Today I was joined by three students to talk about "The first song or album you ever bought (or listened to repeatedly)".
Of those three students, one was new to our group! She is originally from Italy, now living near Seattle.
She likes likes pop music all the way from 70's, 80's to current, but doesn't like country music nor old western music.
Because none of us speak Italian, she explained that it is a romantic song where the singer expresses his feelings for a girl. He tells her he wants to be "next to you", which means he wants to be there more often for her and put time and effort into their relationship.
The student discovered Alberto from the Italian TV servies "Amici di Maria De Filippi" (info) where young people are taught to master their singing abilities. Alberto won the series he was on.
One student said he used to listen to Lady Gaga while preparing for University exams. He listened to her to get energy.
I had watched that video for the first time in many years recently. I always thought it is a cool video. But in the past week I had heard the song *without* the video for the first time ever, and I realized that my association with the song is so strongly tied to the video, that I had to go back and watch the video. That is why it was in my history list.
We branched off from music for a moment as one student asked the Italian student if she has ever visited the Vatican (info). She had visited it, and told us about it and Rome in general.
I asked each student when the last time they had a lazy day like this where they did nothing. The answer was, "a few days ago", with one student saying she is making a habit of having lazy days in her schedule, to consciously slow life down a bit.
Finally we needed to talk about first songs we bought or listened to regularly!
As he told us about his memories of this song, I learned that in Taiwan, by default in movie theaters for American films, the audio is in original English with Mandarin subtitles. I was surprised to hear that they don't dub the audio into Mandarin, but this is good for learning English!
She loved Frank Ocean's music and had waited 4 years for him to put out a new album. She bought it digitally. She was earning her own money so she could buy it. She had to pay $15 to buy it on iTunes, but it was worth the money and the wait :-)
To this day she still plays song from this album almost every other day. As an example of a song from the album, we listened to "White Ferrari" (video with lyrics).
She explained that the whole album follows the story of his first love. This song is about driving his boyfriend to the airport in a white ferrari.
With that, our time for the day was up!
But here's a bonus contribution, sent to me via email by one of the students who usually participates, but couldn't make it this week. This is his email:
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I remember me buying the album in 2006, when I was only 12. It was the time when I graduated from a grade school and entered a junior high school. Commuting time to the school has changed from 30 seconds to 40 minutes, which means that I had to use a train. It was the time when I was more free than I used to be, thus feeling more mature. For me buying a CD with "my money" was such an adult thing to do, while that "money" actually consisted of lunch money.
I was listening to the album either through my old boombox in my room or a portable CD player with cheap earphones (I didn't have a fancy portable MP3 player back then). It was my first experience of carrying around the music everywhere I go, even though the school prohibited bringing in such devices. That feeling of breaking the law also made me feel more mature.
The reason I bought the album was because I heard the song on a TV show and I liked it. I repeated the heck out of the album including the song, which damaged the CD a little bit and now some songs are unplayable. The plastic CD case is shattered and cracked as well, which is now barely functioning as a case.
Now you might notice that the song is not rock at all, but this is because I bought this album before my musical taste was solidified. After all, I don't regret those days at all; the song always makes me reminisce about summer of 2006, the good ol' time when every single experience was fresh, new and enlightening. BTW now I've been listening to more hip hop/R&B stuff for several years, so I guess people can change over time.
P.S. That 30 second thing above is true! The grade school is literally in front of my house.
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Lastly, I didn't have time to introduce the first song I ever bought during the class. I actually can't remember that far back! There were songs I loved as a child, but those were from my parents' albums. What was the first song or album I ever bought on my own?...
The album had a sticker on the cover which said, "As a parent ... I found it an anti-parent record". In my rebellious youth, I thought that was really cool.
My favorite song was "Rise Above" (video, lyrics). I like the energy with which he talks about overcoming obstacles.
The topic for next week's conversation: Songs about snow.
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