Culture January 1, 1

The reason we love a song usually has to do with longing: for a person, a time, a way of life. That is why my teenage songs have stuck by me. Back then, I did hardly anything but long. This yearning led me to doggedly pursue music and unreasonably identify with what I liked. Jonathan Lethem memorably described this phenomenon in his 2012 essay about the Talking Heads: “I might have wished to wear the album Fear of Music in place of my head so as to be more clearly seen by those around me.” This way of thinking might