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I suck at lists of favorites. Absolutely suck at them, and will let the making of such a list take over my entire life. Seriously. Don't be surprised if it takes me a week to write this. By the time it's done, I'll be unbathed, hungry and more than a little delirious. It'll be fun.

In no particular order ...

• The entire first side of U2's The Joshua Tree (back in the olden days when albums had two sides).
  Yeah, I'm totally cheating here. It's hardly fair to lump half an album into a list of songs. But all the tracks need each other. "Where the Streets Have No Name", "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For", "With or Without You", "Bullet the Blue Sky" and "Running to Stand Still" ... they are a complete work. A work that encompasses the full range of human emotion and experience. I've carried these songs with me for nearly 20 years, since I was 14 years old, and I'm still discovering new things about these songs.

• "War on War" by Wilco
  You have to lose,You have to learn how to die, if you want to want to be alive.
  When I finally dealt with that lifelong panic and anxiety disorder shit last year, this song became my mantra. Living through that pain and fear has taught me how to really be alive.

• "Thunder Road" by Bruce Springsteen
  There were ghosts in the eyes
  Of all the boys you sent away
  They haunt this dusty beach road
  In the skeleton frames of burned out Chevrolets
  No explaination needed. It's just rich and beautiful.

• "Love is Like a Butterfly" by Dolly Parton
  Your laughter brings me sunshine
  Everyday is spring time
  And I am only happy when you are by my side
  How precious is this love we share
  How very precious, sweet and rare
  Together we belong like daffodils and butterflies .
  My mom used to sing it to me. Now I sing it to Clara Jane.

• "Know Your Rights" by the Clash
  This is a public service announcement
  With guitar
  This rebel girl's call to arms.

• "Tender" by Blur
  Come on, come on, come on
  get through it.
  Come on, come on, come on
  love's the greatest thing, that we have,
  I'm waiting for that feeling,waiting for that feeling,
  waiting for that feeling to come...
  Oh my baby, oh my baby
  This song never would have entered my radar screen had it not been on a mix CD Kristina made for me to listen to while I was in labor. Somewhere around the 26th hour when the epidural drugs stopped working, this song started sounding like a mantra and a prayer. It got me through those last six hours of fear, unimaginable pain and unbearable anticipation.

• "Sunday Morning Coming Down" by Johnny Cash
  I'd smoked my mind the night before
  With cigarettes and songs I'd been picking.
  But I lit my first and watched a small kid
  Playing with a can that he was kicking.
  Then I walked across the street
  And caught the Sunday smell of someone frying chicken.
  And Lord, it took me back to something that I'd lost
  Somewhere, somehow along the way.
  See "Thunder Road".

• "Jambalaya" by Hank Williams and "You Are My Sunshine"
  The former was always sung to me by my paternal grandmother. The latter, by my maternal grandmother. These songs are little parts of them that I always have with me.

• "Since You've Been Gone (Sweet Sweet Baby)" by Aretha Franklin
  Take me back,
  consider me please
  If you walk in that door,
  I can get up off my knees
  I've just been so blue
  Since you've been gone
  Only Aretha can make such tormented words sound so joyful.

• "Ain't Got No/I Got Life" by Nina Simone (originally from the "Hair" soundtrack).
  What have I got?
  Why am I alive anyway?
  Yeah, what have I got?
  Nobody can take away

  I got my hair, I got my head
  I got my brains, I got my ears
  I got my eyes, I got my nose
  I got my mouth, I got my smile
  

  I couldn't care less about the original of this song. But the things Nina could do with a song, the way she could make it her own ... Another song that has drug me out of some pretty dank and dark places.