A few weeks back, I commented that the soundtrack for AJ Schnack’s documentary Kurt Cobain: About a Son “looks amazing.” Instead of focusing on Nirvana’s greatest hits, Schnack built the soundtrack and the film around songs that Cobain loved and listened to through various stages of his life. A few weeks back, a reporter asked Schnack to name the soundtrack to his own life, and now the filmmaker has challenged a number of bloggers (including yours truly) to do the same.

AJ set out the following rules for the endeavor:

1.) It must reflect music from each part of your life, including childhood, awkward pre-teen years, all the way up to your current existence
2.) It should be music that is not just your favorite songs, but also things that make sense thematically
3.) It cannot be your own music
4.) Challenge at least 2 other bloggers to do the same.

I noticed that Tom Hall wrote blurbs for each of his choices, while AJ did not. With my list, I elaborated on a few choices and left others cryptic. As Schnack’s film is broken down into sections based on the cities in which Cobain lived, my list is broken down by own geographic location when these songs had an impact on my life.

We’ll start with a teaser. You’ll find the full list after the jump. Oh, and I tag these two: Filmbrain and The Cinetrix

LOS ANGELES

Malcolm McLaren, “Madame Butterfly” (see video above)
Malcolm McLaren’s Fans came out in 1984, and at the time, I had no idea who Malcolm McLaren was, nor did I have any concept of how ridiculous it was that the puppetmaster behind the Sex Pistols was releasing an album of synth-pop opera covers just seven years after Never Mind the Bollocks. My mom bought it–I actually have a vague memory of her hunting it down at the Tower Records in Sherman Oaks before finally finding it at the Music Plus in Studio City. I was a four year-old budding ballerina, and when she’d put the record on, I’d practice my pas de bourrée. At some point I choreographed an entire ballet to the full record, with yours truly playing all the parts (thankfully, this was before the advent of affordable consumer camcorders). It’s the first music I remember requesting to listen to.

Madonna, “Vogue”
I maintain that David Fincher’s entire body of music videos, if seen as a whole, are more interesting than any single film he’s ever directed (although, admittedly, I haven’t yet seen Zodiac). I’m probably wrong, and I probably wouldn’t dare say anything so wrongheaded if it weren’t for my deeply ingrained, pre-pubescent obsession with the video for “Vogue”.

Nirvana, Heart Shaped Box

The Breeders, Metal Man
It’s almost impossible for me to pick a single song from The Breeders’ Pod or The Pixies’ Surfer Rosa. When I was 14, I made a tape with each record on one side, and listened to it every morning on the way to and from school for almost three years. I picked “Metal Man” because, as the last song on the second side of the tape, it almost always coincided with the school bus reaching my local intersection, thus signaling the end of another day of high school agony.

Spiritualized, “I Think I’m In Love”

CHICAGO

Nina Simone, “Since I Fell For You”
I started slowly getting into the great female jazz and blues singers in my late teens, but it wasn’t until I found Nina Simone that it all really clicked. This was my Mean Reds song of my first year of art school, as I came to slowly realize that both going to art school and doing so in Chicago was probably a mistake, but was still far too young, stupid and proud to admit to being homesick for Los Angeles.

Joan of Arc, “Live in Chicago”
A year later, I was romanticizing my love-hate relationship with the city, and trying to learn to live with it.

Paul McCartney, “Man We Was Lonely”

SAN FRANCISCO

Frank Sinatra, “Luck Be A Lady”
When I first moved to San Francisco, I lived in a railroad apartment with too many roommates and too little heat. One of my roommates was an Italian guy in town for an internship at a dot com (I won’t say which one, but I will say it no longer exists). He had taught himself English primarily by listening to Frank Sinatra, and this song was his favorite. We had one heating vent, in a little hallway outside the bathroom, and the Italian guy and I basically camped out in that hallway all winter, drinking terrible wine and imploring one another to “keep this party polite.”

Olivia Newton-John, “Xanadu”

Scott Walker, “It’s Raining Today”

NEW YORK

Sonic Youth, “Kotton Krown”
Sonic Youth are probably the reason why, ultimately, I took the leap and moved to New York, even though by the time I got here Kim and Thurston had long since absconded to their farmhouse in Massachusetts. I thought it was going to feel like “Teen Age Riot”, or maybe “Expressway to Yr Skull”, if I was lucky. But most of the time, it feels like “Kotton Krown”–droney and grey on the outside, weirdly sweet and even beautiful in the interior.

The Fiery Furnaces, “Tropical Iceland”
My “snowed in for the weekend” song when I was living in Brooklyn.

Justin Timberlake, “Summer Love”
As Charles Aaron used to say, “I give.”