Ruined Music:

[from Ruined Music]
Breaking up is hard to do. There are tears and sleepless nights, decreased appetites, increased appetites for takeout dumplings and/or vodka, items thrown at walls, packs of cigarettes smoked, embarrassing songs and/or poems and/or “meditative essays” composed (at 3:50 a.m. while smoking said cigarettes), epic bouts of whining to be endured only by your closest confidantes and understanding pets. Then, of course, there are the horrible logistics of the breakup, which involve notifying friends, said friends taking sides, and finally, canvassing your apartment for items left behind or given as gifts by your ex. You must determine which items you should try to return and which you must throw away or burn in the bathtub. And then you collapse against the side of the bathtub and cry, because a) you can’t believe you wasted so many weeks/months/years of your life with that evil bitch/bastard, or b) you can’t believe your precious angel left you and now you are doomed to die alone. Or both.
But perhaps the worst thing about the breakup is the fact that music gets caught in the fallout. Everyone has a song, album, artist, or band that’s been ruined by an ex (or, more accurately, by memories of an ex). Ruined Music is the place to talk about the music you’ve lost: the songs you can’t stand to hear ever again, that record she always played when she was over at your house, the band you went to see together a week before he called it quits, That Song that was on That Mix, the record that was playing the night you (fill in the blank), the album you got for a Valentine’s Day gift.

What is on your Breakup CD?

Various songs I have cried to include:
Sufjan Stevens' Flint
Roxy Music's Oh Yeah
Brian Eno's On Some Faraway Beach
Gillian Welch [all]
Mazzy Star [all]
Steve Earle's Valentines Day
Modest Mouse: The World at Large and Float On
Joni Mitchell's Clouds
Grateful Dead's Uncle John's Band and Ripple
Dolly Parton's Little Sparrow

More soon...