Dashboard Confessional

Thinking of a band/ song that really impacted my life was difficult. My middle school days were a fairly tough time in my life. My mom got sick, my only sister had just moved away to college, and I was in that awkward stage in life when I really didn't know who I was. I started listening to new music and i fell in love with dashboard confessional. Instead of all the pop tweeny music that everyone else was jammin out to, i felt like i was cool for doing my own thing for once. Listening to dashboard opened me up to lots of other new music as well. Once I got to high school I then started getting into the local band scene. Even to this day I know every word to almost all the Swiss Army Romance CD.

My Very First Album - A Life-Altering Experience

CDs had become the new technological craze for a couple years by the time I had turned eight, and so of course, as with tamagachis, pogs, and gimp I had to jump on the bandwagon. "I'm Just a Girl" by No Doubt had been one of my favorite songs for some time, and so when I was perusing the CD section at Target for the first time, and spotted No Doubt's Tragic Kingdom album. I was obsessed with the catchy song, where No Doubt's front woman Gwen Stefani belts out lyrics that were the anthem for teenage girls everywhere at the peak of their adolescent angst. Though I had yet to enter my teen years, I grabbed the album immediately, and tugging on my mom's shirt begged her to buy it for me. "But, Sarah, you don't even have a CD player!" my mom reasoned with me. And yes, pathetic but true, my first CD was purchased before I even had any method to listen to it. However, once that new purple Sony Discman became my most prized posession, I must have listened to the album repeatedly for over a month. "Sunday Morning", "World Go Round", and "Spiderwebs" were among some of my favorites. No Doubt's Tragic Kingdom album made my love for music grow, transforming my tastes from the Lion King soundtrack to the more mature Chumbawumba's Tubthumper. To this day, that album remains in my car CD player, still one of my all-time favorites. Oh, and the No Doubt reunion tour, I'm there.