Top Five Tuesday :: Aimee Mann

Seeing Aimee this past Saturday has me on a bit of an Aimee Mann music kick this week, and has had me in revisit mode, going through albums and the memory recall all the songs gift to me. Here are my five favorites of all-time, at least so far:

5. That’s How I Knew the Story Would Break My Heart

There was a moment, on the opposite coast from where I sit today, when I knew that we would fall apart. In that moment I had a choice to run, or to stay. My first inclination was to run, and for awhile that is exactly what I did, but the truth is, well, it was too late for running. So, I eventually came back and opened my heart, even with the knowledge that that open heart of mine would shatter if I stayed with him. It was an awful secret to keep, but kept it I did, and I fought as hell to make that secret a lie.

It was not a lie. The story of us, it did break my heart.

4. Wise Up

Featured in one of the most moving scenes in a movie involving music, this song always feels like a painful lesson that I do not want to hear, but that gets in to me, regardless. It is also one of those songs that always, always, always makes me cry.

Perhas that truth is proof that no matter where I am in my life, there is always something I am being naive about, or denying as truth, or avoiding facing; that there is always something I need to open my eyes and wise up to.

3. 4th of July

One of my first favorites of Aimee’s, this is a song that I never grow tired of hearing, or singing-a-long to. For me, the song is about new starts, freedoms and letting go of failures; the latter always a struggle for me. It also speaks to regret, and the facing of such regrets, and again, the attempt to letting go of said regrets, and would have done/could have been’s; also ever a struggle for me.

2. It’s Not

This song breaks my heart, and yes, is also one of those songs that always makes me cry. This is a song that I lived, inside and out, for a spell of time in my life, a lonely and painful time, a time of pretending that everything was okay while everything fell apart.

This song also reminds me of the film The Good Girl, which I saw right around that spell of time, and both that film, and this song, speak volumes of how it was to be me during that time.

I wanted it to be so much more than it ever was. I wanted it not to collapse and fail. I wanted us to help heal each other. I wanted us to be each other’s happy ending.

1. You Could Make a Killing

I am quite sure I have written about this song at least a dozen times. My love for this song never lessens, and I believe it never will. It caught hold of me when I first heard it back at the end of the nineties, and has never let go of me since.

It is one of my lifetime soundtrack songs.