Very Specific Associations with Very Specific Songs

I'm back, and I'm very curious to hear other people's thoughts on this one, especially other writers and people in creative fields: When you listen to certain songs, do you have very specific stories you associate with them? Do you associate a song with a book, a fic, a movie, or fictional characters of some kind?

There are some of my Very Specific Associations for songs I listened to often in 2021.*

"Already Gone" by Kelly Clarkson. Remember when "The Broken Man and the Dawn" was my favorite RPF? Well, whether one does or not, that particular story has a plotline that involves a couple who's lost a child having a painful but overall rather amicable breakup. Although Clarkson famously wrote this gentle breakup song for her ex Justin "Little Sweet from the Dr. Pepper commercials" Guarini, in my mind it's about that breakup from "The Broken Man and the Dawn." 

"Girl Crush" by Little Big Town. I made a whole post about this one by itself; it's one of my songs for the fictional couple Destiel.

One of my other Destiel songs is the Deftones cover of Sade's "No Ordinary Love." 

"Runaway Crush" by Stella Soleil. This one is both super-specific and a mishearing. The actual line in the song is, "I'm feeling the soft of your skin," but before I looked up the lyrics I always heard it as "I'm feeling the SALT of your skin." Granted, salt doesn't have a particularly nice feel (it's just grainy), but I liked to imagine ocean-dipped Mediterranean skin which, when kissed, might taste quite nice. 

I rediscovered this gem of a song at roughly the same time I developed my Baron Helmut Zemo fixation. My association with Zemo and salt is this Tumblr post by a native Russian speaker. Daniel Brühl is famously multilingual; he acts in German-, Spanish-, and English-language films and also speaks Catalan and its cousin French. Apparently, though, his Russian accent is less than ideal and when Zemo has to utter the command phrase "soldat," he sounds like he's either saying "soldier" in a baby voice or asking, "Want some salt?"

Thus my runaway crush is a Sokovian war criminal. (It's ok, he's fictional.) 

If you want to fall even deeper into the salty rabbit hole in my brain, you can listen to this episode of Cult or Just Weird in which a self-described alien contactee says the aliens always give him salt as a parting gift. 

"Send My Love (To Your New Lover)" by Adele (Adkins). Like many people who spend too much time on Tumblr, I had a BBC Sherlock phase. I imagine this song is what Sherlock says to John when John marries Mary. 

"Watching You Watch Him" by Eric Hutchinson. I mentioned this one years ago, but this song enjoyed mild popularity when I was reading Fifty Shades of Grey. Thus I experience this upbeat ode to jealousy as being from the point of view of Jose, witnessing the early stages of Anastasia and Christian's relationship.

"Water Under the Bridge" by Adele (Adkins).  In my mind, this is another Johnlock (BBC Sherlock), but this time from John's point of view, upon his learning that Sherlock was not actually dead. 

*I'm trying to learn some new music for 2022. Here are a few current favorites:

• "Boyfriend" by Dove Cameron
• "Celebrity Skin" by Doja Cat, a cover of a Hole classic
• "Chocolate Cake" by Melissa Etheridge
• "DFMU" by Ella Mai
• "Flamin' Hottie" by Megan Thee Stallion, which samples "Push It" by Salt N Pepa
• "LOUD" by Sofia Carson

Anyone, at any time, please feel free to tell me your Very Specific Song Associations. Even if you stumbled upon this post in 2032.

The Pepa Potts Project

Did you ever wake up from a dream that felt like your brain put so much effort into it, dreaming it gave you almost the same feeling of accomplishment as writing something (or whatever your artistic endeavor of choice may be)? Frankly, I still haven't quite stopped thinking about this.

I wish I could. But I can't.

Then, the other day when I couldn't decide what to watch on Netflix, I "accidentally" watched The Avengers for at least the fifth or sixth time. That only made it worse. Now I can't stop thinking about Tony Stark and Pepper Potts as a couple. I know I'm a crazy multi-shipper, but on this viewing, I really shipped Pepperony hard.

Combined with my love of '90s music and hip hop by female artists, I was inspired to create The Pepa Potts Project. This combines screen captures of Gwyneth Paltrow as Pepper Pots with the lyrics of Salt N Pepa.

The lyrics are, of course, from "Shoop," which we discussed in the Go, Mutants! post.

These lyrics are snagged from the immortal "Let's Talk About Sex."

...And these are from "Gitty Up."

"Gitty Up" was never one of my favorite S+P songs, but I do remember the video, somewhat, because of its cowboy dancing.

These lyrics are from an older song, "Beauty and the Beat."

This is from "None of Your Business," a song we already heard in "A Musical Flashback to 1993." 

The last piece of the Pepa Potts Project - so far - takes its lyrics from "Do You Want Me?"

As I searched Tumblr for appropriate images to use for the project, I found out that some people ship Pepperony together with Loki. If you have this OT3, you're a Froz3nPizza shipper. (Whereas if you're not into threesomes and you exclude Pepper, you're a FrostIron shipper.)

I haven't read any Froz3nPizza fanfics, but I sincerely hope that in them, Pepper uses some serious contraception when she's with Loki. Otherwise she'll end up with some kind of monster child. One must always take special precautions with gods, since god-human pairings typically result in demigod offspring. Frankly, I think Pepper should only have Pepperony babies - assuming she trusts Tony enough to let him father a child with her.

On another note, if you want to read a great Avengers-themed blog with actually helpful posts about the business of writing young adult fiction, you must follow YAvengers. It is great.

Maybe I've got all the Avengers stuff out of my system now. Or maybe I rented Thor: The Dark World from the library and plan to watch it over the weekend, possibly reigniting a forest fire of Loki feels.

                                                 Amazon Music: Six Months of Disney+

                                                           This is an affiliate link.