Songs about memory (not just memories)
June 6, 2024 12:43 PM   Subscribe

I want to listen to songs that aren't necessarily about specific memories but about the act of remembering, or the weight of so many memories, or remembering useless stuff, etc. No misty watercolor memories please; "You or Your Memory" is a little indirect, and obv I know the Cats song. The word "memory" isn't required as long as it's on these themes.
posted by mermaidcafe to Media & Arts (56 answers total) 8 users marked this as a favorite
 
Warren Zevon, "Keep Me In Your Heart"
posted by humbug at 12:49 PM on June 6 [7 favorites]


Everything But the Girl, These Early Days
posted by sesquipedalia at 12:58 PM on June 6 [1 favorite]


Depending on your tolerance for extreme sadness, Daughter's "Doing the right thing" is about living with someone with alzheimers/dementia.

I'm just fearing one day soon
I'll lose my mind
Then I'll lose my children
Then I'll lose my love
Then I'll sit in silence
Let the picture soak
Out of televisions
Float across the room
Whisper into one ear
Out the other one
Then I'll take my clothes off
And I'll walk around
Because it's so nice outside
And I like the way the sun feels
And when it's dark
I'll call out in the night for my mother
But she isn't coming back for me
'Cause she's already gone
But you will not tell me that
'Cause you know it hurts me every time you say it
posted by patricio at 1:02 PM on June 6 [3 favorites]


Maybe Expert in a Dying Field by The Beths.
posted by urbanlenny at 1:03 PM on June 6 [7 favorites]




Eid Ma Clack Shaw by Bill Callahan ("show me the way to shake a memory")
I Remember It Well, from the movie Gigi (remembering overall feelings versus specific details)
posted by trig at 1:11 PM on June 6 [1 favorite]


They Might Be Giants' wiki sports a whole page of songs on the topic of forgetting and remembering.
posted by the antecedent of that pronoun at 1:15 PM on June 6 [2 favorites]


In My Life by the Beatles
posted by TwoWordReview at 1:16 PM on June 6 [6 favorites]


Crowded House and The Chicks both have versions of "Silent House." Neil Finn co-wrote it with The Chicks & the lyrics vary slightly between the two. It's also about Alzheimers/dementia but I think it can be read a bit more broadly than just that.
posted by edencosmic at 1:29 PM on June 6 [1 favorite]


R.E.M., Nightswimming
The Cure, Pictures of You
posted by MundaneNoodle at 1:30 PM on June 6 [5 favorites]


Ringo Starr Photograph
posted by indexy at 1:32 PM on June 6 [3 favorites]


One Voice Children's Choir, Memories. OK, OK, maybe Maroon 5 performed it too.
posted by JimN2TAW at 1:35 PM on June 6 [1 favorite]




Jim Croce, Photographs & Memories.

Joan Baez, Diamonds and Rust.
posted by SPrintF at 1:41 PM on June 6 [3 favorites]


This one wrecks me pretty much every time I hear it.

Dan Mangan - Basket
posted by HillbillyInBC at 1:42 PM on June 6 [2 favorites]


How about The Dutchman? It's a song from the folkie-era 60s about an elderly Dutch couple - the husband has dementia and the wife is his caregiver, and it discusses a typical day in their life where she's doing the daily routine of taking care of him, but during the last verse there's a moment where the husband sort of comes out of the fog a little bit and they sing a bit of a love song together before going to sleep. The chorus underscores the point:

"Let us go to the banks of the ocean
Where the walls rise above the Zuider Zee
Long ago, I used to be a young man
And dear Margaret remembers that for me."
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 2:00 PM on June 6 [2 favorites]




Paul Simon - Kodachrome

https://youtu.be/8rlDTK6QI-w?feature=shared
posted by cotton dress sock at 2:05 PM on June 6 [2 favorites]




Oh: Glen Campbell's I'm Not Gonna Miss You. It was the last thing he ever recorded - he wrote it when he was preparing his last farewell album after being diagnosed with Alzheimer's, and it's his response to how people had been coming up to him and telling him how sorry they were for him for what he was going through. This was his frank retort that he wasn't the one they needed to be sorry for, and an apology to his wife because he knew that before long he wasn't going to remember who she was. (Lyrics here.)
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 2:07 PM on June 6 [1 favorite]


Maybe Our Last Summer by ABBA?
posted by cider at 3:00 PM on June 6 [1 favorite]


The Kinks - Do You Remember Walter
Kinda this whole album, really
posted by misscleo3861 at 3:18 PM on June 6 [2 favorites]


Robyn Hitchcock, Recalling the Truth
posted by johngoren at 3:21 PM on June 6 [1 favorite]


elvis presley i forgot to remember to forget
posted by noloveforned at 3:23 PM on June 6 [1 favorite]


Talking Heads, Memories Can't Wait
posted by pdb at 3:23 PM on June 6 [2 favorites]


Nightswimming by REM. In English class in high school we wrote down a memory from the summer and revisited it at the end of the school year after listening to this song.

Those You've Known from Spring Awakening.
posted by catquas at 3:31 PM on June 6 [1 favorite]


Little Feat, Easy to Slip
posted by carterk at 3:32 PM on June 6 [1 favorite]


Time Heals Everything from Mack & Mabel.
posted by elphaba at 3:56 PM on June 6 [2 favorites]


The Bones of You by Elbow
New Order T-Shirt by the National
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 4:17 PM on June 6 [2 favorites]


Talking Heads, Memories Can't Wait

Awesomely covered by Living Colour.

