Music leaves such a lasting impression on me for so many reasons. The melody, the lyrics, and the way they can play off each other. Sometimes it’s just one or two solid lines that can hold me, and sometimes it’s a long guitar or piano solo that makes me feel every note in my soul. Sometimes, though, it’s just right time and right place.

I have two stories about two songs by the same artist. One that changed my entire view on music in general, and one that helped reinvigorate my love for music. Both for entirely different reasons.

My father listened to Country and Blues. He was a massive fan of the Outlaw country superstars like Willie, Haggard, Kristopherson, and Cash. But loved Motown and soul. I on the other hand, was purely into modern pop and rock. A huge fan of New Kids on the Block, Michael Jackson, and Paula Adbul, I couldn’t stand listening to the twangy stuff he liked.

For his part, he never forced me to listen to his music. In fact, anytime we were in the car together, he would put it on whatever station played the stuff he knew I would like. Ii never heard him complain so I don’t know if he actually like it, but I loved he never made me listen to his “crap”.

One day after picking me up from school, we made our way to a gas station to fil lthe tank on our car. The radio had been on commercials when he picked me up and neither neo f us had really thought about it. He left the radio on while getting gas and the station came back from it’s ads and started in on a song. I hadn’t been fully paying attention at first but after a few seconds my ears perked up and I started listening. The sound was new to me but had its hooks in me. When my dad got back in the car he quickly apologized and went to change the station and I told him to leave it because I liked the song. He let me know it was country music, and I thought was.. weird.. leave it.

The song was Rodeo by Garth Brooks.

Anyone who knows me knows how absolutely HUGE of a Garth fan I am. This is where it started.

Without that song and that memory, another Garth Brooks song wouldn’t have been able to pull me out of a depression I didn’t know I was fighting, and a love for music I had lost.

In the summer of 1995, my mom dragged me to Colorado Springs, CO to spend time with family she hadn’t seen in years, and that I had never met. Over a year had passed since my dad died, and I hadn’t made a lot of friends since we had moved back to Kansas City from California, outside a couple kids in my neighborhood.

I’d spend my nights watching TV or playing video games, or just shut in my room. My mom weas working a lot of hours and trying to find herself again and reconnect with old friends. I fell into a depression at 13 and every day just felt like the most mundane, absolute slog. I had no joy in anything, and my constant listenting of music had died and gone away.

While on the trip, I had laid down in the back seat of the car we were in and the radio was playing some local country station that my great aunt had on .i had been crying at one point because I didn’t want to be there and just wanted to be back home in the safety of my bedroom lost amongst the quietness that surrounded me.

In a moment of silence in the conversation, the words “new song” and “Garth Brooks” came across the radio and it felt like a smack in the face and I sat upright and moved between the two women talking in the front seat. I leaned forward to turn the music up and listened.

The song was She’s Every Woman by Garth Brooks

I wanted to hear it again immediately. But back in that day, that’s not how music worked. Oh the luxury kids have nowadays.

For the first time in longer than I could remember, since before my father had passed, I was excited about something. A new song from a singer I really liked, meant a new album.

I turned on every radio that was near me for the rest of the trip, and when we got back home to Kansas City, I started requesting it every night on the radio. As an adult I love that song for a million different reasons, but as a kid, it was a memory. It was a reminder of a connection I had with a portion of my past I had lost. I found myself watching MTV, CMT, and listening to the radio. I was sticking blank cassette tapes into the VCR to record music videos while I was at school and go back and watch them when I got home.

I begged for my mother to buy me the new album when it was released, and in November of that year, Garth Brooks released FRESH HORSES, and my love of music was back in full swing.

A song about how a woman was everything to a man, turned into a song about how a music was everything to me.