Music's my imaginary friend

Although I have absolutely zero talent, music is a big part of my life. Sure, I envision myself as a karaoke star while driving down I-94 with the windows (very tightly) rolled up, but listening to music is more my speed than creating it. Trust me.

Brad and I have almost 45,000 songs on our iTunes. Each and every one of them was downloaded completely legally, of course. Actually, the majority of our music comes from CDs that we copied to the computer. Our 100% legal downloads combined with our existing CD collection makes for a pretty impressive library.

Today, I spent a few hours perusing said collection, finding songs that had a particular significance at some point in my life. Here are the top five, in no particular order:

"With or Without You," by U2 -- My junior and senior year of high school, I was madly in love with a guy in my class. You know, in that crazy, lustful teenage type of way. Even though I always knew that this person had feelings for me, alas -- he had a girlfriend. I used to listen to this song for hours in my bedroom, crying over my unrequited love. Although I'm absolutely thrilled that things never worked out between us 10 years ago, I still think of him when I hear this song.

"Romeo and Juliet," by the Indigo Girls -- Brad, who is the much more musically talented half of the family, played this for me on acoustic guitar the first month we started dating. It sounds cheesy, but I've never been able to resist and cute boy with a guitar! Also, I just recently learned that the Killers, one of my favorite 80s-throwback rock bands, does a cover of this song on their latest album.

"Omaha," by the Counting Crows -- Far and away the best song on August and Everything After, which was my very first compact disc. I was living in Alabama with my family that year, and I listened to that album over and over again on my very first CD player. Wow...that was a long time ago.

"Temptation," by New Order -- Part romantic ballad, part gothy Joy Division-like keyboards, part dance song. This is probably the only band that both Brad and I loved independently of each other when we met (we've spent the past five years introducing each other to new bands and/or arguing over who has better taste). If we had a song, this would totally be it.

"Discovery Channel," by Bloodhound Gang -- Who knew that an album titled "Hooray for Boobies" would make it onto my top five songs of all time list? This song came out when I was a junior in college, and I lived with three girls at the time. We knew the lyrics by heart and even made up a dance. This song was played at every college party for a year. I like to think of it as the Soulja Boy of the dawn of the century.

There are many more songs that I consider significant, but before this glorious weekend is over, I need to fold laundry, do dishes and vacuum up cat liter. So that's all for now.