A person’s relationship to their music is based on emotion; we all know this. This is why we keep saying that these top 10 lists are completely subjective. They’re based on individual feeling. Memory. The place you were in your life when you heard a certain song or album and what it meant to you, how it felt, how it fundamentally changed you.

With many people, this phenomenon is almost always, without exception, tied to love, romance, and drama. What album was playing when you kissed so-and-so for the first time in the hallway outside of the Jr. High dance? What song was playing in the car the night your father died? What band at what show was the first you ever attended with your boyfriend, and what band was playing the night you caught him in the bathroom with that lame-ass indie chick? I see this stuff all the time, and while i’m as susceptible to it as anyone else (hell, i screamed back “I really hate your new boyfriend!” at Poster Children shows once or twice back in the day), it’s usually not what my love of a record is based on. Usually, it’s something less easily definable than standard life drama. Take the Melt-Banana record i ranked at #9–aside from the haughty intellectual rationalizing about why it’s such a perfect noise-rock record, there’s just something about startlingly original, abrasive music that affects me in a visceral, primal way that can’t simply be pegged to one event in my life.

That’s not the case with The Meadowlands, though. I can sit and tell you the story of how i was introduced to The Wrens in 1996 by a co-worker at my college’s radio station, who handed me Secaucus to review and said, “hey, you’ll probably like these guys–they thank Brainiac in the liner notes.” I can explain how that record’s perfect blend of Beach Boys-level pop harmonies and Brainiac-style noise and weirdness made me fall in love with them immediately. And i can talk about how i waited for years and years for The Meadowlands and how it did the impossible and managed to actually surpass the unreasonably high expectations that came with seven years of waiting. Nah–The Meadowlands is in my all time top 10 because of a girl, and that’s the truth.

I don’t seem to remember blabbing a whole lot at her about The Wrens before The Meadowlands was released. I had been conditioned otherwise–she loved what she loved, and while things she loved were usually things i loved, her tastes were much more selective than mine, so she also ended up hating a lot of things i dug as well. So when i finally, excitedly received my copy, i may have said something like “i’ve been waiting for this record for seven years,” but i’m not sure if what that meant it registered with her right away (it did, though, eventually). But it only took one or two spins for her to finally overhear it in my car and say, “woah, what is this?”

Ha! Permission!

The floodgates were open, and soon i was telling her the whole story–my introduction to the band, my early obsession with these mysterious guys from Jersey about whom i could find precious little online, how all i had was this one brilliant record from 1996, and how eventually stories surfaced about all the insane crap that got in the way of the boys and their next record. (Note: If you haven’t heard the story, click on that link and read their bio. It’s sort of heartbreaking and inspiring all at once.) She devoured the music and the lyrics and the story behind the album and was swept away.

Soon, The Meadowlands wasn’t just a record that i loved and somehow snuck into her consciousness; it was our record. She pointed out how the lyrics to “This Boy is Exhausted” made her think about me and how i called her every night whenever i was out of town on tour, sighing and anguishing over how no one was at the show that night or how the van broke down, but then eventually we’d “play a show that [made] it worthwhile.” We’d sing along to “Happy” and remember our own past loves that had collapsed. And finally, after a wait of about a year for her and eight for me, we finally got to see them play in Chicago, and it was euphoric.

We’re not together anymore. The same old stubborn bullshit and entropy that cools the hottest suns in the cosmos finally beat us down. And as a result, it was really hard to listen to this album for awhile. But i can listen to it again now, because she and i are still friends, and still close, and because The Meadowlands is still ours. Considering the title of the album’s final track, “This is Not What You Planned,” maybe it’s more ours now than it ever was.

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