sappy top 40 lyrics
High school music
U2's The Joshua Tree came out in 1987, when I was in 10th grade. For younger readers, it's impossible to describe how huge that record was at the time. Not quite the pop cultural juggernaut of 1984's Purple Rain, but close. The first four songs on The Joshua Tree — "Where the Streets Have No Name," "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For," "With or Without You," and "Bullet the Blue Sky" — were perfect. At least, 16-year-old me thought they were perfect. I even went to RFK stadium with my friends that year to see the U2 concert. My only memory of that show is my seemingly innocent and well-behaved friend jumping some kind of barrier and busting past security to get into the lower-level, closer-to-the-stage section, just so she could get a better look at the drummer, who she thought was cute.
I can't decide if I aged out of U2, if the band jumped the shark, or if I heard too many "punk" people mocking them and decided they sucked. Probably all three. Add in that fiasco where Apple forced a U2 album no one wanted onto our iPods, Bono decided he could cure AIDS with red electronics, etc. and there is no amount of money you could pay me to go to a U2 concert now, because most aging rock stars are embarrassing and depressing. And I'm 100% sure, without having listened to any of their subsequent records, that everything that came after The Joshua Tree was trash in comparison.
I realize I sound like Homer Simpson talking about Grand Funk Railroad. I'm OK with that.
But those songs I mentioned above still hold up. Whenever I hear "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" on the radio, I turn the volume up and sing along, trying and failing to do a vocal harmony. (Shut up.) For anyone struggling with depression, anxiety, self-doubt, etc., that chorus can make you feel like you're not alone, that it's OK — normal, even! — to be dissatisfied and full of existential angst.
I heard the song again over the weekend, when I went with my friend and her daughters to a local farmers market. On the way to the market, the girls were fighting non-stop in the back seat while my stressed-out friend was trying to break them up and drive at the same time. Don't make her turn this car around.
On the way home, one of the girls asked their mom to play "the Clay Calloway song," which is how kids who have seen 2021's animated Sing 2 movie have been introduced to U2's "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For."
"Luckily I still have some of my old CDs," my friend laughed, as she shoved The Joshua Tree into the car's CD player.
She put the convertible top down and turned up the volume. The previously agitated girls became silent and still, leaning their heads towards their respective sides of the car, staring off into the distance. The little car zipped around suburban roads I didn't recognize, until we came to a light across the street from our high school, the campus of which has changed A LOT since we graduated.
"Wow," I said, disgusted at all the flashy development.
"You want me to go in and drive around?" my friend asked.
"Hell no."
The light turned green and we kept going, all of us silent and lost in our own thoughts, while Bono howled about all the colors bleeding into one. When the chorus came around again, I realized it no longer resonated with me.
"Wait," I thought to myself. "Have I found what I'm looking for?" For years I was never even able to define that. I could only articulate what I wasn't looking for: Graduate degrees, impressive job titles, a husband, kids, fancy cars, all the conventional markers of success.
And then 51-year-old me remembered that happiness isn't about achieving socially acceptable milestones. It's about being able to slow down and enjoy the little moments: The wind blowing your hair around on a perfect spring day, your friend of almost 40 years behind the wheel, a bag full of fresh strawberries, arugula, asparagus, mushrooms, and pesto on your lap.
And if this is what I've been looking for, maybe it's been there the whole fucking time.
Links
I enjoyed this interview with Big Tony from Trouble Funk. (Podcast link)
And this interview with Fishbone's Chris Dowd. (Punknews)
Doc Martens look cool, but structurally they are garbage. The video shows you why. (YouTube)
I want to try playing tennis in the dark with glow-in-the-dark balls. (Instagram)
I love the idea of getting no paper mail (other than personal letters). (Substack)
A look inside the Atlantis, the replica of the original 9:30 club they built next to the new 9:30 club. Hoping I can get to a show there sometime next year when the hype has died down. (Washingtonian) Oh and here's some live footage from last night. (Spin)
The young goths of Cruel World Festival. (Vice)
Some kids in Maryland put their high school on Zillow and I'm kicking myself for not thinking of that first. (HuffPo)
Volume way up for this baby duck. (Instagram)
Senate freaking out after Dianne Feinstein gets her hands on gun. (The Onion)
"Countless men suffer from correctile dysfunction." (Instagram)