My Top 1000 Songs #795: Ask Me How I Am

[I've been writing up my Top 1000 songs on a daily basis--you can see them all in descending order by hitting the All My Favorite Songs tag.]

I still have such fond memories of my original discovery of Top 40 AM radio in 1975--9 years old, a small, plastic, hand-held transistor radio, hours in my room after school just absorbing every single song that came on. Didn't know the artists, or if I'd ever hear the song again, or even have enough musical context to discern good songs from bad--just that initial thrill that every 3 minutes or so there'd be another song coming, by another artist I didn't know, and that alone was plenty of excitement for me.

Of course, time went on, I grew obsessive, and songs were no longer just songs; I had to know everything I could about the artist, and hear the whole album to understand the song in context, and I had very strong feelings about what I liked and what I didn't. The innocence was gone.

Still, every now and then I'll hear a song--not so much on the radio, as I pretty much never listen to the radio unless maybe when I'm in a rental car and there's no other option available--maybe at the gym, or as incidental music in a movie or tv show or commercial, and for a couple minutes I'll think, hey, I like this song, and then never really give it another thought.

"Ask Me How I Am," from Scottish alternative band Snow Patrol (off 2001's When It's All Over We Still Have To Clear Up), was one of those songs. Don't know when or where I first heard it. But at some point I read something about the band and checked out some of their records--which turned out to be pretty decent, if not something I play all that often--and "Ask Me How I Am" came up and I immediately knew I'd heard it before; couldn't place it at all, but had that feeling of, "oh, right, I really liked this one, should've tracked it down sooner."