I was just trying to run through a list of my favourite songs, and a lot of them seem to have stuck with me because when I hear them, I instantly think of a particular time and place. Annoyingly, this also makes me remember really bad songs, which then they acquire a poignancy that they certainly do not deserve. I thought I'd start a thread where we could all write meanderingly about lost times and our favourite songs. My first one is:

Hotel Yorba - the White Stripes
This reminds me of sitting on a big grassy hill in Devon, surrounded by hippies and basking in the sun with my old best friend, who had moved there a year before. I hadn't seen her for that whole year, but I'd gone to stay with her in the summer of year 10 (this was back in 2003) and I haven't seen her now for too long. It makes me simultaneously feel lots of things, including very happy, a need to sing the harmony part and a little lonely.

Now I also associate it with sitting at the piano at my friend's house with my ex-boyfriend last spring, when we had only just started going out. She was having a party because her parents were away, but we weren't really enjoying the partying, and he started playing this on the piano.


Golden Skans by Klaxons also reminds me of the first term at uni, late nights at the Rescue Rooms and an exchange student friend who has now gone back to Australia, although I don't like it as much as my Hotel Yorba memory because it hasn't stood the test of time yet, and isn't as special. That was an idyllic summer, whereas this song signalled the start of something I am less happy about.