Other: Mmhmm

I do not like a lot of Relient K's music. They can feel overly poppy, forcedly nerdy (like Weezer), and just generally annoying. The song "Sadie Hawkins Dance" is a classic song to many of my friends and one of the band's most popular, but I absolutely hate it.
That being said, Mmhmm is one of my favorite albums of all time. Musically, it slides right in with bands like Paramore or Fall Out Boy with pop-punk and emo influenced riffs and production. Trevor and I have played a massive spectrum of songs together throughout the years, but songs like "Be My Escape" and "Who I Am Hates Who I've Been" keep reappearing time and time again."
Lyrically, it came along at the perfect time in my life. Sophomore year was a weird time for me, with a strange relationship, a more difficult academic schedule, a never-ending athletic schedule, and overall the pressures of trying to fit into a still unfamiliar school. Years from now, I may find Mmhmm silly and childish, but it captures precisely what I felt about life, relationships, purpose, and even religion.
Mmhmm and Paramore will always bring me back to tenth grade. To be honest, I doubt if I'll ever find two albums so perfectly timed in my life as those two.

How I Discovered: Oasis

I had trouble deciding whether to do a "How I Discovered" post on Oasis or an "Other" post on their 1995 smash, (What's the Story) Morning Glory?. As was the case with Relient K, my view of Oasis is shaped very, very heavily by my opinion of a single album. It occurred to me, however, that in addition to owning several Oasis albums, I do actually like the majority of what I've heard from them. That seemed to be qualification enough for a "How I Discovered" post.
I found (What's the Story) Morning Glory? in my mom's CD collection in middle school, probably in late sixth grade but definitely before eighth grade. My first memory of listening to the album as a whole was in Wilmington, but I had of course heard the iconic (and at this point laughably overplayed) "Wonderwall" years before. They're classified as Britpop, though I've always considered them to just be rock or alternative. They've been a pretty significant band in my life because they've written some of the most played songs by Trevor, Jack, and me.

Favorite album: (What's the Story) Morning Glory? (1995)
Favortie songs: "Don't Look Back in Anger," "Married with Children," "Champagne Supernova"

How I Discovered: Guns N' Roses

I think Jack is the one who first bought Guns N' Roses' Greatest Hits in sixth grade. In any case, it was an album that would go on to shape Trevor's and my perception of music and the guitar forever. Since fifth grade, we had been riding what I call the Guitar Hero Wave, a sudden growth in the number of people learning the guitar after the success of the Guitar Hero and Rock Band series of video games. In particular, Guitar Hero III and Rock Band introduced me and Trevor to heavy, riff-driven hard rock and inspired us to take guitar lessons together. Years later, the two of us consider playing guitar and being musicians a huge part of our identity, so in that sense we owe a huge part of ourselves to a silly video game.
Greatest Hits was basically my only exposure to Guns N' Roses for a long time. It exemplified hard rock in my mind, with loud, heavy, and iconic riffs, edgy lyrics, and a sense of rebelliousness prevalent throughout. Many of the songs on that song are undisputed rock classics, but it really doesn't give a full picture of who the band really was. Years later, I discovered that the band was incredibly controversial; in one song, they essentially spend four minutes throwing obscenities at journalists, many of whom they name outright. Guns N' Roses as a whole is therefore a bit too crude for my taste, but their classics are out of this world.

Favorite album: Appetite for Destruction (1988)
Favorite songs: "Estranged," "November Rain," "Welcome to the Jungle"

How I Discovered: The Beatles (Part Two: 1966-1970)

Oddly enough, Revolver reminds me of Canada. I listened to the album quite a lot during a vacation to New York and Ontario after I got it as a gift in second grade, but I've revisited it several times since. Every song on the album is innovative in some way, whether lyrically, technically, or compositionally.

Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Another triumph. I copied Jack's CD of Sgt. Pepper onto my computer as early as first grade, but it was one of the very first albums I bought when the Beatles remasters were released in 2009. I could write for hours and hours about how special this album is, but I will just say that I consider it and Abbey Road to be the two greatest albums of all time, period. "A Day in the Life" is a masterpiece in every sense.

