268. Song No. 4,025: “Got a Feeling,” Flickerstick
Welcoming Home the Astronauts, 2001

By the time I’m nearing the end of a letter (G ends at No. 4,164, for reference), there is just this yawning chasm of time between when I listened to a song/earmarked it for a writeup and then actually get around to posting about it. So please know that when I say this song sounds like summer, that feeling was born from listening to it during an early July, windows-down-volume-up commute and was in perfect harmony with both its beautifully aestival surroundings and my headspace at the time.

And this band and this album do sound like summer, but this song especially does (it also sounds like the vast possibility of the infinite, which I suppose is the same thing as an academic summer). I loved every second of every repeat play spent singing along and rocking out to it and remembering all the reasons why College Me loved this band so fucking much, no matter how many times my then-boyfriend ragged on what a terrible vocalist the singer is.

I know I saw this band live at some point in the early aughts, though when exactly and what venue and accompanied by who has been completely lost to time (though I feel like bestie’s ex-husband, who dated another friend all through college, was there complaining about or making fun of something, which doesn’t necessarily help narrow down a marijuana-masticated mind’s diminishing memories of possible whens and wheres). And I’ve been to roughly a million shows and so few have retained any standout setlist moments, but the feeling of being exactly where I belong while singing along to this song with an unknowable crowd in a darkened venue has somehow persisted as a snippet of concert-going moment worth preserving, warming this track with the glow of belonging and an early glimmer of realizing that music is more fun to share with others than hoard greedily and snobbishly all to myself.

I don’t care how many times I hear it a thousand different ways, that build-and-release interplay between choruses and verses the closer the bridges gets absolutely delights some primal part of me that just loves some silly little piece of music so much that it hurts, and the closing seconds of the song that burst into “I couldn’t live without the rush” is such a satisfying musical release and resolution that still gets me right in the heart 20 years later.