Wait, is it actually…Monday? On a Musical Monday? Well, let’s not ruin it; time to get to it!

If you’re just tuning in, Musical Monday is a “weekly” series I’m doing on songs that are important to me. It’s an attempt to get over my discomfort with talking about music, and maybe learn a little bit about myself along the way. You can learn more from my first post.

So far, I’ve learned that I’m really drawn to wistful songs. I like that bittersweet twist of longing for something lost, maybe something you never had…maybe I lean too hard into nostalgia, but what are you gonna do?

Anyway, without further ado, this week’s song!

“I Think I Need a New Heart” by the Magnetic Fields

Lyrics – iTunes

Music can be a form of time travel. There are some songs that are so ingrained in a place in my past, it’s impossible to listen to them without being transported back there…mentally and emotionally, anyway. For me, the Magnetic Field’s album “69 Love Songs” is an instant transmission to my college days. It takes me back to sophomore and junior year, living on campus, and just starting to figure out who I was as an adult.

More than that, this album reminds me of the specific story I was working on at the time. It’s current working title is “False Starts”, but it’s had a lot of names over the years. Usually I don’t have strong musical associations for stories, but this is the exception. I was gearing up for NaNoWriMo, and every day on my way to work I’d listen to these albums and think: “What would Blake do next? Why is Logan the way he is?”

False Starts is the first novel-length story I ever finished. It’s the first time I “won” NaNoWriMo (met the 50,000 word goal within the month), and it’s a story that has grown with me. When I first wrote it, the characters were barely older than I was, and I had them dealing with a lot of crap that at the time felt adult and in retrospect was very melodramatic (there was even a fake pregnancy). A few years ago, for a different NaNoWriMo, I rewrote it; aged the characters up, toned down the melodrama, and threw in a few more years of my own wisdom and experience behind it. I reread that draft a year ago, and it’s actually pretty good (it’s main flaw is that it lacks a middle).

The whole album reminds me of that story, but this song, specifically, is special to me. It feels very appropriate for my two main characters; Stephin Merritt’s voice is how I imagine Logan sounding, but the words are all Blake.

False Starts is all about Blake and Logan falling in love in the messiest, silliest way possible. Both characters make a ton of mistakes, hurt each other and their friends, and generally make all the wrong choices. And I love them. There’s a lot of me in both characters. I’ve had a lot of writing projects over the years, but this one is really my baby.

“You’ve lied, too, but it’s a sin that I can’t tell the truth,
Cause it all comes out wrong unless I put it in a song, so the radio plays,
‘I Think I Need a New Heart’, just for you.
‘I Think I Need a New Heart’…”