Oh! Those five distinctive notes, I know immediately what song this is.

I turn it up.

“She’s a good girl, loves her mama”

I’m 8, and I’m sitting in the living room of my childhood home. My dad has the system at full volume, and he’s singing along while he tinkers with the fireplace. It might be my only memory of him and the fireplace that doesn’t involve him singing Jim Morrison; my dad was the ultimate dad and couldn’t resist singing “come on baby light my fire”, while lighting an actual fire.

“Loves Jesus and America, too” 

I’m 10, in the backseat of the car on a road trip to go camping with our family friends, and I’m just at that age where everything must relate to me – something can’t exist outside of my sphere. So I change the lyrics, and every time I sing it in my head I replace “America” with “Canada”. It requires finesse – four syllables to three – but I imagine doing it with ease when I sing my version to a full stadium when I grow up.

“All the vampires walkin' through the valley / Move west down Ventura Boulevard”

I’m 11, and we’re driving into Los Angeles. I’ve never been in a city so big and so smoggy before; my eyes burn and my lungs feel funny. This isn’t the one horse Canadian rural parish that I’m used to. My mom points out Reseda, Ventura Boulevard, Mulholland. I feel like I must be in a movie.

“I'm gonna free fall out into nothin' / Gonna leave this world for a while”

I’m 18, and I’m packing up to stay with my mom. In my old house. With her new husband. I’m going to be back in the town full of people who never liked me in high school, and I can’t decide if I feel good or terrible. I have a great job for the summer, my boyfriend is coming to live with us. Everything feels totally out of joint, amazing and terrible and uncertain. Did I download this on Limewire? I must have…

“And all the bad boys are standing in the shadows / And the good girls are home with broken hearts”

I’m 22, and I know I’m going to break up with him. It’s hit me like a ton of bricks, just a few weeks ago, and it’s all I can think about. I have to rework the lyrics, again, because he’s such a good guy. He is definitely going to have a broken heart. Driving down the freeway with the volume turned all the way up, I sing at top volume over my own sobbing tears.

“And I’m freeeeeeeeeeeee, free fallin’”

I’m 26, and I’ve broken up with him for the last time. I know it in my bones. I knew the second I didn’t answer his call that I would never speak to him again. I want to be sad, mad, hurt, but I’m just tired. I turn it up and say a quiet prayer of apology to my neighbours. But I don’t close the windows.