I am not as familiar with Magical Mystery Tour, but it includes some truly legendary songs like "Strawberry Fields Forever." It is the only Beatles album which I never purchased in any form, as the way I listen to it is online via Spotify's streaming service.

My best friend Griffin let me copy his CD of The Beatles around fifth or sixth grade. It is the Beatles' weirdest album to me because of the wide spectrum of tracks it contains: "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" is a fantastic song that was only taken seriously when Eric Clapton was brought in to play guitar, "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da" is a classic despite its strangeness, and "Revolution 9" is just... Strange. My guitar teacher once said that the White Album (as it is often known) should have been released as one disc of serious songs and one disc of silly songs. I agree.

My brother and I owned Yellow Submarine Songtrack very early on, and in many ways I think it's a truer Beatles album than the official Yellow Submarine. Both include the same core of songs, but the Songtrack includes many that had not been widely available in the United States. The official soundtrack is 50% Beatles songs and 50% George Martin orchestrations, but in general it is a decent album. "Hey Bulldog" is one of the best Beatles rockers ever, in my opinion.

Let it Be must have been purchased around sixth or seventh grade. Paul McCartney thought that bringing in Phil Spector to produce the album was a mistake, as it resulted in an overproduced, cluttered album. While I agree that it generally lacks the heart of Abbey Road, which I consider the band's final album, I will say that "I've Got a Feeling" and "Get Back" are two songs which really do capture the spirit of the group at its peak.

Abbey Road is a masterpiece. Most days, it's my favorite album of all time. I had a copy of this album very early on, as I remember listening to it on full blast in the living room of my old house, but I can say for sure that I bought the 2009 remastered edition before my family's trip to the Philippines around Christmas of that year. It's easy for me to get carried away when describing this album, but it really cannot be overstated how well written, produced, and performed the music is. "You Never Give Me Your Money" is one of my favorite songs of all time by any group, and it's only one of the fantastic tracks found on Abbey Road.

1 is the first album I have any memory of; in fact, one of my earliest memories of anything is of this album. As of a week ago I still remember most of the tracklisting without having heard it in years. It's a greatest hits album, so it's not really fair to choose any song as my "favorite" from it, but "Ticket to Ride" is always a standout when I hear 1. This is the album that ensured that the Beatles were, in fact, the one constant throughout my life.

How I Discovered: The Beatles (Part One: 1962-1965)

This post is not really fair, because I never really "discovered" the Beatles. They have always been a part of my life; in fact, the earliest memory I have of music at all is hearing "Love Me Do" in the back of my family's white Chevy Suburban.

In light of this, I've decided to approach this post a little differently. In two posts, I'll be writing a sentence about what each individual album means to me, along with an estimate of when I got the album, if possible. The albums will be listed in chronological order, with three exceptions: I count Abbey Road as the Beatles' last album because it was the last recorded, even though Let it Be was their last release. The Past Masters albums, as collections of the band's singles, include songs from the band's entire career; thus, I will be using them as a sort of interlude between the two posts.

I listened to Please Please Me quite a bit after I purchased the 2009 remaster during my sixth grade year, and the song "Misery" in particular reminds me of my unsuccessful stint as a competitive swimmer for Wave swim team. The song "Boys" is the first song I played with two of my best friends in a band setting.

With the Beatles was the first Beatles album I bought digitally after the Beatles' catalog was made available on iTunes, but I didn't buy it until late sophomore year as far as I can remember. I consider it one of the peak "Beatlemania" albums.

A Hard Day's Night was purchased and played constantly throughout my sophomore year, especially early on. It is not a particularly sad album, but it always reminds me of a fun, exciting, complicated, and ultimately painful relationship with a girl.

Beatles for Sale must have been purchased around the same time. It contains arguably the Beatles' worst song, "Mr Moonlight," but also many of my favorites like "What You're Doing" and "No Reply."

I got Help! from one of my best friends, Jack around fifth or sixth grade. I had known some of the songs, like "You're Gonna Lose That Girl,"for much longer, but overall the sound of the album brings me back to middle school and bus rides on Quest Academy field trips.

