Fond Memories Made Special By Silly Songs

Songs are memories swayed by verses while dancing in rhymes and melodies. For singers and composers, they are emotions immortalized into words and tones. While most of us can relate to certain songs that depict our past or current emotions—if not trigger us into reminiscing—some of us still connect to songs even if they say none at all of our lives.

That includes me. Certain emotions and memories rush through the back of my eyes upon hearing familiar tunes, not necessarily lyrics. Some of them are understandably relatable as conveyed by the words, but some of them I also find peculiar and funny at times.

What goes around, comes around (Justin Timberlake)

I spent two months in Baguio City for my media training, and this song reminds me of the pines. What goes around, comes around says nothing about the summer capital, but I remember hearing this on my way to the mountain city and while spending my lonely days with a few friends in our apartment. Maybe the initial fear of what’s going to happen within my two-month stay connected to the song somehow.

Radar (Britney Spears)

Radar to me is like a ruptured appendix. You read it right. It’s my own ruptured appendix.

Spending five days in San Juan de Dios Hospital for my appendectomy in August 2009 wasn’t easy especially that the wake of the late Pres. Corazon Aquino was all over the news. My resort? MTV and MYX channels.

Britney was climbing the charts that time and her music video was practically overkill in airtime.

Whenever I felt pain, Britney was there.

Whenever my mom visited me, although she was suffering from cancer, Britney was there.

Whenever President Aquino’s sad story ruled primetime, Britney was still there.

I’d kill myself for saying this, but the pop princess comforted my agitated mind (or maybe it’s the horse in the video). Yes, it’s weird, but this is one Britney song that I’d be more than glad to listen to.

Lollipop (Aqua)

Oh my love, I know you are my Candyman.

I can still hear Lene Nystrom’s squeaky voice singing the chorus.

My classmates and I spent weeks rehearsing this for a dance number in fourth grade. We had no term as “LSS” back then, but I’m sure I had it before. There’s nothing comforting about the song, but picturing myself dancing while weighing 132 lbs. at 10 years of age was disturbing.

Come what may (Ewan McGregor and Nicole Kidman)

Promise me (Beverly Craven)

Mad season and Push (Matchbox 20)

My freshman year in college was not exactly an exciting and adventurous one. I was living in an apartment with my friends and cousins in Cabanatuan City, Nueva Ecija. No clubbing. No nightlife. No late movies. All went home on weekends.

However, I frequently stayed alone not because I had no home to go to, but because our house was so depressing that I’d rather feel lonely than gloomy.

My dad was staying in Ayala Alabang to man my cousin’s house while my mom was undergoing chemotherapy for her cervical cancer in Manila. My younger brother went “home alone” for a few months and being the selfish kid that I was, I didn’t want to feel his loneliness in addition to my own perplexed emotions. As the older one, I should have been by his side, but college was too much for me that another burden could cause a breakdown.

Music was my companion whenever sadness and hopelessness struck me. There was nothing much left to do anyway. We had no MP3 players back then so I had to listen to the available CDs in the apartment over and over again. Hurray for Matchbox 20!

Until now, these songs bring me back to a tight year. Now, I’m stronger.

Mambo Italiano Remix (Free step)

Intramurals 2000: I was with four other schoolmates representing our team to the dance competition and this was the competition song. Weekend rehearsals, walking on downpours (all wet!) from the school to our team member’s house, eating lunch in our teacher’s place, lots of disagreements – it’s like Mambo Italiano was the OST playing repeatedly as our bed (the background music in radio while a DJ talks).

We didn’t win, if that’s what you want to know. We were more hip-hop-ish than mambo-y. Apparently, the judges preferred sexy young students dancing while wearing fishnet stockings and scandalous red spaghetti straps.

Smile to Shine (Baz)

When I was still a desk editor, this song was fed to me by Pandora over and over again (before it stopped playing outside US territories). I liked it so much that I’d bookmark its link in Nutsie (before it was shut down). It’s also a mainstay in my Grooveshark playlist before the site was shutdown as well in April 2015.

Even Google doesn’t say much about the song nor the singer, but it’s one of my most favorite songs of all time. As a young and aspiring editor (which didn’t work out right), I was filled with so much positivism and hope to help me look forward to a brighter future. The song said what I felt the best during those years.

I’m alive and it’s universal

Gonna keep my smile to shine

Gonna keep on going on

Today is a new day

I wanna be with you (Mandy Moore)

I’m not a fan of this song. I’m not a fan of Mandy Moore either, but it reminds me of my sophomore days in high school when our room was at the far back of the school—when our windows were closer to the mango orchard at the lot next to us than the principal’s office—when the secluded garden was our tambaya—and when NPA rebels clashed with soldiers near our school. It was a year full of thrills, don’t you agree?

When you’re looking like that (Westlife)

Same old brand new you (A1)

No more (A1)

What do you expect? I was a teenager at the apogee of boyband craze. Their catchy songs were my summer anthem before second year high school. Listening to the same songs makes me feel young and worry-free once again.

I still listen to their songs, especially Westlife.

Rose garden (Lynn Anderson)

It stayed in Billboard Hot 100 Top 10 for a few weeks in 1970. No, I wasn’t born until almost two decades after, but my mom was. With our 1000-megawatt karaoke, I figured you wouldn’t find it hard to hear what’s playing even from a distance. I knew too well.

As a consistent honor student who saw absence as abomination to education, I had very few memories of absence from school (in elementary and high school, at least; college was a different story). All of them were either due to a typhoon or fever.

One feverish morning up to the afternoon in elementary, Rose Garden was played by the AM radio announcer so often that I’d memorize the chorus by the end of the day. I was chilling yet my brain was still memorizing an unfamiliar song. How could that be not memorable?