Memento Mori
My 2023 in music
(I know, it’s 2024. But I struggled to write this thing for months, so I’m going to publish it.)
Last year was a challenging year for me in many ways, and I sought solace and comfort in songs and artists I listened to from high school days through my early 20s. Think Nirvana and Smashing Pumpkins, Tori Amos and Liz Phair, Hole and Radiohead. This nostalgia trip was aided by my children, who have been discovering artists from the 1990s as well. We purchased a car for our older two, since they are on the verge of being licensed drivers. It has a CD player, so my children raided my CD collection for good driving music.
(Yes, I still have CDs, over 300. It’s more a matter of laziness than sentimentality.)
I am frankly amazed at my brain’s ability to recall every lyric to songs from the late 1980s and 1990s even when I haven’t listened to the songs for 30-plus years. They are just there, solidified into my long-term memories. (This phenomenon is called procedural memory, a type of implicit memory.) If my car keys aren’t where they should be, I couldn’t tell you where I left them. But if you put on “Never Let Me Down Again,” I could sing along with every word.
I took refuge in the music from this time, especially when I was in my blue era over the summer.
And then Sinead O’Connor died. I cried a lot that week.
Defiance and Desire
I was 16 when The Lion and The Cobra came out. I was a sheltered girl in Erie, PA, attending an all-girls Catholic high school. In my household, sex wasn’t talked about and emotions were verboten. And suddenly I was hearing this Irish girl, not too much older than I was, voicing so much that resonated with me. She was raw, her voice was powerful and other worldly, and she embodied defiance and desire, from her shaved head and Doc Marten’s to “I Want (Your Hands on Me)” and “Troy”.
She wasn’t Madonna, bold and blonde and brassy. She wasn’t Whitney Houston wanting to dance with somebody. She knew “Mandinka”, whatever the hell that was, and I felt like I knew it too, somehow. But as a girl with more questions about identity and sex than answers, a Catholic who maybe took Depeche Mode’s “Blasphemous Rumours” a little too seriously*, she was the female musician who spoke to me most clearly in that era of my life.
When she performed at the Grammys for the first time, she had an imprint of Public Enemy’s logo on her head to symbolize her solidarity with black artists who decided to boycott the show as a result of the Grammys not televising the awarding of Best Rap Album. She also wore her son’s onesie tied to her waist to show she was a proud, talented mother.
She knocked the world over when she released her second album, and the video for “Nothing Compares 2 U,” a song written by Prince.
And then she ripped up a picture of Pope John Paul II on stage.
O’Connor was our modern-day Cassandra, and she was punished for it. She told us the truth about racism in the music industry, especially in institutions like the Grammys, and about sexual abuses of the Catholic Church. She suffered a lifetime of abuse and trauma, and laid her grief bare. She never got an apology from any of the people who harmed her. And then she left us. I hope she found peace.
Seeing an Old Favorite
A highlight for me last year, musically speaking, was the Depeche Mode Memento Mori tour. They have been one of my favorite bands for a very long time; theirs was the first concert I attended on my own. When they released their most recent album in March of 2023, I was hoping they would also tour. And even though — maybe because — Andrew Fletcher had died in May of 2022, tour they did.
I went to see them in November in Cleveland with my husband and some friends. They put on the best show I have seen them do — high energy, entertaining, musically perfect, and crowd pleasing. As seems to be the trend in concerts, they certainly pulled from every era, with songs from early works such as “Strangelove” and “Everything Counts”, right up to recent releases including “Wagging Tongue” and “Ghosts Again.” They paid tribute to their missing bandmate, as the image at the top of this article attests.
Dave Gahan is 61 years old and Martin Gore is 62. They definitely wear their ages on their faces, but their voices are still remarkable, and Gahan’s dance moves seem limber enough. But who knows how much longer they will make new music and tour? Who know how much longer any of us have, really? Life is short; go see your favorite bands.
Swifties, Unite
I do not consider myself a Swiftie, but I do like Taylor Swift’s music, and I admire her as a woman and a performer. I was pleased as punch to see her on the cover of Time as Person of the Year for 2023. While it is hard to overstate her cultural impact, what makes me happiest is the joy she brings to so many people, many of them women and girls.
* I do think God has a sense of humor. Just look at the giraffe or the platypus. I don’t think it’s sick, but I expect to find them laughing when I meet them.
