playlist memoirs: songs for francis
an ode to late night drives on highway 29
For me, cars and music are inextricably linked. It’s hard to imagine one existing without the other.
When I was a lonely child of divorce, trekking four hours back-and-forth every other weekend to yet another house I was asked to call home, I held close to my CD player and copy of Abbey Road like a security blanket. The oh-so-transformative sequence of “Golden Slumbers,” “Carry That Weight,” and “The End” often lulled me into a dreamless sleep, only to be woken by the sight of a Walmart parking lot and my mom’s gentle, yet resigned, voice telling me it was time. I had to go back to my dad’s—to school, bullies, and his terrible temper.
I have a distinct memory of laying down in the backseat of my mom’s car late one night on one of these long drives. It was late Spring. The sunroof was open, stars and wind rushing by my eyes in flashes. Famous radio host Delilah played the “Somwhere Out There” duet with James Ingram and Linda Ronstadt. I was overcome with several emotions I’d never experienced—romance, yearning, longing. I was also struck by an emotion I knew all to well: heartbreak.
I lived in a near-contant state of missing someone.
Is that song cheesy? Oh, unbelievably so. Still, I felt something in my soul take hold. Some neural pathway was created that night, cementing the connection between music and cars in my brain forever.
Music was always in motion, and so was I.
When I was nineteen, I fell in love with a married man nineteen-years-older than me. When I was nineteen, I drove a 2008 white Subaru Legacy. When I was nineteen, I drove the same road, back and forth, to university. When I was nineteen, I wrote poetry. When I was nineteen, I filled notebooks with stilted words and adolescent fantasies.
When I was nineteen, I owned a car named Francis—except I called her Baby, cause nobody parks Baby in a corner. Was I projecting? Certainly. I wanted so badly to be accepted, to be seen, to be held by a stranger and not feel the urge to scream. I wanted to feel the way I did when I used to sing. I wanted music to feel like it was mine again, not a far-off pipe dream that was never to be.
When I was nineteen, I cried more often than I smiled. When I was nineteen, I wore oversized hoodies with the sleeves pulled over my shaking hands. When I was nineteen, a boy I liked walked me home from a party and asked me for advice on how to ask out my best friend. When I was nineteen, I dyed my hair pink and wore black eyeliner everyday. When I was nineteen, I flirted overtly, carelessly with my TAs. When I was nineteen, music was the only thing I could stand. When I was nineteen, I made my car a playlist full of songs that made midnight drives a little less lonely—a little less scary.
The emotional output of a nineteen-year-old girl is often dismissed. There is little thought or empathy afforded to her plain, barefaced vulnerability. Nineteen was a singular year for me. Everything hit like a freight train: rejection, loss, love, desire, approval. Every ounce of emotion bled out onto the pages of my notebooks. Every thought was stitched into the songs my friends and crushes showed me.
Music was always in motion, and so was I.
When I was twenty-two, I fell unbelievably, honestly, completely, and irrevocably, in love. After several years of feeling rejected, used up, and unwanted by ruthless or careless assholes, I reconnected with an old friend from high school. Everything about it seemed to fit. We both needed music like our lives depended on it.
In their car, I discovered Jeff Buckley, Nick Drake, Elliott Smith, Queens of the Stone Age, Mark Lanegan, and the Milk Carton Kids. I showed them Men I Trust, Julia Jacklin, Carseat Headrest, The Shins, Faye Webster, Rusty Clanton, Angelo De Augustine, and on and on and on.
Almost every critical moment between us happened in the car, while a song we loved played low on the stereo. The first “what are we?” conversation. The first kiss. The first of many panic attacks. The first “I love you.” Endless milkshakes from Cook Out. Dates. Make-out sessions. Road trips. The first fight. The break-up. The unfortunate fall-out.
Music was always in motion, and so was I.
When I was in grad school, I drove the length of Highway 29 back-and-forth for two years. As a global pandemic raged on, I found solace in the great music playing from my mediocre car stereo. I lived for those precious, late-night hours where songs I’d heard a million times played in the exact same order, over and over and over again.
Even greater than this, I discovered so much of my young self in that space. I found something familiar. Music laid over me like the security blanket I always knew it to be. All I needed was a good playlist and my car, Francis. The world burned and empires toppled. I was just trying not to drift too far over the center line.
Music was always in motion, and so was I.
These are just a smattering of the songs and artists I needed when nothing else felt right—
In retrospect, I think I look back on this time in my life a little too fondly. I haven’t driven a car in years. Francis is long gone, sold off to some new driver in need of a safe, used little four-door.
I don’t like driving, nor am I very good at it. It was mostly a stressor. As I went through my photo archives to procure a relevant photo for this post, I remembered just how many accidents I was in, one of which was most definitely my fault. (That subsequent court-ordered traffic class was a unique sort of hell I hope to never return to again.) I remembered I once ran off the road in a musical theatre jam session and earned not one but TWO flat tires AND dented the rims. (I’m a terrible driver.)
Now that I can walk and take public transit regularly, my anxiety has lessened to the point where I wonder if driving would still bring up the same feelings of fear and uncertainty. Part of me thinks so. In Ubers and taxis, I always feel on edge and nauseous. I sit motionless in the backseat, gripping the arm rest like it’s a piece of driftwood.
Inhale for four beats. Exhale for eight.
Another part of me wonders if I’d enjoy it now. Maybe this medicated, in-therapy version of myself could handle the stress of driving without the near-constant urge to veer off the side of the road into a ditch. (Intrusive thoughts are a bitch.)
It makes sense that music was the only thing that could calm me down enough to get me anywhere worth going. Without it, I’m not sure I could have ever made the leap to get my license or trekked all the way to North Carolina and back to New York over the last few years. It’s the only thing I can reliably trust.
Music is always in motion, and so am I.
Huge s/o to Andy’s Weird Ohio and his essay, “Songs for Driving in Cars,” which partly inspired me to write about the playlist, songs for francis. You all should go read it, if you haven’t already!
Playlist Memoirs is a series of short, personal essays about my music awakening. With the mass exodus away from Spotify, I decided to start documenting my Spotify playlists in writing. I wanted to bring meaning to the hours and hours of streaming data I’ve compiled there over the last decade. Even if Spotify is a soulless, corporate monster intent on stealing from its artists and robbing its users blind, I still grew up on it.
I hate Spotify, but I could never hate what it brought me.