Hayden's "Everything I Long For"

Yesterday, while driving Juliette to school and listening to the news, which Juliette hates to do, I heard a story on NPR about Indian Classical Music: "Another Reason Not To Sleep." The story talked about Indian music and the fact that there are different melodic scales for different times of day and different seasons. Of course, this reminded me of Vivaldi's The Four Seasons.Quickly, though, my thoughts went to the music I listen to in every season. Instead of thinking about it in relation to four seasons though, I usually think about the music I listen to in regards to spring/summer and fall/winter. Since fall is almost upon us, September 22, I decided to take the next few days to present my top ten albums for the fall/winter. I'm not ranking the albums in any particular order. I'm just presenting them as the ones I listen to when the weather starts to change.

Album 1: Hayden Everything I Long For (1995)

If you've never heard of Hayden Dresser, you don't know what you're missing. While I've never lived in an extremely cold environment during the winter, Hayden's music, and specifically his voice, makes me think about what it would be like to be snowed in with nothing to do but listen to music through long winter nights.

The first time I heard Hayden was on MTV's 120 Minutes, remember when they used to have good shows that actually played music. Anyways, the video for "Bad As They Seem" came on, and I immediately liked it. The song a detuned guitars and his low voice made him sound hypnotizing. "Bad as They Seem," in case you were wondering, is about a guy in Hayden's neighborhood who sat on his roof in a lawn chair all day. The song is Hayden thinking about what that guy was thinking while on the roof.

  After getting Everything I Long For, the other songs started to stick out, especially to a sophomore/junior in high school. The standouts to me have always been "In September," "Stem," "Hardly," and "When This is Over" which is about Susan Smith. A few years ago, I used this song to show students what a ballad is, and it went over pretty well.

To conclude, if you listen to the whole album, not on Spotify, there is a great sandwich recipe at the end of the last song. Enjoy!