Post 1: My Turn First – The Ten Tracks That Made Me
Some people remember years. I remember songs.
The opening chords. A voice like a match striking in the dark. A lyric that feels like someone took your inner monologue and set it to music.
Welcome to The Soundtrack of Us, a new series where I’ll be inviting people who’ve shaped my life to share the ten songs that define them. Not just their favorite songs, but the ones that built them—bricks of melody, mortar of memory. Then I’ll sit with those songs, let them wash over me, and tell you a story—about the person, the music, and everything in between.
I’ll be dedicating a new post to this every Friday. A weekly ritual of listening, remembering, and honoring the people I love—one soundtrack at a time.
But before I do that, it only feels right to start with mine.
These are the ten songs that have scored my life like a film I didn’t know I was starring in. Some are glittering Broadway showstoppers, others are quiet whispers in the dark. Some hold pain I barely survived. Others remind me that I did.
This is the soundtrack of me.
“Anything Goes” – Sutton Foster & Cast of Anything Goes (2011)
This is where it all began—a tap-dancing spectacle that cracked the stage open and whispered, there’s a world waiting for you. Sutton Foster, radiant in sequins, belting Cole Porter like her heart was stitched into the melody. I was a kid, wide-eyed in a small-town production of an original revue—You’re the Top: A Cole Porter Revue—breathing in every note like it might carry me somewhere new. And it did. This wasn’t just a song; it was a key. A key that unlocked Barbra, Sondheim, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Hamilton… and, somewhere between all that glitter and rhyme, me.
“Smoke Signals” – Phoebe Bridgers (2017)
If you’ve ever taken a 45-minute train ride from the suburbs of Paris into the city in spring, you’ll know the way time stretches. In 2022, I rode that line daily with a darkness that matched the gray French skies. This song played through my AirPods while I processed heartbreak, survival, and a quiet kind of resurrection. I was leaving someone who hurt me deeply. Someone who made me doubt my worth. But Phoebe was there, whispering that lavender things grow from buried pain. Her voice felt like the soft echo of my own courage. I made it out. I’m still here.
“cardigan” – Taylor Swift (2020)
Taylor Swift doesn’t need your approval. And neither do I. She’s been a constant in my life—our bond complicated, evolving, like any long relationship worth having. But folklore brought me back to her with quiet awe. In the stillness of the pandemic, with the world hushed and the roads wide open, my mom, dad, and I set out across the American Southwest. No service. Just one CD spinning through the dust. By day three, my mom dozed softly in the passenger seat while my dad, somewhere between amused and bewildered, mumbled the words to “betty,” eyebrows raised each time she dropped the F-bomb. And I realized: even in isolation, music builds bridges. cardigan is sewn with that memory—of wide skies, quiet roads, old wounds, and new grace. A song made of distance and closeness. Of family. Of healing.
“Ribs” – Lorde (2013)
This was the anthem of my adolescence. The glittering ache of growing up too fast, of trying to hold on to a moment just a second longer. I think of Romy—my best friend in high school—and how we’d laugh until we couldn’t breathe, until “our ribs got tough.” Lorde is the artist I’ve called my favorite since I was seventeen, and Melodrama remains the most important album I’ve ever known. But “Ribs”? “Ribs” is what nostalgia sounds like when it’s breaking your heart in real time.
“How to Disappear” – Lana Del Rey (2019)
Lana is a poet of longing. Of disappearing acts and dreamscapes. In fall 2019, during my first semester of undergrad, I was adrift—questioning who I was, what I wanted, and who I loved. Norman Fucking Rockwell! gave me a place to land. “How to Disappear” reminded me that you could vanish while still being seen. My mom, my sister, my best friend Jill—we’re all Lana girls in our own right. And then there’s Saif, the Tunisian soulmate I met abroad, who took Lana’s lyrics and made them gospel. This one’s for all of us.
“Butterflies” – Kacey Musgraves (2018)
I swore I hated country music growing up in Calaveras, where it blared from every Dodge truck. But then I found Golden Hour. And Kacey found me. “Butterflies” is sweet and sincere and glowing with first love. It doesn’t just take me back to the farm—it redeems it. Makes it soft. Forgiving. It reminds me that I don’t have to hate the place I came from to move forward. Sometimes healing sounds like a banjo and synths in harmony.
“Dynamite” – Sigrid (2019)
Sigrid is my secret weapon. Norwegian pop magic that never got the recognition it deserved. “Dynamite” is a slow-burn ballad I didn’t expect to fall in love with—but when she sang it live in San Francisco with Jill beside me, we both fell apart. The control in her voice, the vulnerability—it shook something loose. This is the oddball on the list, but it’s also one of the purest expressions of quiet strength I’ve ever heard.
“Picture” – Kid Rock feat. Sheryl Crow (2001)
Okay, this one’s complicated. I do not co-sign Kid Rock’s politics, but this song is woven into my childhood like sun through a car window. I can’t tell you the first time I heard it, but I feel it—like a memory I don’t quite own. I imagine my parents singing it back and forth as we drove through hot summers, fishing gear in the back, me clutching Puppy, my stuffed animal, in the backseat. This song smells like home. Like love. Like simpler things.
