The Sister Hazel Bearhug
They’re always there for you, almost like a real sister.
It's a funny thing, a very specific kind of self-betrayal, when a song that you disliked in your youth sneaks up on you in your later years. It awakens a whole weird sense of longing, wonder, and shame, like a big bolus of emotions just hit your system. For fractions of a second, it’s even a little dreamlike, as you project your current self onto your younger self. Here you are in 2023 thoughtlessly loving a song from 1997 that you know for a fact you hated. It's useless, though: you don't have the antibodies. Your older self can't resist the song even while your younger self recoils in disgust.
This feels invasive - it feels like someone trying to plant memories in our brains, it feels like a hijacking of our autonomy. You’re being betrayed by some part of you - not by your body, and not by your brain, although in some ways, maybe you're being betrayed by both of them at the same time? It hits your body because maybe the hairs on your arm stand up and your pulse quickens. Maybe your eyes even get a little damp. It hits your brain because you feel the resistance: executive function like the proverbial Dutch boy with his finger in the damn, a tide you successfully fought off a few decades ago suddenly springing back to life, and this time, you don't have that youthful chip on your shoulder to fend it off, do you?
So now you’re wrestling with this feeling and the self-doubt that accompanies it - fuck, do I…do I like this song? Have I always liked it? Is the song in fact *good*? If it is good, why didn’t I let myself see that at the time - why is it only now, decades later, that I can feel this? After all, if the song was going to make you feel something, it should have made you feel something back then! This song is from your time, it's from your peak years! It was meant for you! And for people your age! You didn't want it then, though you can claim it now!
But wait. Now you’re regaining your footing, and you’re thinking that maybe the song isn’t good, maybe you were right all along. The song is trash, and you knew it then, and now…well, ok, maybe you like it now. This is ok. You've been around for long enough to know that it's ok to like trash. Your younger self was more unforgiving, but your younger self didn't have the perspective you have today. And look, you know, some softening is inevitable as you age, and that's ok, isn't it? It feels natural, maybe nice even - to be less angry than you were when you were young. To dislike fewer things. (Incidentally, I think this is what Steve Albini was really on about with the Steely Dan tirade, he was angry at his peers for going wobbly on stuff they used to hate. And now here you are doing the same, and your inner Albini is just as pissed.)
And the song has been playing the whole time, you're coming to the chorus now. This is ok. You don’t have to fight it, it's not a retconning. No, it’s a new memory from your present. You're making a new memory of that time you heard the song you used to hate, and now you kinda like it. Shit, you even know all the words to the chorus? Wow. Can it be muscle memory if you never sang the song out loud before? Where does that knowledge come from, and has it been sitting there all along, undisturbed?
You suddenly think about the phrase "the song remains the same." It was about something else, but doesn't that more or less describe what pop songs are? They get released and they stop changing. They just sit there. But we keep changing. Given enough time and enough selves, it seems likely that you'll eventually change into someone that likes that song, right? Yeah, eventually you become the kind of person who responds to that song. That unnamed song. Finally, you've figured out…
Yeah. It's hard to say what it is I see in the song. Words can't say and I can't do enough to prove, especially because I'm now kind of foggy on where I saw this (maybe Yellowjackets? It's tough, old age being what it is). But I am *begging* people who write tv shows and movies to never use "All For You" ever again. Because next time, I'm going to love it unironically.
