207. Song No. 3,132: “Everything is Good for You,” Crowded House
Recurring Dream, 1996

… All paths lead
To a single conclusion
Everything is good for you
If it doesn’t kill you
Everything is good for you
One man’s ending
Is another man’s beginning…

There is summer-sounding music and there is music that sounds like an intensely specific seasonal episode, and Crowded House is such a wonderful example of both that all it takes is a lyrical snippet to rock me back to the utterly unremarkable but somehow eternally impressed-up fragment of another interminable childhood summer vacation that is indelibly linked to this band, this compilation record and this song.

My teenage infatuation with Neil Finn‘s solo career was always going to lead me to Crowded House; my combination of impatience and dubious probability of picking the “right” place to start getting to know a band when fate didn’t make that introduction for me was always going to yield a deliberately orchestrated first meeting through a best-of CD. Which actually was a pretty solid overview approach that gave me a well-curated idea of how Crowded House’s catalog unfolded over time.

For liking the general ’80s vibe a whole lot less as a teenager than I do now (which still isn’t much—Rate Your Music has a helpful visualization of just how underrepresented that decade still is in my musical library), for any predominately decade-of-my-birth-occurring band to make music that I actively loved and mined for cryptic LiveJournal post titles was an accomplishment. And Recurring Dream had a lot of stuff that I unabashedly loved.

(I had a mid-draft note-to-self to mention some of those songs that struck a particular chord with my insufferably fussy-about-music teenage self, but it’s a deadline day and my brain is shredded, and also those songs deserve their own stories, so please enjoy some convenient justifications for lazy writing instead.)

Hearing this album now is such a tangible wormhole directly to my detritus-/protective talisman-strewn backseat of a modified camper van as it rumbles along some northern Maine tourist town’s last stretch of main road signaling imminent touchdown in another one of Vacationland’s woody enclaves and aesthetically tamed outcroppings of rustic civilization. I can’t even begin to speculate how many of my summer vacations were spread across New England campgrounds and WASPily evolving RVs; I know exactly how many of them felt like forever-taking mixtures of trapped boredom, reluctance, travel itineraries so inflexible they seemed to exist in direct opposition to the whole point of vacation’s restorative escape, and stunning natural vistas I wished I was experiencing with people whose company I actually liked.

Which is why so much of those endless, isolating summers were accompanied by a soundtrack that was wholly, painstakingly mine; that freedom being so novel that it cast every note in some hazy amber of warm recollection.

Everything is Good for You was a rarity on Recurring Dream, one of a small handful of unreleased songs included on the compilation. And maybe having its roots in the ’90s is what endeared it to me, but I also think it being one of the most perfect last tracks stuffs the ballot box in its favor pretty nicely, too. It’s such an apt coda to a time-traveling highlight reel, somehow simultaneously cathartic and freeing and declarative and empowering and all wrapped up in summer breezes and zen mantras like the aforequoted “Everything is good for you if it doesn’t kill you” and “All paths lead to a single conclusion” and “If you come undone, it might just set you free.”

Most of all, and most immediately relevant, though, is how a fairly newish Thursday office tradition is playing the local independent station all day as it rolls through the week’s themed throwback playlist, one of which recently dropped “Don’t Dream It’s Over” in the middle of my workday in an apparent (and successful) attempt to lodge this band in my brain until I finally stayed awhile and listened.

And so, after playing “Everything is Good for You” a couple-three days against the pre-dawn glowing screen of an ancient desktop that’s basically a glorified music repository two “We’re no longer supporting updates to” notifications away from being completely bricked, I took my MIL’s even more ancient boat of a Grand Marquis/my My Car’s in The Shop car for a commuting spin accompanied by Recurring Dream (huzzah for iPod tape-deck converters providing both the full breadth of my music library and some bonus geriatric flourishes), filling out the last half of my homeward journey with this song playing over and over again in the summer wind it’s always paired best with.