“Million Reasons” – Lady Gaga (2016)
Gaga was the icon for me. She made weird okay. She made drama sacred. And Joanne brought her back to the basics—guitar, gravel, gospel. “Million Reasons” plays like a prayer, and during some low points, it was. I saw A Star is Born six times in theaters. The man who owned the theater gave me the poster because he knew. Gaga didn’t just raise me—she validated every loud, queer, emotional part of me. And in two weeks, I’ll see her again at the Mayhem Ball. Come hell or high heels, I’ll be there.
“The Good Side” – Troye Sivan (2018)
Troye Sivan came into my life when I was too afraid to come out, and his quiet bravery made things seem possible. “The Good Side” is heartbreak seen through a mature lens—a song about letting go with grace. There are things in my life I wish I had handled better. People I’ve hurt. This song helps me hold those truths, and forgive myself, too.
Looking back, these ten songs aren’t just favorites. They are fragments of identity—each one a heartbeat, a turning point, a quiet revolution. They come from different genres, but together they make a kind of personal symphony.
Musical theater taught me how to be—to take up space, to tell stories out loud and in full color. I watched Sutton Foster light up the stage not once but twice on Broadway: first as a knife-sharp Mrs. Lovett in Sweeney Todd, then as the hilariously radiant Princess Winnifred in Once Upon a Mattress. Two performances, wildly different, yet equally spellbinding. They confirmed what I already felt: theater wasn’t just entertainment—it was transformation.
Phoebe Bridgers and Lorde taught me to sit inside discomfort, to name the ache and let it echo. Taylor Swift taught me reinvention—how to narrate my life and survive it, again and again. Lana Del Rey and Lady Gaga taught me that performance is truth, that glamour and melancholy aren’t opposites but companions. Kacey gave me back a softened version of my rural childhood. Sigrid made me feel like being unknown is sometimes the most intimate place to be. Troye gave voice to the closeted kid I once was. Even Kid Rock—against all odds—reminds me that meaning can live in the memory, not the maker.
I’ve been lucky enough to see many of these artists live. Gaga commanding a stadium with pure force. Lorde, glowing like moonlight, every lyric a spell. Taylor, somewhere between a megastar and an old friend, reminding us all we’re part of her diary. Sigrid, in a small San Francisco venue with Jill, brought the room to its knees with “Dynamite.” And Sutton—always Sutton—reminding me why I fell in love with music in the first place.
Each concert was more than just a performance. It was a confirmation: these artists aren’t just voices on a playlist. They are living testaments to the emotional lives we carry.
These songs didn’t just soundtrack my story. They shaped it.
And I’m endlessly grateful to be a part of theirs, too.
These ten songs are fragments of a self that is still being written. And as I begin this series, I’m excited to do the same for the people I love—listen deeply, remember fully, and honor them through song.
Thanks for letting me start with mine.
If you’d like to hear the story as it sounds, you can find my Top 10 playlist now on Spotify.
Stay tuned—some beautiful stories are on the horizon.
With love,
Jared
Honorable Mentions – The Ones That Almost Made the List
Because ten songs could never be enough.
There are tracks that live just outside the frame of my top ten—songs that shaped the edges of who I am, that I return to like old friends, like late-night texts that still make me feel something.
“360” – Charli XCX
This is pop at its most confident—sharp, dizzying, hot-green swagger. Charli is the future of pop, and “360” is a mirrorball I dance under when I need to remember my power.
“The Wizard and I” – Wicked (2003 Original Broadway Cast)
The blueprint for every misunderstood theater kid’s dream. I belted this song in bedrooms, bathrooms, and empty classrooms long before I had the voice—or the courage. It’s a promise, a fantasy, a prophecy.
“Chosen Family” – Rina Sawayama
A song for every friendship that saved me. For Jill. For Saif. For Jake. For everyone who wasn’t born into my life, but chose to stay in it anyway.
“Time Machine” – Muni Long
The ache in this song is universal. If you’ve ever wanted just one moment back—one conversation, one second to say what you didn’t—this track holds that longing like water in cupped hands.
“Diet Pepsi” – Addison Rae
Yes, her. And unapologetically so. This song is a glittery, bubbly, Y2K fever dream, and proof that pop doesn’t always have to be deep to be right. Camp, couture, and catchy as hell.
“Normal Girl” – SZA
This one guts me. It’s every moment I’ve wished I could just be, without explanation or performance. It’s soft, devastating, and unspeakably real.
“We Belong Together” – Mariah Carey
I mean… come on. This is heartbreak perfection. Mariah’s voice is the gold standard, and this song played in the background of every middle school breakup I invented in my own head.
“The Boy is Mine” – Brandy & Monica
Iconic. Timeless. Petty in the best way. I sang both parts with equal passion, depending on the day. A lesson in harmony, tension, and perfect ‘90s production.
“Idle Town” – Conan Gray
The gentle soundtrack of small-town boyhood. This one takes me right back to Calaveras—where I felt both too much and not enough, dreaming of more from the passenger seat.
Each of these songs could’ve easily made the list on another day, in another mood, under another moon. But for now, they sit just outside the spotlight—whispering, humming, waiting for their turn to be remembered.
Okay seriously, until next time!
Jared ❤
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