A new way of introducing yourself

What do you do? Ugh, the most dreaded party question of all time. We all need a better answer for this, one that doesn’t make us question all of our life choices. I recently discovered a perfect alternative. What if you could introduce yourself without saying a word, but instead played 5 songs that perfectly articulated the essence of you? Heaven? Yes, I thought so.

Introducing yourself without saying a word

I was at a concert a couple of months ago. I didn’t know the artist well, but the opening act was a friend of a friend so we went. It was also a 15 minute walk from my house. For a recovering introvert that goes to bed at 9:30, that was a big deal. I went with a group of 10 good friends.

Halfway through the show, the singer tells a quick story. Actually, she sang it, kind of. She starts by saying that there are a lot of new faces in the crowd, and she wants us to know more about her. But rather than tell us about herself, she was going to stick to what she does best. She was going to play a medley of songs. She played 5 songs that when strung together, gave us a great idea of what she was all about. So she did. And it was incredible.

I don’t remember the songs she played. But this idea stuck with me, and I decided to try it myself.

Picking your 5 life songs

I went home and asked myself, what if I had to introduce myself to someone without using words? Could I give them a sense of who I was by sharing 5 songs? And most importantly, which 5 songs would I choose?

It was much harder than it sounds. I agonized over it for hours.

Do I base it on eras of my life - adolescence, high school, university, 30s, 40s, 50s?

Do I base in on people in my life - old friends, wife, kids, new friends?

Do I start with my favorite bands, then pick songs?

I felt a huge amount of pressure for what was supposed to be fun experiment. It felt like I was betraying many of my favorite artists by not including them.

Will Keith Richards ever forgive me?

Once I finalized my list, I decided to make this idea bigger. I asked each of my friends to send me their 5 songs.

I got lots of questions, the most common one being, can I give you more than 5?

No! If I can widdle my entire 55 years of music-listening to 5 songs, so can you! I know it’s hard. That’s what makes it interesting.

Everyone eventually sent me their songs, and I put them together in a playlist. Now we listen to it together on shuffle, and we try to guess who’s song is whose. The playlist is a superset of our lives. Some of it overlaps, but much of it is from eras before we met. I learned a lot about these people I’ve known for 20 years. Mostly I learned that some of them have really shit taste in music - or at least, they used to.

The soundtrack of our lives

These songs are a time machine. Nothing can pick you up and transport you back in time like a song you haven’t heard in 20+ years. And you remember every word. But it’s not just the words that came flooding back. Anxiety, awkwardness - I swear I was 15 again, eating my lunch on long walks to avoid trying to find someone to sit with in the cafeteria.

For so many of us, music is a part of who we are. When I was young, I desperately wanted to belong to a group. There were the headbangers, the new wavers, the classic rockers, the top 40 crowd, the mods, the punks. There was an attitude and style with each one. You didn’t need to know everyone in a group, but when you passed people in your same group in the hallway, there was an understanding. Yes, I see you. You’re not alone.

I moved groups a couple of times. I started as a headbanger listening to ACDC, Judas Priest, Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin. Then I found a cool crowd listening to classic rock with the Stones, Neil Young and Pink Floyd. I spent most of high school with the new wave crowd, experimenting with haircuts and rocking out to The Smiths, The Cure, The Housemartins, Depeche Mode and New Order. I love all this music today, but it wasn’t the music that made me jump groups. It was my search for artists singing about things that spoke to me, and hoping to find some sense of belonging with people that were looking for the same thing.

The song remains the same

This is an emotional exercise, and I hope you try it. As I travelled back in time, I rediscovered music I hadn’t listened to in years. But more than that, I realized how much I’ve grown. And not. You can’t listen to that old music and not be thrown back to an earlier time - and it’s not all awesome. This music is paired with some seriously shitty feelings. And while I feel I’m no longer that shy kid looking for belonging, I kind of still am. I know I’m doing it here in this newsletter. I know I’m doing it on LinkedIn. When I look back on this time in 20 years, like I look back at high school now, will I see that I was searching for belonging the whole time?

Somedays I feel like I can take on the world, like there is nothing I can’t do. Somedays I feel like I desperately need just the right song to make me feel less alone, before everyone realizes I’ve been making it up all along.

Bob’s 5 songs:

1. In the Ghetto, Elvis Presley

2. Age of Consent, New Order

3. Running To Stand Still, U2

4. Blow at High Dough, The Tragically Hip

5. Angel from Montgomery, John Prine

Special Mention: Jackson, Johnny Cash and June Carter

So now you know all about me. Wasn’t that more fun than reading?