Record Collecting for Girls: Unleashing Your Inner Music Nerd, One Album at a Time

by Courtney E. Smith

  In my twenties, when I made more stupid decisions about relationships than I care to admit, it was Death Cab for Cutie that played in the aftermath. I picked songs off We Have the Facts and We're Voting Yes, The Photo Album, and Transatlanticism to score the bitterness that accompanied my romantic miscalculations. Eventually I would meet and become friendly with the guys in Death Cab. In fact, at one point I had a conversation with their bassist, Nick Harmer, about breakup albums in which he told me all about his devotion as a young man to the Cure's Disintegration as the only answer to his heartbreaks. There has to be some sort of psychological symmetry at work there. I suspect that Ben Gibbard, Death Cab's singer, and I must have spent our early twenties doing the same things: dating people who didn't like us as much as we liked them, getting dumped, feeling really bitter about it, and enacting revenge scenarios with a pen: his dedicated to song lyrics, mine to blistering postmortem e-mails after being dumped. I spent many nights lying in my bed in various crappy New York apartments listening to Death Cab albums and trying to figure out why Ben and I were so unlovable (or maybe so awful at being in love).

  A few years later I got involved in what can only be described as a series of romantic disasters with a guy who was friends with Gibbard. I had no idea they knew each other until the guy drunkenly tried to introduce us one night, not knowing we already knew each other. My Death Cab records were soon retired from sad rotation. It felt too weird to listen to them once I actually knew the band, and even weirder after messing around with one of their friends; the universal experience of listening to their songs was ruined. It felt like listening to your brother write love songs about a girl—it's nice and all but there's something kind of creepy about it.

  BEGGING

  I don't do begging songs. I break up with determination to stay that way and subscribe to the school of thought that says, "It didn't work out, you can die now." I almost never learn my lesson. On occasion I've been known to feel a twinge of regret after breaking up with someone, but I still wouldn't beg them to come back. I have only once sent someone a playlist of songs about how I'd change, how things could be different, or how I've learned my lesson. It didn't work. That's the bleak truth of a begging playlist: If you actually send it, there's a fair chance you'll get the thumbs-down. You're taking your ego in your own hands if you try to woo someone back with music.

  However! There are situations when begging becomes the only recourse at your disposal: If you cheated on someone; if you deeply regret breaking up with someone, because you weren't really ready to break up but the other person called your bluff; if you did something generally unfair to drive him away, like blowing him off on his birthday. To find the right come-back-to-me songs, look beyond pop music. If you have to beg, you'd better do it right: with soul and R&B songs. The ultimate in baby-please-come-back songs is Otis Redding's "Just One More Day." If you're making a mix tape for someone you did wrong, that'd better be the first song. If you haven't heard it, put the book down and YouTube it right now. The second song on your mix should probably be the Exciters doing "Tell Him," to get across the message that you will never ever again let that man doubt you adore him. The last song on the mix has to be Sam Cooke's "Bring It on Home to Me," in case he does change his mind and take you back. Somewhere in there you have to have the Temptations doing "Ain't Too Proud to Beg."

  I don't know what it is about soul music that imbues it with this perfect longing for the one thing you've lost; perhaps it's the genre's roots in gospel music, which is filled with begging for God's attention and forgiveness. Maybe it's the way the singer needs the response from the chorus so the song as a whole makes sense, in the same way you need his reply to your mix tape. Maybe it's the inherent vulnerability in soul; these singers expose themselves in a way that pop singers can't seem to replicate. Soul musicians just sound more sincere, as though their hearts are truly on the line. If you really want someone to believe you're desperate to have him back, you have to go with the old soul classics. Just be really sure you want him back before you make a begging-songs mix and give it to a boy. This is serious business. And no matter how soulful the mix, there's a good chance the response will be, "No way."

  KISS OFF

  Entering into a romantic partnership with someone is like going into therapy. You slowly start telling the other person everything about yourself. Eventually you find yourselves settling in together, building a rapport, and slowly changing each other's behavior. But what do you do when, after you've agreed to be someone's girlfriend, you come to realize you don't actually want to be with that person? There are relationships that end neatly, when both parties realize it isn't going to work out, and you mutually decide to part and wish the other person well. And there are breakups when you kind of hope the other person gets hit by a bus so you don't have to go through with the breakup. Or the awkwardness afterward of trying to be friends. In the past, I've dumped guys because I literally couldn't stand to be around them any longer. I actually hid from a couple of guys, hoping they would dump me so I wouldn't have to do it (that even worked once, but it took forever).

