It started with our powder blue Oldsmobile’s 8 track and likely Barry Manilow and Stevie Wonder, and has been the one passion that has never abated.
My love for music is truly everlasting. In Junior High School I used to dream of a smaller portable music player maybe even handheld so that the melodies in my head could be audible to the entire world. I understood and envied the “hoodlums” that my grandparents and even parents complained of walking around with a refrigerator sized stereos on their shoulders (I can’t imagine what that had to cost in batteries, especially since those guys never looked like the rechargeable battery type). Portable music was the “jam” if you will. 
Decades later, enter the iPod that had external speakers and one of my earliest dreams was realized. I, however, am not Al Gore and will not claim that this genius innovation a la Steve Jobs and Apple was mine. The iPod was and is one of the best things that has ever happened to me, allowing my music to constantly surround in version audible outside my brain.
How does this relate to love, relationships, and dating or maybe even just life? Well in my life it is oddly straightforward if I pay attention. In everyone else’s it is the reason that the soundtrack makes such a big impact on a film or even TV show. Hollywood has known and worked with this since sound was able to be paired with film. We have all watched a film and then the music started playing “Bow chick a bow bow…” and thought wow that situation is not going to work out…
One of the most stark and mocking examples is according to JLo’s character Mary in The Wedding Planner. Sitting in the theater, I became sure that I wasn’t alone in my suspicion that music and relationship success are definitely related:
"Oh, oh, and "I Honestly Love You" as your wedding song?
You might as well commit matrimonial suicide right now."
My first real relationship began my senior year in high school and lasted through my first two years of undergrad. Looking back via a musical perspective our first date should never have even occurred. He was a guy I met through my first job. He was nice enough and I knew he had a crush on me for about 6 months prior to our first date. From the moment I met him every time I was around him 99.7 the Fox would play “Better Man” by Pearl Jam. In retrospect that was the proverbial frying pan repeatedly hitting me in the face of our dragged out and absurdly painful relationship. He was uncomplimentary at best and an all-round douche-tard at worst. “She lies and says she’s in love with him can’t find a better man.” Pearl Jam was right and the music gods were speaking to me as loudly as the could.
I didn’t take the hint that time or even the next 10-20. To their credit the powers that be didn’t give up on me.* In my last several relationships the overly repeated musical mantras (and I state this recognizing that stations far and wide play the same thing about every ten minutes) have been no less subtle than what Pearl Jam tried to tell me in the mid 90s.
*It is important to point out that these songs not only played on the radio, but in stores, amusement parks, restaurants, everywhere.
In 2002 I should have thought twice when my guy told me he always thought of Willy Nelson’s “You Were Always on My Mind” when he thought of me. Yes we were still dating at the time. Maybe he had already broken up with me in his head. In 2008, Rihanna’s “Unfaithful” should have prevented a late night discovery that I was far from the only one in my guy’s little black book. In 2010, Taio Cruz sang the fateful “I’m only gonna break break ya break break ya heart.” only 16 times per play in his catchy upbeat yet oddly dark hit 
(Players unite you now have a Pop Anthem that does not offend and possibly appeals to all of us white girls). Actually, this was the first song that I truly thought was a sign. It played on our first date in a Peruvian restaurant and was the only NonLatin song during our dining experience. Instead of being giddy with the relief that they were currently out of beef heart (the one thing my date thought would be symbolic if we ate “heart” on our first date. Yeah, yeah, OK there were multiple signs.), I should have cabbed it home as soon as Taio started crooning.
Finally and most recently I met the Conudrum wine (what exact combo of grapes is in that stuff that makes it so very palatable and delicious?) of boys and musical influence. 
We mucked the pot by constantly listening to music of our own choosing all of the time via iPods, shuffles, iPhones, iPads, and once or twice his Kindle Fire. We ate, drank, and hung out to Foster the People, the Black Keys, Cults, Young the Giant, and Vampire Weekend to name a few. All of these bands maybe have had an odd album cover or video, however, all make great music and there was no overt badness. Plus there were so many songs; whole albums even. In the present theory this relationship should have ABSOLUTELY worked out right? 
