Finding pleasure in literally everything

To quote my former associate managing editor Samantha Stewart after she looked at my entire collection of playlists and saved songs one late night in the newsroom, my taste in music is “so all over the place — just like [my] personality!”

I take this as a great compliment. As a human being, I’m passionate about a whole set of very unrelated interests — with a music taste to match.

While there may be no rhyme or reason for why I like movie scores, Miles Davis, cookie-cutter pop hits, Nas’ entire discography and Beethoven (outside of a library setting) with the same amount of love, I go through the same process with all the music I’ve really loved.

I live my life, and some beautiful sound fills the room. I find it on Spotify, tap a little heart on it. I listen to it 50 times in a row. It infects some old playlists, makes its way into the fabric of my actions for a few days or weeks. I spend time apart from it to remember why I loved it. I return to it after a long while, and then the beautiful part begins: When I finally hear it again, I associate it with that whole segment of my life.

So allow me to share a few stories and songs, all over the place and wildly different, that I love the exact same way. Every last one is linked to strange memories — yet they’re all a part of who I am, what I chase and what I love about life.

“Love Theme From Spartacus” by Yusef Lateef

The first jazz song I’ve ever really loved, I discovered “Love Theme From Spartacus” through a Spotify-generated study playlist that I randomly searched for in my hometown Starbucks during my senior year of high school. Trapped in quarantine and desperate to know where my 26 college applications would take me, I don’t regard that time of my life without painfully remembering the anxiety l felt almost every hour of the day — except when this song came on. It felt like a tonic. To me, it always feels like the clarinet in the song, the volume of which sticks out so distinctly from the low piano and drum sounds humming in the background, was whispering something to me — a message to be patient, that opportunities were coming, that the world I wanted to see, far outside the confines of my teenage bedroom, was about to reveal itself.

It means the same thing to me now. Patience, CJ, good things will come.

“I’LL SEE YOU IN 40” by Joji

After finding Joji on the Twitter trending page, I did a deep dive into his discography and found this gem sitting at the tail end of his “BALLADS 1” album. It’s the only song where I can sincerely enjoy hearing ukulele — and later prompted me to learn how to play it a bit.

It’s one of those moody and reflective songs, perfect for a warm evening drive or your average quarter-life crisis. I’ve spent almost four years taking it with me on some solitary “adventures”: sunset-watching in my car, lying in my dorm bed looking up at a ceiling lit by a cheap disco light or taking the long way on my walk home from work.

“Gonna Fly Now” by Bill Conti

There’s no good explanation for this one, just a word of advice to athletes: The “Rocky” movies have the most motivating soundtracks I’ve ever heard. And you don’t even have to be threatened by Apollo Creed!

“Beat 54 (All Good Now)” by Jungle

This song is where all my happy music memories reside. There’s nothing like hearing its gentle, upbeat melody and getting launched into the nerdy little dance I reserve only for this funk band in the privacy of my home. It feels like opening Blackboard and seeing you got an A on a difficult essay or knowing the person you like feels the same way about you.

Now that’s all good and fine, but wait until you hear how I found it — in the middle of a debilitating bathroom visit in a country club restroom. There’s no greater image than struggling to hold an iPhone to the roof to Shazam a good song while you’re clung to the lid of a gold-plated toilet.

“Nobody” by Nas feat. Ms. Lauryn Hill

My favorite song of all time, I found “Nobody” reading another newspaper — some critic had written how amazing Ms. Lauryn Hill’s feature on Nas’ new album was, and since my discovery, I’ve learned every lyric. I listened to this every day when I studied abroad, when I was truly in “One city, one country, one state / Some place to be nobody.” Exploring a city of millions whose language I didn’t speak, where I learned the true meaning of independence, I was the happiest and most genuine nobody out there. 

And no matter what random piece of sound I’ve decided to become completely obsessed with — whether it makes me happy or sad, or turns me into nobody or somebody — I’ll always find pleasure in that chaos.

“Jam Journal” is a rotating column featuring a new Daily Trojan editor in each installment commenting on the music most important to them.