A few weeks ago I went to see my friend’s daughter perform as the lead in her middle-school musical–Xanadu. Does anyone remember that movie? Olivia Newton-John plays a muse, Kira, who awakens in 20th century California to inspire a painter (played by Michael Beck) just as she had inspired a big-band director (played by Gene Kelley) around the time of World War II. The three of them get together and decide to renovate a local theater, Xanadu, and turn it into a night club. Of course there’s a love story that spans generations and that ends up being incredibly sweet, but what I remember most about the movie is the music. Xanadu was released in 1980, that liminal space between the disco-70’s and the pop-rock 80’s. I was eight years old.

My friend’s daughter was beautiful, charming, and very talented; the entire production was adorable, funny, and most of the performers were incredibly earnest. On a personal level, though, the show re-introduced me to music from my earliest memories, and as I sat there I found myself remembering the lyrics to every single song. On the way home I played the album on Spotify, and the feelings that rushed back to me as I sang along were what most of us know happens in our minds when we hear music from our childhood–I felt suffused with joy and wonder. Granted, it helped that the songs were about daughters of Zeus who come to earth to inspire artists, and that the Electric Light Orchestra performed tracks like, “I’m Alive,” “All Over the World” and “The Fall.” One song that I had almost forgotten was a mash-up (I think it may have been one of the first, ever) of 50’s- and 70s/80s-style music with the song “Whenever You’re Away from Me” and “Lover, I Won’t Take a Backseat.” Alone in my Jeep, I belted out every song and I felt younger than I have in years.

In my pre-teen Xanadu era, my love for music was unfettered and expansive. I sang all the time, any song I wanted, as loud as I wanted, whenever I wanted. Then something changed. In retrospect, I think it started when I met my husband, who is the best part of my life but who also has very specific taste in music that does not mesh well with my eclectic playlist. One of the only things he said that ever made me question our ability to have a relationship was that as a child he hated music. Who could hate music? I wondered. Then he explained that his mom listened to mostly big-band stuff and songs without lyrics (think Muzak). I didn’t fully understand why that was a problem-even in my late teens I pretty much loved every song with a tune. Then he made it clear that the music he immersed himself in during his teen years was progressive rock– Rush, Yes, Genesis, Pink Floyd, The Alan Parsons Project, Moody Blues, and Jethro Tull (to name only a few)–and it made sense that he’d detest “The Pina Colada Song.”

My musical history, on the other hand, started when I was three with an album called Goofy Gold. It had songs like “Monster Mash” and “Pepino the Mouse,” which is sung half in Italian. My grandfather overheard me singing it one day–I had memorized the sounds without having any idea what I was saying–and he took me around the neighborhood to sing it to his Italian friends. I still remember all the words, and I still have no idea what I’m singing.

As I grew, I just added to the insane smorgasbord of music that made me smile. Tom T. Hall’s “Sneaky Snake” and Jim Reeves “Billy Bayou” hold a place on my Spotify childhood playlist along with “We are the Champions” by Queen and “Stayin’ Alive” by the BeeGees. I had a serious country music phase where my icons were Linda Ronstadt, the Oak Ridge Boys, Kenny Rogers, and Barbara Mandrell. I loved movie albums like Xanadu and Saturday Night Fever. Then came The Columbia Record club, which my fellow-contributor Susannah wrote about so incredibly awhile ago, and my mom and I bought albums by Billy Joel, Pat Benetar, The Eagles, The Police, and Michael Jackson. I had a stereo system in my room that could play both sides of a cassette, and spent a lot of hours playing with my Barbies and listening to the Back to the Future soundtrack. As I got older and started driving, I would roll down the windows, turn up the bass, and play everything from Prince to Salt ‘n Pepa. “Pump Up the Volume” brought me an intense amount of bass-thumping joy, as did “Shake That Body” and “Weapon of Choice.” Once I got home, to mellow out, I would listen to The Cranberries or Enya. I more or less had a vast collection of “mix tapes” for all different moods–but there wasn’t much I didn’t like with the possible exception of heavy metal, because that didn’t have a tune that I could sing along with.

So because I was very flexible in my tastes and my husband had hard boundaries–no disco, no rap, no new age–his playlists won out over mine. We discovered new music together, too–on our long drives from New York City to his parents’ house in Pennsylvania we listened to the Gin Blossoms, Live, and XTC. Billy Joel was a soundtrack of those times, as well as the Beatles, Simon and Garfunkel, The Who, The Doors, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, and The Spin Doctors. I played him the soundtrack from Phantom of the Opera and Les Miserables, and he got me into early Genesis, particularly A Trick of the Tale which spoke to my fairy-tale heart.

At the same time, gone were the days of me belting music in the car. I am tone-deaf, and I change octaves regularly. Since we were almost always driving together, I couldn’t very well subject him to that torture. I still sang out loud, a lot, when alone–and listened to my rap and techno music, too–but not as often as I did when I was a teenager.

Then came the kids, which I call The Wiggles years. It’s funny that I still have a playlist from those times, too, and I’ll listen to the aforementioned Australians as well as Laurie Berkener, Red Grammar, any- and everything Disney, Kindermusik tracks, Veggie Tales tunes, and definitely Phineas and Ferb songs when I want a walk down memory lane. Over time, the kids introduced me to their music–my eldest and her friends were my first exposure to the Hamilton soundtrack, as well as all other musical theater songs like those from Come From Away and Falsettos. My younger daughter introduced me to the music of Kikuo and other Vocaloid artists, and as a family we became very heavily immersed in music from the Final Fantasy video game series, which is absolutely majestic–but can’t really be belted by any voice except my older daughter’s.

As time went on, I spent more hours listening to music than singing along, because I spent all my time accompanied by someone–whether the kids, or my husband, or my father-in-law, or all of them. Over time, however, the occupancy of my car has dwindled. My younger daughter, who as I write this is finishing her last week of high school, drives herself to school and back almost every day because she can start a half hour later and get out 45 minutes earlier as a student than I can as faculty. This means I now have 30-45 minutes in the morning and the same (if not longer) in the afternoon in my car all by myself. I normally spend it talking to my mom, or my husband, or my AP Language and Composition co-teacher, or listening to a Catholic radio station which prays me to work every morning. The drive home from the middle school play, though, was different. It was at night. Most of my friends were with their families, my mom was watching tv, and my husband was occupied with his video game. I wanted to hear the Xanadu music, and all of a sudden I was belting out songs again. I came home so happy, I decided that I would add other songs to my drive. So every day since, while I still listen to Spirit FM in the morning to center myself for my students, on the way home I queue up songs from Xanadu. As I am at that point where my daughters will soon be both out of the house and on their own in college, I also indulge myself by singing along to Heart’s “Alone,” and Cher’s “If I Could Turn Back Time.” Spotify put together its own playlist for me that included those songs and added “Thank You for the Music” by ABBA and a bunch of Taylor Swift songs (which I can’t sing along to, yet–but I will memorize those words). Last week at school was spirit week, and for “Icon day” I chose to dress as Stevie Nicks, which led me to play (and sing) everything from “Don’t Stop” to “Landslide.”

And boy, did I belt those songs! Just full-out, off-tune, tone-deaf, sing-like-no-one-is-listening driving in my car. It was like reclaiming some of my teenager-hood. And granted, I didn’t turn up the bass and roll down all the windows like I did in my teens, but . . . well, you never know what tomorrow will bring. Pitbull’s music has some great bass tracks. My husband would hate it, but I think it’s what I’ll play when I’m next driving solo.