Oh, Weddings

So my friend Wilderness is getting married at the end of April and his wedding invitation contained an innocuous question: favorite song. Now, this is, at first glance, an innocuous question. For me, it should be obvious. My favorite band of all time is Simon and Garfunkel. My favorite Simon and Garfunkel song is The Boxer. Hence, that should be my favorite song. Yet, that question is insidious because you just can’t answer using the preceding methodology. One’s favorite song needs to tell everyone one’s musical sophistication and pretension (i.e. the listeners must at once be overwhelmed by the goodness of the music and stupidity for not having the same great taste of knowing that song) and cut across genres, moods, motifs, themes, and playlists. For example, I know what my favorite Simon and Garfunkel song is, my favorite Portland indie song, my favorite Beethoven piano sonata, but favorite song? Can it include opera arias? Vietnamese music? Musical scores from movies?

Anyway, since nobody reads this thing anymore, I am longer in shame of revealing my terrible taste in pop music and so, until Wilderness’s wedding, I shall be generating lists and trying to choose a worthy yet pretentious song as a non-bias point estimate of my favorite song. Incidentally, I started off with 10 songs for Wilderness’s Wedding (i.e. 10 songs having to do with l’amore (which, incidentally isn’t the same as the top 10 songs I would want played at my wedding) and had a really hard time populating it while the Top 10 Songs for breaking up was done in about 10 minutes.