  When I was younger, it was easier to just break up, because guys were like buses: If one departed, another one would come along. I had the time to burn. These days I find myself wondering more and more often whether it's time to settle down with Mr. Right Now or face dying alone. Every girl who has watched an episode of Sex and the City or read a Cathy cartoon has been trained to fear spinsterhood and the day your cat eats your wrinkly, old face. In my opinion, though, even worse than dying alone would be retiring with no money. If I were independently wealthy, I would never think about how much easier things might be, and I might dismiss the idea of marriage entirely. But retiring with no money is one of my biggest fears, so Mr. Right Now with a Good Job sounds pretty good when I'm feeling emotionally nihilistic.

  The apex of kiss-off songs has to be the Beatles' "Think for Yourself" (although "I'm Looking Through You," also on Rubber Soul, is also pretty damn good). It manages to imply both that the person has some hope to fix his mistakes and that he's an idiot all at the same time, while making it perfectly clear that he's being ditched. There's a callousness to the song that makes it obvious that reconciliation is not an option—and that is really what you want in a kiss-off song, because in this phase you are at high risk of slipping back into the comfort of a relationship you don't want to be in anymore. If you listen to the right songs, you can keep yourself from backsliding. The only mix you'll make about this guy is a playlist for yourself. These songs are your reminders when your confidence waivers—and it will. Unless the guy you've dumped is a total loser, leaving the warm cocoon of a relationship is incredibly difficult! You'll have moments when you miss him, or if not him, then the comfort of a relationship. It's hard for me to dump a guy even when I dislike him so much that spending one more night with him makes me want to dry-heave. I always feel a little mean, knowing I'm going to hurt his feelings. The right kiss-off songs always help me when I feel cold feet coming on in the face of a breakup.

  You're most likely to listen to sad or angry songs as a reaction to having something done to you, when things spiral out of your control. You listen to kiss-off songs to capture a vision of how much better your life will be once you've moved past the bad situation you find yourself in. There are loads of options, like the Replacements' "Unsatisfied," for those instances when you know you've been settling and what you want is something more than what you have with this person. Scandal's "Goodbye to You" suits a particular feeling, when you're crazy about him but can't stop fighting and it is obvious you won't work together, but you keep having dramatic fights and long entanglements. Or it could be Elvis Costello's "You Belong to Me," which, contrary to the song title, is about not wanting to belong to anyone or be in just any relationship. It's the "I'm not settling" anthem of my life.

  While I was still breaking up with Mark, I went out on a date with another guy. He was the type of guy who started planning date two before
date one was over. I just couldn't commit myself to a second date, because he was a Mr. Right Now. I am always eager after a breakup to move on and stop thinking about it, but it was undoubtedly too soon to be dating anyone at that point. If you try to rush things, you'll likely find yourself regressing—moving backward through the cycle of breakup songs, repeating sad to angry to relieved to angry to sad ... in an infinite loop. The day after my date, I felt so depressed that I hid in bed all day and listened to Kate Bush. The only thing to do in that situation is resign yourself to being on vacation from love for the moment, until you've completely worked your way through the stages of musical grief.

  ARE WE BREAKING UP? PLAYLIST

  BLUR, "To the End"

  LUSH (FEATURING JARVIS COCKER), "Ciao!"

  BJÖRK, "Army of Me"

  LILY ALLEN, "Not Big"

  YEAH YEAH YEAHS, "Bang"

  BERLIN, "No More Words"

  GLASSER, "Mirrorage"

  KELLY CLARKSON, "Since U Been Gone"

  KATE NASH, "Dickhead"

  FIONA APPLE, "O' Sailor"

  BAT FOR LASHES, "Moon and Moon"

  EL PERRO DEL MAR, "Change of Heart"

  THE CURE, "A Letter to Elise"

  THE CURE, "End"

  THE CURE, "Apart"

  DEATH CAB FOR CUTIE, "For What Reason"

  DEATH CAB FOR CUTIE, "A Lack of Color"

