Garbage: Stupid Girl

My most vivid memory of this is dancing to it at my brother’s wedding, New Year’s Eve 1996. All the other girls were singing “Stupid boy,” which I must have rolled my eyes at, or would have if I hadn’t been so stinking drunk.

Garbage: Queer

It’s hard to pick my favorite Garbage song, but this one might be it.

Garbage: I’m Only Happy When It Rains

I loved Garbage. Yeah, me and millions of others.

Philip Glass: Violin Concerto No 2

I loooooove this one, which one of my ex-boyfriends and I used to listen to obsessively. How cool that someone’s matched the music with Kate Moss stripping (originally from the White Stripes video she did)! I have no idea when this was composed.

Counting Crows: Hanging Around

Yes, I enjoy Counting Crows. (Or, at least, I loved their first album when I was a teenager and also very much enjoy this single. I haven’t heard anything else they’ve made since 1995.)

Mary Chapin Carpenter: I Take My Chances

I must have listened to the Come On Come On album about 60,000 times my senior year in high school. Now I can cry until I laugh and laugh until I cry. (Sorry for the homemade video some YouTuber made: This is the only time you’ll see Julia Roberts here, I promise.)

Beth Orton: Best Bit

The Best Bit EP has two wonderful songs on it, both duets with jazz guy Terry Callier: Dolphins and a song called Lean on Me (not the one you’re thinking of, though). This is good, too:

Pulp: Mis-Shapes

My life changed the day I found out that you could actually buy bags of broken biscuits. They weren’t shitting me! Anyway, this has some silly socialist propaganda in it, but try not to love it.

Alison Krauss + Union Station: New Favorite

Ignore the video. Why do you lie about love? I saw the light go out.

Alison Krauss + Union Station: Lucky One

I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again: Alison Krauss can’t put a note wrong. (Though I am a bit concerned with how much she looks like Posh Spice in this video.) It would be wrong to ignore the awesomeness of the rest of the band, too.

Norah Jones: Sunrise

Go to hell, I love this song. (I also like Norah a lot since a friend worked with her on the De-Lovely soundtrack and reported that she really is as sweet and unassuming – and beautiful – as you’d guess.)

Alison Krauss + Union Station: Let Me Touch You for a While

Alison can do no wrong in my ears.