Rubber Soul is an incredible album. I bought it around the same time Jack bought Help!, and all throughout sixth grade I had it on rotation with Sgt. Pepper, Abbey Road, and Please Please Me in my mom's car. It is the last album the Beatles released before they really started to let loose in the studio and shows glimpses of what wonderful songwriters they were becoming.

I bought Past Masters, Volume One in a record store in Chicago two years ago. I was already familiar with most of the songs in one way or another ("Sie Liebt Dich" had been a joke among Jack and me since we were seven years old), but it was nice to actually own the album itself.

How I Discovered: Joe Dassin

People pride themselves on having non-mainstream or unusual taste in music, but I can say that I only know two other people who had heard of French crooner Joe Dassin before I introduced them to his music. The first was my good friend Jack, who first showed me his song "Salut" after discovering it somehow in middle school. We laughed at the song's obviously somber yet otherwise inaccessible message and its cheesy 70s vibe and forgot about Joe Dassin for a long time. The second person to have heard of Joe Dassin was one of my closest friends, a French exchange student who cracked up and wondered how on earth I had heard of him.
As I later came to discover, Joe Dassin is basically the French equivalent of Barry Manilow. I think that says it all, really.
It should come as no surprise at this point that my exploration of Dassin's music was greatly facilitated by my decision to subscribe to Spotify last year. Now Joe Dassin is more than a punchline to me; he is the man responsible for the hauntingly romantic "Et Si Tu N'Existais Pas (And If You Did Not Exist)," the bouncy and fun "Les Champs-Èlysées," and even some English songs like "Sunday Times." It's good to really mix things up every now and then, and Joe Dassin is an extreme outlier in my music library.

Favorite album: Joe Dassin (1975)
Favorite songs: "Salut," "Les Champs-Èlysées," "Piano mécanique," "Carolina (Sad Sweet Dreamer)"

Other: "For Mathew"

As Victor Hugo once said, "Music expresses that which cannot be put into words and that which cannot remain silent." It has an incredible ability to express, share, and even influence emotions that otherwise would go ignored or misunderstood.
It's with this thought in mind that I created the playlist "For Mathew" as a way of getting into character for Millbrook's fall play, Anne of Green Gables. I was cast as Mathew Cuthbert, the loving father figure to Anne Shirley, a very significant and challenging role. I had auditioned with hopes of being cast as Mathew but knew that it would be a daily struggle in rehearsal to discover, remember, and convey who exactly this old, quiet man that was basically a total opposite of me really was to the audience. He only has so many lines on which an actor can base his understanding of the character, so a huge brunt of the work was on me to bring the character to life! Mr. Kotzian, the theatre teacher, had mentioned making a "character playlist" before, and without even realizing it I began to create my own a few weeks before the show.
Though musically dissimilar, each song has some significant piece that reminds me of who my Mathew Cuthbert was. Many of them have lyrics that remind me of Mathew's actual personality or role in the show, like "Suddenly" from the Les Miserables film or Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young's "Our House." Other songs spurred me on to develop a totally unique Mathew Cuthbert; for example, I imagined Mathew as a talented choral singer who had been forced to give up his musical dreams in order to take care of his sister and the family farm. It's for this reason that I included "The Pasture" by Z. Randall Stroope. One of my favorite songs from "For Mathew" is "The Water is Wide," which is  traditional Scottish song that Mathew could very realistically have known and loved in 1910 Canada.
The one song that will always remind me of Mathew Cuthbert, though, is probably the biggest outlier on the entire playlist. After a long day of rehearsal, I remember sitting in my car and hearing "Can't You See" by the Marshall Tucker Band and thinking, "This is Mathew." In my mind, the soft-spoken and loving Mathew Cuthbert was not always a shy old grandfather-type. He had once been an exciting young man with hopes and dreams that reached far beyond his home of Prince Edward Island, with a future and a lover and a story of loss.
Hearing that song that day is a moment I will never forget and one that will always remind me of both the beauty of theatre and the power of music.