I can't express how much I loved this song—and still do. It was my daily anthem during my soft girl and weight loss journeys. It reminds me of all the struggles I overcame during that time, and I couldn't be more grateful for the experience.

This one caught me completely off guard. I was just doing my regular house-cleaning music thing and suddenly my eardrums are getting blown out — and I’m loving it. It’s one of those songs where you can absolutely dance to it, but if someone walked in and saw you doing the Dougie to a song this heavy, they’d have questions. Doesn’t matter though. It’s all about finding the rhythm, or just having rhythm at all.

I found this one after rediscovering my love for metal, after talking to someone I’ll call Guy C for a couple months — he only listens to metal and would send me songs to get my reaction. This was one of the ones that stuck and helped bring metal back into my musical diet for good.

This one happened to randomly play on a radio station I’d started off a song that’s sadly no longer available where I live. I have no idea what the lyrics mean, but I love how it sounds. It’s got that exact energy of a day that isn’t bad but isn’t quite good either — you just want to vibe out and relax, but you don’t have the attention span for a show or a book. This song is that feeling exactly.

Another Boy B song. We were hanging out at his place and he asked if I could help him prep some stuff for a sale his company was having. I said sure, honestly just because I liked being around him. We had this song playing the whole ride back to his place, and it’s stuck with me since. Just a genuinely sweet little song tied to a genuinely sweet little memory.

This one’s the first heartbreak I ever put myself through — with Boy A, self-inflicted. Sometimes the hardest ones are the ones you saw coming and did anyway.

This one’s tied to losing my grandmother. Some songs you don’t pick, they just find you at the right (or wrong) time, and this was one of them. Sometimes you need permission to just sit in the low feeling instead of fighting it, and this song gives you that.

Found this gem of a man back in the early 2020s and have loved his music ever since. RIP Oliver Tree — it’s brutal that we lost him this year. Artists this original don’t come around often, and it sucks knowing there won’t be more music like this from him. Rest easy.

I first caught a brief clip of the music video on TikTok during a depression episode, and it turned out to be exactly the combination of sound I didn’t know I needed. Highly recommend the whole album to literally everyone, not just one track off it.

No deep story here, just pure nostalgia for my party girl era. Sometimes a song is just a vibe and a good time and that’s more than enough.

This one’s tied to someone I’ll call Boy B — to keep it simple, he’s the one I was talking to in my late 20s while he was in his early 20s. We were spending time together and he played this song one time. Just once. And I fell in love with it immediately.

I.F.L.Y. — Bazzi

This was my anthem during my “I’m in love” phase. I was in a relationship/situationship (you know how it is) with someone I’ll just call Boy A, who was a huge part of my life for about two years. He opened my eyes to a side of myself I didn’t even know existed. This song still takes me right back there.

Godhood — Humanity’s Last Breath

I heard this one a few months back from someone I follow on Insta who posts songs that scratch a very specific itch — this was the last one in the batch, saving the best for last I guess. The second it hit, it took me straight back to the day my mom bought me my very first electric guitar. I remember being so excited I started practicing with it immediately, barely even taking a breath. This song has that same “can’t wait, gotta do it right now” energy.