Jim Morrison Gets Me: A Playlist For The Incurably Apathetic

I was going to call this The Great Playlist of Misery, because 80% of the songs on it make me miserable and yet, like a raving lunatic, I love and listen to them anyway.

It's actually supposed to be music that makes me instantly feel something strong when I hear it, whether that be wistfulness or heartache or ambition or peace. How do you condense that into a catchy title?

Songs That Remind Me I Can Feel

or

Sad Scary Happy Music

or

Anti-Robot Music?

I guess I could have called it Songs That Amy Relates To, but that's too weak, too generic. It doesn't convey the depth of feeling I'm after. It's not a playlist of ~relatable~ Taylor Swift-type songs about high school and boys and growing up. It's music that seems amazingly specific to me, like I might have written the melodies and words myself in a past life. The kind of songs I sometimes hesitate to play because I'm not sure I can handle the way it's going to make me feel.

The idea to make a playlist of this kind of music came to me earlier when, of all things, I was baking vegan chocolate muffins for my brother's birthday, and Unhappy Girl by The Doors was playing on Sonos. I thought wow, Jim Morrison really gets me, and I started to think about other songs that hit me on a similar visceral level.

1. Unhappy Girl - The Doors

Lots of songs are about pain and unhappiness, but this is the one that feels like it was written for me. This song is poetry, the last verse in particular:

Don't miss your chance 

to swim in mystery

You are dying in a prison

of your own device

I didn't include it on this playlist because it's called Unhappy Girl, and hey-what-do-you-know, I'm an unhappy girl sometimes. I included it because it so eloquently encapsulates not just depression itself, but that even more crushing side effect - the feeling that you're slowly decaying, or 'dying in a prison of your own device', and knowing that one day you'll wake up and realise you wasted your entire life away. You missed your chance. You know you're missing it every second of the day, but you can't help yourself. It's not the unhappiness that kills you, it's the regret and inevitability. Damn.

2. Tangerine - Led Zeppelin

And now, for something a little bit more upbeat. I don't know why I love this song the way I do, or why my mood tends to improve as soon as the false start fades away into the proper song. Maybe it's because it reminds me of innocence and sunshine and passion. I think maybe it's because of Almost Famous. It plays over the final scene, during this exchange:

William: So, Russell, what do you love about music?

Russell: To begin with... everything.

I want to live my life like this song sounds. It's a shortcut to my mental sanctuary, my happy place; the American landscape of the sunny Seventies, touring and playing the music I love with interesting people. It's one of those cases where your associations are different to the original intent of the songwriter; the lyrics are actually about separation, not paradise. "Measuring a summer's day, I only find it slips away to grey...'

3. Exploration - Bruno Coulais (Coraline OST)

This one instantly makes me feel like a child. I can almost feel my legs shrinking, my boots getting smaller, my wonder at this big world flourishing. I want to pull on my mac and weave through the misty woods by the park, dancing like a nymph in the evening rain. I want to collect dead bugs and interesting rocks in glass jars. I want to jump into streams in my wellies. Why? I don't know. I wasn't a child when Coraline was released. It's a mystery.

4. I'll See You In My Dreams - Joe Brown

I love every incarnation of this 1920s song. I categorise it alongside other haunting, sentimental old-timey songs like Goodnight Sweetheart. Do you know what I mean? Those old love songs you listen to on Youtube and end up sobbing at 2am after finding a comment like 'my wife passed away eight years ago today, we danced to this song on our wedding day back in 1948.'

My favourite version, however, is by Joe Brown. I'd never even heard of it until I attended a screening of Concert For George at the Museum of Liverpool in 2012. Closing the show - a musical celebration of George Harrison's life featuring the likes of Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Eric Clapton, Jeff Lynne and Tom Petty - Brown performed a beautiful ukulele rendition of I'll See You In My Dreams as rose petals cascaded from the ceiling over George's loved ones assembled on stage. I remember being a bit of a wreck - there I was, in Liverpool on the anniversary of George Harrison's death, watching an outpouring of love for a beautiful human being. Try not to cry.

5. Ooo Baby Baby - Smokey Robinson & The Miracles

This one brings me right back to Christmas Day 2013, the day my Nan died. The extended family, after visiting her in the hospice, gathered for Christmas dinner at my grandfather's pub, which had closed a few hours before. It had been a difficult holiday period, and it was probably the first time I'd seen my family laugh and smile and relax in months. Ooo Baby Baby was playing on the sound system when the phone rang. I didn't know who was calling, but my dad, uncle and step-grandad rushed out to the car park, and my brother ran off crying and didn't return. People at the table started talking solemnly about my Nan, using the past tense. I naturally assumed she'd died, but no one really said anything concrete so I sat there in uncomfortable silence, focusing as hard as I could on the music and hoping someone would tell me what the hell was going on. A few minutes later, my brother's godmother received a text and announced 'she's gone' to everyone before running off in tears. This gorgeous song is like a kick to the stomach when I hear it, an instant throwback to that feeling of limbo and loss.

6. Mother - John Lennon

This song is brutal. I think it's one of the most raw expressions of pain in recorded Western music. It's only recently that I've been able to listen it. John wrote it about his parents, having been abandoned by both of them as a small child (though it's a lot more complicated than that) and raised by his well-meaning but unaffectionate Aunt Mimi. He reveals his torment at his upbringing through simple statements - "Mother, you had me. I never had you" - before acknowledging his own failures as a parent (he similarly abandoned his own son, Julian) and imploring his children not to repeat the pattern. The song ends with him screaming in a childlike manner, begging his mother and father not to leave him. You can hear the strong influence of the primal therapy he'd been having. The saddest thing about this song for me is that having had now-resolved issues with my own mother growing up, I once related to it.

7. Beast of Burden - The Rolling Stones

It's pretty hard for me to describe how this song makes me feel. There are so many conflicting emotions there: Sad, content, summery, exhausted, light, inspired, dance-y, vulnerable, reflective, longing, accepted, nostalgic, alone, not alone. Like Tangerine, it transports me to my dream world by the end of the first line.

8. Sara - Fleetwood Mac

Sara, you're the poet in my heart... Ending on a happier note, Sara is probably my favourite song of all time. There's something so mystical and earthy about it. I feel immediately connected to the magic of our planet whenever I hear it; it seems to tap into the rhythm of nature. I almost get shivers when Stevie sings the 'undoing the laces' part. Honestly, I could just listen to all of Tusk forever, but this song is particularly special. From Stevie's ethereal, floating vocals to the enchanting piano melody to the heavenly background harmonies, everything weaves together to create a unique, celestial tapestry. To state it plainly, this song makes me glad to be alive. If there was one song I wish I could say I wrote... I'd go anywhere, anywhere, anywhere...

Honourable mentions:
These Are The Days - Van Morrison
She's Leaving Home - The Beatles
Gloria - The Doors
 Hedwig's Theme - John Williams
 Catherine - PJ Harvey
Heaven - The Rolling Stones.