My secret conditional music tastes

Certain situations call for certain tunes. Habits are often slightly embarrassing. 
  1. I only ever listen to one of two albums in my car: Ryan Adams’ Heartbreaker or Neil Young’s On the Beach.
  2. That’s actually a lie. I just repeatedly listen to the burned CD probably stuck in the deck that has my faves from Heartbreaker & On the Beach.
  3. That’s a lie, too. I almost always just listen to “Come Pick Me Up” & “Ambulance Blues.”
  4. I have an iTunes playlist called “malleable shapes,” which is also the title of my terrible self-published poetry chapbook on unrequited/imagined relationships. It’s largely comprised of Elliott Smith bootlegs.
  5. My apartment’s most-oft-spun LP by far is a Mamma Cass compilation, to be listened whilst getting ready to go somewhere I really don’t want to. Because, when you have to get up early on a Saturday for a menial job you hate, it just feels good to be told you gotta make your own kind of music.
  6. If you see me listening to an iPod and walking to class, chances are extremely good that the soundtrack to Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet is playing. When I was in second grade, I had my mom buy me it on cassette  because I had heard “Lovefool” on the radio as she drove me to Catholic school once, and because I had heard somewhere that it also had Radiohead. I’ve loved Thom Yorke – who is just a few days older than my dad – since I was 8 years old.
  7. When I don’t know what to listen to, I usually just pop on OK Computer. Because I’m lame like that.