I was listening to the iPod at work today, something I don’t do nearly often enough, and it was hitting me with long strings of favorites, as though it knew I was in the mood for the musical equivalent of comfort food. (I didn’t know I was in that mood, actually, since I woke up feeling fairly chipper, but the iPod always knows.) It started out with a dazzling three-in-a-row of Elvis Costello, the Who, and the Jam, but then it started getting into the heart-tugging stuff. A few songs later it played my single favorite Pogues song (“Thousands Are Sailing”—coincidentally, one of the rare Pogues songs that Shane McGowan didn’t write), followed shortly by my favorite Caitlin Cary song (“Fireworks”), and so on. And then it pulled out the big guns: two older Sam Phillips songs in a row. The first was “Go Down,” from “Cruel Inventions,” not my favorite song on that record, but a pretty great song anyway. And then “Strawberry Road.” I know I wrote about that one recently here, but I have to reiterate what an astonishing song it is. Possibly one of my favorite songs of all time. I’ve already quoted one of the killer lines, but for some reason I’d forgotten this one:

“Pain is sharper
When I suspect
That true love runs
Looking for us
Like a lion in our dreams”

And weirdly, all those songs pulling on my heartstrings started to alter my mood—I started feeling sad for no good reason. That almost never happens to me. When I’m already down, music either improves my mood or distracts me from it, and when I’m in a good mood, even the saddest songs are pleasurable. So this was a rare experience, and a little worrisome.

Fortunately, Scott Miller’s entirely silly “Good Morning, Midnight,” from the live acoustic record the name of which provides the tagline for this blog, came on, and Scott’s long, entertaining introduction to it cheered me back up again. And then I turned off the iPod for a while. I have enough trouble staying in a decent mood without outside stimuli—particularly outside stimuli that are supposed to make me feel better—contributing to the problem.