No. 240 – I Still Do

Performer: The Cranberries

Songwriters: Dolores O’Riordan, Noel Hogan

Original Release: Everyone Else Is Doing It, So Why Can’t We?

Year: 1993

Definitive Version: None.

Timing is everything when it comes to a relationship, and so it is with music—at least, I’ve found that to be true. Take this song for instance.

Back in 1993, I loved The Sundays, and when I heard Linger on the radio or MTV (back then I listened to MTV as much as watched it), it sounded like the jangly folk rock of The Sundays. In fact, it was close enough that I bought Everyone Else …

But nothing jumped off the polycarbonate except for this song. I threw I Still Do onto a mix tape with a bunch of stuff by the Stone Temple Pilots and Porno for Pyros … and promptly forgot about it within months. I continued to listen to The Sundays, but I quickly parted company with The Cranberries. I suppose at some point, I even contemplated selling the CD with a bunch of other stuff I never listened to, but I didn’t.

Fast forward almost two decades. I got this crazy idea to write a musical autobiography—my top 1,000 songs counting down the 1,000 days to my 50th birthday. Cracked, right?

Anyway, in early 2011, I started to get all my old songs out, including tapes I hadn’t listened to in years, just to take a look and see what was on there that ought to be considered. I found the tape that included I Still Do and thought, oh, yeah, I kind of remember that this was a good song, but at that point, I had absolutely no recollection of how it sounded.

Still, I figured if I had liked it enough at one point to include it on a mix tape, it was worth consideration. I found the CD buried in a box of other to-be-tossed albums, popped it in my Mac and gave it a spin.

My reaction wasn’t as profound as was that of Born in the U.S.A. (good ol’ No. 318), but it was no less dramatic: What am I listening to and why haven’t I been listening to this for the past two decades? It really was like I had never heard the song before, and I loved it right away.

I instantly put I Still Do on my list, somewhere around the midpoint, and it seemed to move up after every listen. Now, it’s on my workout iPod and here it is at No. 240.

Timing is everything, but honestly, if the timing had been a little different, this song could be even higher on my list. If I had found this song after, say, my breakup with Debbie, I could see it in my top 100. Different times, different perspectives.