I’m discussing guilty musical pleasures with a work colleague, when she screws her face up. I have just mentioned the group “Il Divo”.
“I loved those guys. But I just can’t listen to them any more”, she sighs.
She recounts the fateful day when she was listening to them whilst driving into a car park basement, where she promptly collided with another car. Since then she can’t bring herself to put their CD on again: the bump of excitement she used to get now replaced by the memory of a decidedly less pleasurable jolt.
How odd, I think. Most people associate a minor car accident with denial, blame and insurance paperwork. She associates it with an unfeasibly handsome quartet of classical crossover male vocalists.
But her story has since planted a seed of disquiet every time I drive, blue-toothing my favourite songs, susceptible to the vagaries of the road. Statistically, every time I turn on the ignition, I am putting my favourite music at risk of becoming forever tainted in my mind. A few times I’ve noticed that when a particular favourite starts pumping through my speakers, I will catch myself and, for a moment, start to drive more conservatively. The song becomes like an overfilled cup of tea I am gingerly carrying over to my mum on the sofa. When it gets to a satisfying verse, bridge or chorus, I’m checking the wing mirrors every five seconds.
The reverse is of course also true. Music can ignite welcome memories, and sometimes in the most remarkably specific way. A few weeks before a trip to South Africa, U2 released their album Songs of Experience. I earmarked it as my holiday soundtrack, and played it on a loop every time I was on a tour bus in Cape Town (I had a 3-day pass, believe me I tour-bussed the sh*t out of that trip, no getting car-jacked in a rental Kia Picanto for me, thank you very much).
You’d think the result was that I now associate the album generally with that country. But no, I can’t say that I do. However – what I can say is this:….. the fifth to eighth lines of the second verse of the (remix version of the) song Ordinary Love (on the deluxe version of the album), remind me, unerringly, of a precise quarter-mile, south-bound stretch of road running past the University of Cape Town, on a slightly overcast and blustery day. Specific enough for you?
I could be anywhere in the world, but when, and only when, those fourteen seconds of words and music hit, I am back in that precise spot. What created this connection, I don’t know (the fact that the song is about Nelson Mandela is just a coincidence), but the impression is as indelible as, I suppose, a momentary lapse of concentration in a basement car park.
The American group The War on Drugs released an album in 2014 that seemed a perfect soundtrack for a relaxed road trip, whenever the opportunity arose. I failed to keep the proverbial auditory powder dry though, and played the album in my car when I moved to a new country in the Middle East and was racing around various bureaucratic appointments. I started to associate some of the album tracks with getting lost on unfamiliar roads, or sitting in traffic stress-grinding my teeth, or clutching a ticket in a waiting room with some forms filled out, with one leg doing that nervous-energy jigging thing.
I vainly attempted to rewrite the memory slate for this album by deploying it on a day out the following summer in Canada, heading to a beach. Now the album is a hybrid trigger (a musical Brundlefly if you will). It’s the equivalent of a memory of sitting on a beach, the waves lapping at my feet….with my teeth grinding and paperwork in my lap.
I mention to my son about the song that reminds me of that short stretch of road in Cape Town. I play the song to him, gesticulating (like someone who’s spotted his mugger in a police identity parade) when those fourteen seconds hit. He remembers the road. He already knows the song….. A week later, he tells me that now every time he listens to that part, he automatically thinks of that road too! My word. I’ve implanted a suggested, false memory in him, Blade Runner-style. Perhaps these music memories cues aren’t so organic after all.
On the way to work, I’m playing a song called Hold Back The Love by White Lies. The tune is far too breezy to be associated with the mundane daily commute. It deserves something better, so I decide to go under the knife.
I prepare myself for the experimental surgery: a cup of tea, a sofa and a laptop. I click on a YouTube vlog about driving around Cape Town, and turn down the volume. Through my earphones I turn up the song, and focus…