  OTIS REDDING, "Just One More Day"

  THE EXCITERS, "Tell Him"

  SAM COOKE, "Bring It on Home to Me"

  THE TEMPTATIONS, "Ain't Too Proud to Beg"

  ELVIS COSTELLO, "You Belong to Me"

  THE BEATLES, "Think for Yourself"

  KATE BUSH, "Never Be Mine"

  THE NEXT MADONNA

  YOU'VE BEEN WITH MADONNA through triumph. Through scandal. Through questionable hairdos and fashion disasters. You, along with the world, have idolized her as she reinvented herself, pushed the boundaries of acceptable behavior and femininity, and redefined what a female pop star could accomplish. And on August 16, 2013, you, along with Madonna, will celebrate her fifty-fifth birthday. You've probably noticed that around the year 2000 the music press began the hunt for the Next Madonna. The original has had a solid thirty-year run as arguably the most successful female pop star in the world, but now the world seems ready for a newer model.

  When all this Next Madonna chatter began, a young upstart named Britney Spears seemed primed to take the crown, but a series of public missteps involving exposed lady parts and a shaved head halted her ascent. More recently Lady Gaga has been the favorite contender as the Next Madonna, with approval coming from music journalists, Kanye West, Jonas ûkerlund (a Swedish video director who helmed "Ray of Light" and "American Life" and came out of retirement to shoot Gaga's "Telephone"), and a great swath of music writers. For those who haven't been named as candidates for the throne, there is always self-nomination, an option that Miley Cyrus, Rihanna, and Avril Lavigne have all embraced. But this raises some important questions: What does it mean to call someone the Next Madonna? How will we recognize the Next Madonna when we see her? And what is the old Madonna to do when we force her to retire?

  Most people associate Madonna with sex. While she's partly responsible for that (and I'll get to that later), so too is the world of music writing. Pick up any mainstream music magazine or blog and look at the staff list. You may see one female editor, but the rest of the editors will be solidly male. The gender ratio of writers will lean male as well. The voices of men, from Nick Hornby to Chuck Klosterman, have dominated music writing, resulting in a decidedly male slant to music coverage: Van Halen's guitar chops are treated with a level of seriousness on par with the return of Christ, and Madonna's evolution as a songwriter goes unexamined, but her body does not. If a female musician is profiled in a magazine, the odds that she will also be photographed in a state of undress are high. Unfortunately, Madonna exploited this angle from the start, putting her sexuality at the forefront to get a reaction from the press. After all, press sells records, and salaciousness gets more press, especially if you're an attractive woman. Throughout the 1980s, no matter where you turned, you heard Madonna talking about being like a virgin while dudes obsessed over how hot she looked. This worked for Madonna because the teen girls who were her core audience and the kind of guys who become music writers have a key commonality: They are obsessed with female sexuality and are not entirely sure how it works.

  Teenage Madonna fans in the '80s were interested in her sexuality because we were just then learning the potential power of our own sexuality. Madonna became a role model for us in learning what this new sexual power could accomplish, and she wrote the book on how to wield it for maximum effect.* Male music critics were interested because, well, duh—boobs and the vague promise of sex hold pretty much any straight guy's attention.

  A long line of young female pop stars have embraced the legendary Lolita fixation to get some easy publicity. But that sort of attention alone can only get you so far—as my friend Russell pointed out to me, isn't it weird that none of Prince's lady protégés, a list that includes Sheila E., Wendy & Lisa, Vanity, Apollonia, and Sheena Easton, ever broke beyond one or two hits, even with the Purple One's backing and sexy songwriting? It takes more than sex alone to create a Madonna.

  That said, sex did help Madonna steal our attention away from the pop world's top dog at the time: Cyndi Lauper. Back in 1983 Cyndi's debut album She's So Unusual was outselling Madonna's self-titled debut by a wide margin. The albums were released in the same year, and Lauper's racked up major hits like "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun," "Time After Time," and "She Bop." Cyndi is the quirky one, the outsider who touched a nerve that everyone could relate to. Her videos were in constant play on MTV, and she attracted a wide fan base with her kooky hairstyle, female-friendly anthems, and out-there sense of style that Madonna later admitted to biting. Cyndi scored four Billboard top fives in 1984 and by March 1985, her album had gone platinum four times over—that's four million copies in the United States alone. While Cyndi's album took just six months to go platinum, Madonna's took over a year. Madonna was a well-known pop artist, but she was no Cyndi Lauper.

