos on the electric guitar and thinking how bad ass it was.

1995: Anything by the Beatles. - I was a Junior in High School.  The Beatles Anthologies were on TV for the first time ever and I just absolutely fell in love with the later stuff.  Pretty much anything past Revolver, but especially Abbey Road and Past Masters II.  I can still picture playing golf at Hollywood Beach Golf Course around Christmas time with Travis and Steve and coming home to our old house at Monroe St. and listening to Hey Jude, Get Back, the whole B side of Abbey Road and thinking how these songs were the best things I've ever heard.  I can also picture the time I was waiting for friends at this Italian restaurant in Plantation for over an hour (until realizing I was at the wrong place) and just listening to Abbey Road over and over in the car while I waited.

1997: Dark Side of the Moon and The Division Bell:  Being an impressionable college freshman, I thought these albums were written about me.  That whole melancholy feeling comprised of being happy about being sad, totally fit that time of life when I was trying to figure out who I was, etc. 

1999: Whatever and Ever Amen:  I missed the bandwagon on Ben Folds Five, but got turned on to them later by Steve and Stacie.  It was happy music, but with sometimes heavy or angry lyrics.  But in a way that your average white kid (being me) could understand.  Not heavy like Tool, not ethnically themed like Public Enemy.  Quality nonetheless. 

2001: Left of Cool (Bela Fleck and the Flecktones): This album came to me at the time when we started the band for real.  We thought we were awesome and unstoppable and then we lost a stupid battle of the bands.  On the way home, I listened to "Sojourn of Arjuna" and the line "one cannot jump to the absolute, he must evolve," still sticks with me today as a reminder of how to run my life/goals/etc. Also, Big Country is one of the most beautiful songs ever.

2002: Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots and The Soft Bulletin.  Steve bought Yoshimi, which garnished my scorn (not knowing anything about the Lips besides She Don't Use Jelly) and played it on the drive from Hollywood to Gainesville.  I was blown away by the album and needed about 6 solid months of listening to it nonstop before I could even consider buying their previous effort, the equally massive Soft Bulletin.  Both albums have directly shaped who I am today, even though one of them came out 5 years earlier than when I bought it.

2004: Bryter Layter (Nick Drake).  My final semester of Law school.  I hated it.  Couldn't wait to finish.  I woke up every morning angry and depressed.  I had a shower radio at the time and put this album in it.  Every morning, I awoke to One of These Things First.  It immediately put a smile on my face.  I listened to it before I took the Bar.  I listen to it at least once a week on my drive home from work. 

So, why does it happen.  How come some albums hit us at the right moment, while others hit us right when they come out and help create the right moment?

 

Currently listening: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band By The Beatles Release date: By 25 October, 1990