Ha! This relationship even ended on a musical note where there was likely some blatantly ignored foreshadowing with a Fitz and the Tantrums‘ concert and songs like “Don’t Gotta Work it Out”. He has not spoken to me again since two days after the concert. It was the same week that I heard Gotye and Kimbra’s “Someone That I Used to Know.” I still have very little idea what happened. He didn’t defriend me on Facebook so I gather it couldn’t have been my fault…
At this point, I am thankful that “Goodbye Earl”, The Dixie Chicks or “Love the Way You Lie” a la Eminem and Rihanna hasn’t happened on a first date. At least now I would know to RUN! 
Speaking of I have always wondered what Rihanna and Chris Brown jammed out to? Maybe they listened to 2 Live Crew or Death Metal (I don’t know any death metal bands off hand so I googled and was immediately partial to Fleshcrawl and Pungent Stench, here are the Top 100) or any of the Top 30 domestic violence songs as per A.V. Club (Eminem has 3 of those). That might clear up the mystery that surrounds their situation a bit.
Maybe I should only look for a guy if the song seems favorable like during such IQ dropping hits like Jason Derulo’s “I Only Miss You When I am Breathing”. Now that is dedication! It does risk the hazard of being the type of relationship that would be all encompassing and possibly stifling, but possibly better than the above.
The Top 5 Stop Dating this Douche Already Mantras (a la me)
1. A Lap Dance is So Much Better When the Stripper is Cryin’ – Bloodhound gang (Enough Said)
2. Flavor of the Weak – American Hi Fi (there also will be other signs, like that extra pink toothbrush)
3. Area Codes – Ludacris (watch out when dating traveling salesman of any types. Pharm and Device reps included)
4. Still Not A Player– Big Pun (this guy is almost too arrogant not to tell you)
5. That Ain’t My Truck – Rhett Atkins (for the country fans and the ladies who drive by their man’s dwelling)
Honorable Mentions: What it Takes – Aerosmith (this one’s gonna hurt) and Glycerine – Bush (The title comes from the explosive applications of glycerine to stabilize nitro: in an interview Rossdale said the song was about how love was like a bomb). Another Boyfriend, Another explosion.
Top 5 Keep This Guy Around Although Your Love May Be Nauseating To Those Around You Songs (also a la me)**
** A category which would not surprisingly be dominated by boy bands if I extended it to a top 20.
1. Truly Madly Deeply – Savage Garden (I never said all or even any of these songs would be good, just that they indicated a musical agreement that this person wouldn’t hurt you.)
1.I Knew I Loved You Before I Met You – Savage Garden (Let’s just take a moment and bask in the wonder that one band can be sappy enough has the top two songs and also to take deep breaths to suppress the feeling of nausea that we now all have)
3. I’ll Never Break Your Heart – Backstreet Boys (Excellent Promise)
4. I Need A Girl – P Diddy (Where to apply?)
5. Without You (feat. Usher) – David Guetta (It was on Glee, how could it be wrong?)
Honorable More Serious Mentions: I Found You – Alabama Shakes (Check this Band and their album Boys and Girls Out! That is a command!), One and Only – Adele (it’s good to be the one and only, at least that is what I have been told), and Angel – Aerosmith (classic adoration)
All in all we should likely pay attention to what lots of things in our live including the music in our lives is telling us about our relationships and even our perspective. It is possible that we gravitate towards what we subconsciously already know, that some higher being is telling us via pop culture what our outcome is going to be and thus making desperate efforts to save our time and energy, or maybe it there is a radio or even a government conspiracy that dominates and manipulates our relationship undertones and thus lives (insert Carmina Burana here). If the latter is the case then I have major issue with 93.3 because there music has provided the worst crop yet (they do have excellent Celebrity Gossip via “The Dirty @ 6:30”).
What are your top 10 relationship do and relationship don’t tunes?
whatreallyhappenswhennotlooking 