In my introduction I invited my friends to share their favorite albums with me. I’m happy to report that my friend Jonathan Lee took me up on the offer and has decided to contribute to the site. Check out his take on the When Harry Met Sally Motion Picture Soundtrack. If you’re interested in writing about a favorite album, drop me an email.
When I was in the 6th grade, my parents bought me a Sony Hi-Fi system as a Christmas present. It was large and utilitarian and featured two tape decks, a tuner, and a CD player. No fancy digital equalizers, and you couldn’t even turn the damn thing off with the remote. To turn it off, you had to walk over to it and press the button. It didn’t resemble any of the sleek, silver models that flood the market these days — no concessions to space were considered during the design. It didn’t have any flat speaker panels and the whole monolith took up an entire quadrant of my bookshelf-slash-entertainment system, the speakers sagging on the top shelf. A miracle the bookshelf never broke under its weight.
It had 2 tape decks that allowed for recording from the tuner, which was the most exciting feature for me. I didn’t really know what CDs were at that point; they were a new technology, but I received most of my music fix from the radio — the top 40 station, mainly, and eventually the “alternative rock” station (94.5 the EDGE!). I listened intently every night to the top 5 countdowns and recorded the favorite songs of my youth by untoggling pause at the right moment, as to capture only the song, and no pre- or post-DJ blabber. My first CD purchases/gifts were embarrassments. Hootie and the Blowfish, August and Everything After by the Counting Crows (which really isn’t an embarrassment as it is still a fantastic album), The Bodyguard soundtrack — they were played more for novelty sake than anything else. Oooh…a shiny disc with clear, almost TOO clear fidelity sound! Don’t touch the shiny part or you’ll scratch it! Carefully extract the CD from the case carefully or you’re scratch it! Don’t expose it to air for too long or you’ll scratch it! In fact, anything would scratch it. I didn’t understand at the time that music is art and reached beyond the object itself.
My voice was changing, and I started to get all these strange, new feelings about girls. It was much easier to hide my emotions behind a row of my peers than talking to a girl one-on-one. My choir teacher placed me in the baritone section, and I took great pride that my creaky, changing voice could be turned into something deep, oaky, and confident. What my choir teacher didn’t know was that I was practicing at home, developing a deeper sound by singing along at home with my Sony Hi-Fi.
The album was the When Harry Met Sally soundtrack by Harry Connick, Jr., and as with all things fateful, how it arrived in my CD player was both coincidental and random. It was a soundtrack and thought, “Hey, the one soundtrack I had isn’t so bad.” I borrowed it from my aunt, who was part of that wretched Columbia Records CD Club, knew nothing about the film, drew parallels from the cover to my own burgeoning love life, and as soon as track 1 started — It Had to be You — my young, fertile musical mind underwent a revolution. Jazz? Big Band? I knew nothing about those genres at the time, but all I knew was that those bold horns reached into my soul, I wanted to sound like Harry, and those syncopated rhythms kicked around in my head even after the CD stopped. I never viewed music the same from that point forward. Listening was enjoyment, it was pleasure, it was happiness, it was sadness — music became EVERYTHING. Harry Connick, Jr. was my wise teacher, and I was crooning along with him, hoping to match my voice with his.
When my crush ignored me during math class, I would listen to But Not For Me, comforted by the fact that Harry knew what I was going through, how I was feeling. When I was in a goofy, puppy-dog sort of stupor, Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off matched my whimsy, despite the lyrical dissonance. And Where or When, mimicked my sexual frustration as a young adult male (the build-up, the climax, the regretful post-coital haze?), but also imbued in me crystal fragments of romance that I still don’t know how to outgrow.
