Comfort Music?

The last few weeks I haven't been quite myself. A breakup can do that to a man.

Besides having conflicting sad/angry emotions, sometimes crippling self doubt, and a general loss of appetite, I have been listening to a lot of music. I'm not sure what most people turn to musically when something traumatic happens. I would assume 70s singer/songwriters or maybe Slayer? Not this guy though...I play the most inane pop music of the 80s.

I have about 15 gigs of 80s Top 100 Billboard charts on my iPod, and they have been on shuffle for the last couple of weeks at home, at work, and in the car. It's gotten so bad at work that one of my co-workers actually said (after I explained exactly WHY I was listening to "Kyrie" for the 15th time that week) "now you are making us all suffer". Yet I still turn to my comfort music.

Comfort music is not like comfort food (although they both theoretically share Meat Loaf). At least I don't THINK they are the same. One man's "How Will I Know" could be another man's Cure or maybe Otis Redding. Hell, I don't even know if anyone else does this. My personal belief is that my favorites (whether it be "The Blue Album", "Ten", "The Low End Theory" or "Exile on Main St.") should not be tainted by bad memories of the down times. I want to hear "Rocks Off" in a month or two and shake my sexy white ass without thinking about all the bad shit that I am currently going through.

Fortunately, 80s shit pop is untouchable like Elliot Ness. One cannot put special meaning on Jermaine Stewart or the song "Look Away" by Chicago. All those songs remind me of are being five years old and running through sprinklers and jumping on beds and trips to 7-Eleven for Slurpees and Tony Gwynn's jheri curl on a 1989 Donruss baseball card. The disposableness of those joints makes them have no emotional heft, and I can only tie them to positive memories at a time in my life where I really couldn't feel hurt. They are my aural Salisbury Steak.