  With the release of Like a Virgin and Madonna's performance at the 1984 MTV Video Music Awards, everything changed. Lauper had racked up eight nominations to Madonna's one. In what should have been Cyndi's moment to shine, Madonna stole the show. Her now-iconic performance of "Like a Virgin" paired the song, which winked at the virgin/whore imagery that would become a cornerstone of her appeal, with images of a lingerie-clad Madonna writhing on the floor and unintentionally flashing the audience. The act she put on that night convinced a lot of us that we shouldn't just buy in to her image, but that we wanted to save up our allowance to buy a copy of her newly released second album. And it's the moment most often discussed when we talk about the history of the VMAs. Though Cyndi went home with the Moon Man for Best Female Video, Madonna made 1984 all about the "Material Girl," Desperately Seeking Susan, and her self-proclaimed status as a boy toy.

  Like a Virgin was certified platinum six times over by the Recording Industry Association of America a little over a year after its release. Her hyper-sexualized persona did a lot to drive our interest in her, but she sustained it by remaining front and center, while Cyndi took 1985 off to write her next album. Cyndi released True Colors in '86. It had a massive hit in the title track, but none of the follow-up singles charted. By the time she released her third album in 1989, it barely even registered with the pop audience.

  When Madonna released Like a Prayer in 1989, she was as ubiquitous as Pepsi, so it seemed only fitting when she struck a sponsorship deal with them that caused a sensation not just in the pop world, but in the marketing world as well. It was Madonna's first major endorsement. New York magazine quoted an unnamed source close to the deal at the time: "Now that everyone from Michael Jackson to Whitney Houston has endorsed either Coke or Pepsi, it's become a rock 'n' roll status symbol." In the midst of a brutal cola wa
r between the two soda giants, Pepsi was incredibly lucky to land Madonna, whose popularity and of-the-moment legend was second only to Michael Jackson's.

  After Pepsi featured her and "Like a Prayer" in a two-minute commercial that premiered during the Super Bowl, Madonna released the track's accompanying music video, and a shit storm of drama rained down. The video was an interracial love story that ended with her kissing a black Jesus. The Catholic Church actually issued a condemnation against her, and Pepsi killed their contract with the superstar immediately, yanking the spots off the air. Madonna reportedly kept the multimillion-dollar fee she'd been paid and walked away amid the whirl of controversy, garnering major press attention and all of the bad-girl reputation rumors she could handle (not that any of those were bad things in her world). Pepsi came out looking conservative while Madonna's actions played into our perception of her as a maverick.

  Throughout her rise, Madonna has been at the center of a range of criticism, from disapproval for the negative social impact of her blatantly sexual image to allegations of lip-synching and studio fixes to enhance her vocals. Her fans, however, could not have cared less. We just wanted to be part of the spectacle. Her ability to put on a live show that's nothing short of an extravaganza has been a vital part of her appeal and her reputation. And she's come a long way. In the early '80s, she could be found lip-synching and dancing to tracks in clubs, with her brother and some girls as backup dancers. Her first major tour, 1985's Virgin Tour, didn't veer too far from the club routine. By 1987's Who's That Girl tour, Madonna was already trying the push the envelope in creating a multimedia stadium experience, but the result was little more than a fairly faithful recreation of her music videos with some Warholian pop-art–inspired costumes and visuals. It was the 1990 Blonde Ambition tour that forever changed audience expectations for pop concerts. Even if you didn't go, you're probably familiar with that tour from its infamous on-the-road documentation in the movie Truth or Dare, which gave us a raw, behind-the-scenes look at Madonna, who came across as kind of a monster. Every Madonna tour since has been a massive production, requiring so many set changes that the crew and transportation needed would be unthinkably taxing to any but the richest and most sponsorship-bankrolled pop stars, but they're also among the most profitable—and entertaining. She has twice broken the record for the top-grossing female tour ever, according to Billboard magazine. With her Re-Invention, Confessions, and Sticky and Sweet tours commanding $350 a ticket, she has likely priced out many of her teenage fans.