Elvis Costello, "Veronica" ("Well she used to have a carefree mind of her own and a delicate look in her eye/These days I'm afraid she's not even sure if her name is Veronica")
posted by praemunire at 4:32 PM on June 6 [4 favorites]


Also, it's ambiguous, but arguably the Psychedelic Furs's "The Ghost in You."
posted by praemunire at 4:41 PM on June 6 [3 favorites]


Noah Kahan Stick Season - now I'm terrified of weather, cause I see you when it rains captures the way a memory can just burst in on you like a thunderclap so well, imo

Trisha Yearwood The Song Remembers When
posted by the primroses were over at 4:51 PM on June 6 [2 favorites]


I Remember You sung by Frank Ifield, a big hit in 1962.
posted by Dolley at 5:04 PM on June 6 [2 favorites]




First thing I thought of:

This Used To Be My Playground - Madonna
posted by Pryde at 6:30 PM on June 6 [1 favorite]




Leaps and Bounds, Paul Kelly
posted by quinndexter at 7:15 PM on June 6 [2 favorites]


From the Pogues / the late great Shane MacGowan:

The Broad Majestic Shannon
White City


.. and come to think of it Dreams is about letting go of memories.
posted by wps98 at 7:21 PM on June 6 [3 favorites]


Andrew Bird, Lazy Projector
posted by eirias at 8:42 PM on June 6 [1 favorite]


Kitchens of Distinction, Polaroids
posted by xil at 8:51 PM on June 6 [1 favorite]


Memória by Lirinha
Love this song so much. Here’s my translation:
MEMORY
Do you remember?
It was the harvest festival
Do you remember?
Some soldiers that danced
I know about the cerebral circuit that recollects The construction of what happened in the frontal lobe
But I returned to replant your memory
Inside the archives of the past
The ability to remember another time of the future wind that blew through the flower of time
that will cause a chemical change
I go against the grain of your memory

My story is a song of drunks
Made into a tree that eats birds
posted by umbú at 8:52 PM on June 6 [1 favorite]


If that’s alright by Uncle Tupelo (Jeff Tweedy’s template of future Wilco sounds like).
posted by umbú at 10:31 PM on June 6 [1 favorite]




The weight of memories made me think of Flux by Ellie Goulding

"When the memories pack up and leave
It will set me free
All those days on the beach will be washing away from me"

And at the beginning of the song:
"Remember me in a simple way
Not what I did or said
When I think of you now
I just think of the day we met
Don't forget me, like I didn't care
Yeah, I stole from myself just to make you complete"
posted by skunk pig at 12:40 AM on June 7 [1 favorite]


Frank Turner - Polaroid Picture - with the great line "And I don't have your number, The one I can remember // Is the place you used to live with your parents"
Bear's Den - Selective Memories - about a loved one with dementia
Frank Turner - Farewell to my City - more indirect, but it takes a tour through London where every spot has a memory attached
Spinvis - Voor Ik Vergeet - in Dutch, but translated lyrics here
posted by snusmumrik at 2:23 AM on June 7 [1 favorite]






REM, I Remember California
Lord Huron, The Night We Met
posted by jabes at 8:46 AM on June 7


"I remember you well / in the Chelsea Hotel" #2 another Leonard Cohen

And maybe Regarding Steven (Blues Traveler) ?
posted by adekllny at 8:50 AM on June 7


Definitely, definitely “wanting memories” by sweet honey in the rock
posted by sleepingwithcats at 4:34 PM on June 7


“A Different City” by Modest Mouse:

I wanna live in the city with no friends and family
I'm gonna look out the window of my color TV
I wanna remember to remember to forget you forgot me
I'm gonna look out the window of my color TV

This song always struck me as being about someone who wants to annihilate their own past through forgetting.
posted by ejs at 9:18 PM on June 7


Mefi's own ludwig_van (aka Steve Goldberg and the Arch Enemies): Things I Used To Know
posted by Pallas Athena at 5:20 AM on June 8


I guess a lot of John Prine's work is about the weight of memory and/or forgetting, but these two songs from the beginning and end of his career come to mind in particular: Souvenirs and I Remember Everything.
posted by Not A Thing at 8:50 PM on June 8 [1 favorite]




I have a counterargument to:

Hurt - Johnny Cash cover

I don't think the song itself would qualify on its own. If you look at the lyrics (even the lyrics Johnny Cash used, he changed one word from the original), it's more about self-harm and self-loathing.

But the video is absolutely about memory, interspersing clips of a younger and more lively Cash with contemporary sepia-toned shots of him singing, occasionally sitting in front of a table of food that looks like a Renaissance still-life Memento Mori painting.

So - OP, if you want to expand to watching videos as well as listening, then yes, I'd include this for sure. But if you're just listening then "Hurt" may not work after all.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 3:53 AM on June 14


OH. Kate Bush, Moments of Pleasure. It's about the fleeting moments of joy you have with the people you love that become so precious in retrospect, no matter how brief or mundane:

Just being alive
It can really hurt
And these moments given
Are a gift from time
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 4:06 AM on June 14


« Older Mechanical copy machine counter?   |   How does this frame work? Newer »

You are not logged in, either login or create an account to post comments



Tags

Share