271. Song No. 4,088: “Great Romances of the 20th Century,” Taking Back Sunday
Tell All Your Friends, 2002

There is such a special place in my heart for these bands that put out deeply significant music right between the blessed end of my high school days and the even more glorious beginning of my higher-education era, bridging the gap between them with songs that transcended time and space to remain relevant with an honestly impressive dexterity. And Tell All Your Friends occupies that space in a way that only one other album does, since my first semester of college ended with my beloved five-disc stereo getting caught in the crossfire of my daft roommate’s open-window snowball fight, an absolutely enraging circumstance that, for whatever reason, left my emotional-support music-slinger incapable of playing anything other than this album and The Get Up Kids’ Four Minute Mile in its dying days.

This entire album has a certain feeling associated with it for being pretty much the only thing I listened to for the final weeks of my freshman year’s fall semester, the first months of an experience I hold dear as a beneficially formative four years that felt like the beginning of the person I actually wanted to be, despite being a little emotionally tumultuous (and a lot my own damn fault) and not exactly the most auspicious start to a fondly recalled overall experience.

“Great Romances of the 20th Century” was always the song that got the most plays from me, though, bridging the gap between emo and post-hardcore better than any other track did and also appealing to my emo sensibilities better than any other track could. From the unexpected string section to the vulnerably raw lyrics that translated so well to cryptic AIM away messages (“This won’t mean a thing come tomorrow / And that’s exactly how I’ll make it seem / ‘Cause I’m still not sleeping / Thinking I’ve crawled home from worse than this!”) to one of the most elegantly constructed and perfectly executed breakdowns that also seamlessly marries the best of two genres, this song still gets me (and gets to me) in ways that have me convinced that not only am I truly and eternally at the mercy of my inner 16-year-old emo kid but also that Younger Me at least knew a thing or two about falling in love with songs that still speak to me just as poignantly as they did when I was equal parts teenage angst and chronic inability to make good life choices.