Choosing a soundtrack to your life is no easy task, especially if you’re being honest rather than hip. Below are the songs that held the most importance in my life and had the most impact at pivotal moments…and generally made me the person that I am today.

“Everything I do (I do it for you) – Bryan Adams: Video - This was the very first sign of my obsessive personality taking root. I was nine years old and although I can’t remember when I first heard it (in retrospect, it had to have been on Casey Kasem’s “Weekly Top 40,” which I never missed) I remember buying the cassette single, which led to my purchasing Waking Up the Neighbors, my first album on cassette. At the time that this song came out I was going through a really heavy romantic phase devoted exclusively to “Romeo and Juliet,” Jane Austen and “Wuthering Heights,” and Adams song fit perfectly into that whole swooning delusion. When I listen to it now its lyrics make me cringe a bit, but it also never fails to conjure memories of the sentimental little girl in me.

“Ain’t Gonna Hurt Nobody” – Kid N’ Play: Video - Although I am sure that my older brother, who was responsible for introducing me to hip-hop and rap (as well as most of the other music that I listened to in my childhood), was listening to way cooler songs than this Kid N’ Play House Party II classic, this song is the very first hip-hop song that I ever heard. My brother and I would play Nerf basketball while blasting it on the tape deck and it never failed to make me want to attempt to both dance and dunk at the same time. It is one of my favorite childhood memories.

“The Fly” – U2: Video - U2 defined my childhood in more ways than one but unlike most U2 fans, Joshua Tree was not my introduction to Bono and the gang. Thanks to a U2-loving Canadian missionary who stayed with us briefly the year that Achtung Baby was released, my brother bought the cassette tape the day it came out. We cradled the tape as if it was some newfound holy treasure and in many ways it was. “The Fly” was the first single released from the album and it was unlike anything I had ever heard—sexy and dangerous, equal parts rock n’ roll and dance, and very, very hypnotic. This marked the first time in my life where I found biblical and spiritual references in mainstream songs and this was both strange and comforting, and sparked my need to search for other artists, such as Johnny Cash, who did the same.

“Estranged” – Guns N’ Roses: Video - One of the most expensive and longest music videos of the 90s (this was waay before the R. Kelly dramas), I remember waiting anxiously for its debut on MTV. We didn’t have cable growing up but they would show music videos on the Daisy Fuentes-hosted one-hour MTV Latino show Saturdays on Telemundo and I remember seeing it there for the first time. I was going through a deep love affair, if only in my head, with Axl Rose at the time and this video made me long for his tortured soul all the more. I loved the audacity of the band—making a song nearly 10 minutes long that pretty much guaranteed them no radio airplay—the drama and ego at the forefront of the video, and of course, Slash’s perfect rock n’ roll guitar solo. This song also came out at a time when I was entering middle school, a period in my life where I discovered my outer-stoner-rocker, wore rock shirts and ripped jeans and carved G N’ F’ R into my textbooks, and permanently left behind my life as a goody-goody.

“Somebody to Love” – George Michael & Queen: Video - Queen came into my life with the release of Wayne’s World, but I didn’t fall in love with Freddie Mercury and George Michael until the 1993 release of this duet, performed at the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert a year earlier. There is something in the combination of Queen and George Michael that fits perfectly—it is hard to find someone that can reach the notes that Mercury could reach, with the emotional range that he always inhabited, but Michael comes closer than anyone else I’ve ever heard. Both men represented an individualism that I had never seen before and that I certainly lacked at the time. I clearly remember wanting to be that confident and vulnerable but had no roadmap or clue as to how to get there at the age of 11.

“Fields of Gold” – Sting: Video - This song is significant for two reasons—it was part of Ten Summoner’s Tales, the first CD that I ever bought; and it was the big single on the radio the summer that my brother visited Colombia. He stayed there the whole summer and it was the first time that we had ever been apart. I remember sitting in his room, recording songs off of the radio on his tape deck and recording videos on the VCR because I didn’t want him to miss anything while he was gone. I remember being so excited to show him the “Fields of Gold” video when he came back only to have him tell me that he had already seen it. The song still makes me think of how lonely and lost I felt that summer and how glad I was when my brother came home.

“Today” – Smashing Pumpkins: Video - If U2 defined my childhood, then Smashing Pumpkins defined my teenage wasteland. Like everyone else at the time, I was a fan of Pearl Jam, Nirvana, Stone Temple Pilots, [insert early 90s grunge band here], but none reigned as supreme as the Pumpkins. The first time that I saw and consequently fell in love with Billy Corgan he was wearing a brown corduroy coat lined with fake fur and was being interviewed as part of MTV’s coverage of that year’s Lollapalooza festival. Although I cannot remember a single thing that he said that day, I do remember the freakish confidence that he exuded, with an emphasis on the word freakish. Corgan came around at a time when I felt like a complete freak, full of insecurities and misconceptions, and his own insecurities, referenced so honestly in his lyrics, made me feel better about myself, and made me feel, for once, that I was not alone.

“Willing to Wait” – Sebadoh: Video - There is so much nostalgia tied up with this song. Harmacy was released when I was fourteen and my best friend at the time, who I also happened to be in love with, bought it and played it for me one afternoon when we were hanging out in his room. He told me that I had to buy it for this one song, “Willing to Wait,” because he’d never heard anything so perfect and beautiful in his life. Oddly enough the song ended up representing everything that I felt about our relationship and I still can’t listen to it without remembering the pain that I felt when I discovered that he didn’t love me in return.

“One Step Up” – Bruce Springsteen: Video - A friend of mine lent me a copy of Tunnel of Love my junior year in high school and that album literally changed my life: it brought me the gift of Bruce Springsteen. This gift coincided with my discovery of Raymond Carver’s writing, and both of these men let me into a secret world that I never knew existed. “I’m sittin’ here in this bar tonight/But all I’m thinkin’ is/I’m the same old story same old act/One step up and two steps back,” Springsteen sings. Up until this point I never knew that one could be so completely vulnerable and honest as a writer…I know this is going to sound insane but discovering Springsteen, and this album, made me a better writer, simply by listening.

“Most of the Time” – Bob Dylan: Video - This was the song that I played the most during what turned out to be a crossroad my junior year of college. I was enrolled in the journalism school and, for the most part, hated it completely. I was miserable and I would listen to this song on repeat because something about Dylan’s voice made me feel better—the way that he would say these words, so matter-of-fact and precise, it killed me. It was such a comfort and became a mantra for me during that time. This is a song that I constantly go back to even today because its lyrics describe the way that I feel…most of the time.

“Begin” – Ben Lee: Video - This is a song that I played over and over again when I first moved to NY. It was written by Lee in NY about NY, as the lyrics clearly reflect, and it encompasses the feeling of waiting for your new life, the new you, to begin. As cheesy as it is to admit now, I would actually walk down Broadway listening to him say, “I’m walking down Broadway/Each footstep is a new love letter/I’m trying to make eye contact with every stranger that I pass,” smiling my ass off the entire time. I was unemployed at the time, pretty much broke and terrified, and this song filled me with such hope and promise.

“When You Were Young” – The Killers: Video - The first time that I heard the opening guitar riff of this song I was floored. Not since “Born to Run” has a song filled me with such energy, wanderlust and passion, all in one fatal punch. The song lifts you up off the ground and never puts you back down and this is where I’ve been for the past year—soaring high on its wailing guitar and Brandon Flower’s pleading voice. When all else fails to excite, and Britney Spears’ new single hits the top of the charts, I put on this song, close my eyes and rock out, fully believing that the future of music (and all art) is in safe hands.