from Showbiz (1999)

Enter the second mentions of “Godiva” and “Red,” my two capital exes.

I first heard “Unintended” way back in the fall of 2000. I was 18 years old with a newfound confidence, a goatee, a new girlfriend, and a new major in school, having grown out the goatee after visiting Europe, that after switching from Finance to Film Studies, the move which more than any other has led to this little essay right here. Godiva and I, attending different schools, made good use of a revolutionary program called AOL Instant Messenger to save on phone bills but also to send songs back and forth. It was taste in music more than anything else that brought us together, I think. As Rob Gordon says in the film High Fidelity if not in the book itself, “What really matters is what you like, not what you are like. Books, records, films– these things matter. Call me shallow but it’s the fucking truth.” Opposites otherwise attracted but the music was all. And so it was when she sent me an MP3 of this song by this group called “Muse.” I’d never heard of them, their having only put out music about a year earlier. I never knew where she picked up these random songs by these random artists, but I’ll never forget what she wrote after the MP3 finished sending, that “his voice makes me cry.” And his voice got to me, too, with how I was feeling at the time, a new man but one feeling incomplete, with as much yearning as contentment. The song burrowed its way into my brain and my heart and never left. I’d swear the song found itself on a mix CD the girl sent me a few weeks later and would confirm that for you if I hadn’t destroyed it a couple of years later.

The song was kind of a one-off for me: I loved it, but was too busy paying a university to watch movies and getting into other, more famous bands for the first time in my life to follow Muse at all. This was made more difficult by the fact that some of Muse’s earlier albums weren’t released in the U.S. until years later, delaying their inevitable world dominance until at least 2006, which is when I got into them again. Pandora had arrived – the internet jukebox, not another precocious nickname for a former girlfriend. I scoured my mind for songs I enjoyed, single songs by artists I hadn’t heard from in a while. So I typed in “Unintended” and soon out played Muse’s new single, “Knights of Cydonia.” It took no time at all for me to fall in love again, this time with this new song, for different musical reasons. I got Black Holes and Revelations and enjoyed it all the way through, over and over, and pieced together the rest of their discography from there. They’d become my favorite band I’d never seen live, until August 6, 2007, at Madison Square Garden in New York. I’d just begun dating Red, our long friendship having blossomed into something more. Unintended, it would seem. I was delighted she went to the show with me to indulge my new passion. It’s still the second most enjoyable concert experience I ever had, my face having been melted on a number of occasions, most notably during the guitar solo for “Invincible” for those keeping track. The biggest surprise of the evening was during the encore, when Matt Bellamy lugged out the acoustic and played a song, as he announced, they’d never before played in the U.S. I’ll give you one guess.

1. Green Day, “Basket Case”
2. Melissa Etheridge, “I’m The Only One”
3. Weezer, “Buddy Holly”
4. The Offspring, “Come Out and Play”
5. Bush, “Machinehead”
6. Foo Fighters, “Monkey Wrench”
7. Muse, “Unintended”
8. Radiohead, “Everything In Its Right Place”
9. Stage, “Live Happy, Live With Anorexia”
10. Ludo, “Save Our City”
Dan’s Definitive Top Ten 2010: Introduction