The Good Life - “Album of the Year”
The first time that I met her, I was throwing up in the ladies’ room stall
She asked me if I needed anything, I said, “I think I spilled my drink.”
And that’s how it started, or so I’d like to believe
This song’s a real heartbreaker for me. While he can be obtuse or melodramatic from time to time, Tim Kasher can really cut deep when he’s on. “Album of the Year” is the opening track from the album of the same name, a concept record about one year in a relationship from beginning to end. Each song represents a month in the life of this couple, but this song has the unique opportunity to describe this couples first and last interaction. As the above are the opening lines to the song, the last verse is a beautiful parallel, showing the way intimacy can destroy two people who have so much in common.
The last time that I saw her, she was picking through which records were hers
Her clothes were packed in boxes with some pots and pans and books and a toaster
Just then a mouse scurried across the floor, and we started laughing until it didn’t hurt
Call me a sucker, but I love the courtship process of a relationship. Getting to know someone, and feeling out the situation and the spark between yourself and another person is kind of worth dealing with the subsequent months of things getting boring and the two of you growing apart and becoming jealous or hating yourselves (Is that a thing? Is that just something that happens to me?). Maybe that’s why I’m bad with relationships. Admittedly, I’m a pretty huge bastard, and I’m selfish and childish. I end relationships and then can’t get over them. I just want everything to be easy like it was at first, but I make everything way more complicated and difficult than it needs to be.
I love how Kasher takes such delight in those small details. I fall in love every morning on my way to work, I fall in love every time I leave my apartment, and I imagine so does (or did) Tim Kasher. The male protagonist of Album of the Year is a bastard also, and he gets his fair share of shit throughout the album, but this song is really his song. He might be a bastard, but his account of the relationship in this song is genuine and heartfelt. I certainly also tend to do things like that, romanticizing old relationships just because I’m lonely, and then once I’m back in one, I lose it and revert back to being unreliable and distant. I think it’s universal though.
