Geek Love: Finding the Perfect Wedding Song

John Lennon [2] once wrote a song called "(Just Like) Starting Over," [3] because he believed that is what falling in love felt like. But that "just like" always stops me. It must mean love is almost a fresh start but not quite. Getting takeout from the place down the block, listening to your favorite record, confessing about the time you saw your mom get way too drunk—people go through these motions with every new person they date, "starting over" again and again. And they feel the same—and not the same—each time. It's something like Nietzsche's "eternal return," minus that numbing, alienating sensation. More like a light-headed, déjà-vu.

I have been thinking about all of this lately because I am getting married this fall to someone who's just as crazy about music as I am, and I have to choose a song for my first dance with my future husband. (I hate the word "fiancé." So I go with "future husband," which sounds amusingly sci-fi. He's a husband ... from the future!) And even though I pretend to scroll through iTunes, I already have my heart set on the perfect song, Yo La Tengo's "The Last Days of Disco." [4] Every time I hear it, it reminds me of my future husband. There is just one problem. It used to remind me of someone else.

"The Last Days of Disco" may be the most romantic song ever written—if the idea of two kids slow dancing to disco hits doesn't make you queasy. Written nine years ago by a real-life married couple, guitarist Ira Kaplan and drummer Georgia Hubley (along with their bassist friend James McNew), it is a love song about the power of love songs. As a former music critic and longtime songwriter, Kaplan knows his way around the subject: Blanketed in atmospheric guitars and hushed, brushed drums, it is the ultimate indie-rock ballad, with a Boy Meets Girl story that unfolds shyly. Boy sees Girl at party. Girl asks Boy to dance. Boy hates dancing, but dances anyway, because he can't stop staring—and pretending he's not staring—at Girl. He laughs as she wobbles in her platform shoes. She laughs at his jokes about disco singers. And then something miraculous happens. They listen to the song they're dancing to. I mean, they really hear it for the first time. "The song said, ‘Let's be happy,' and I was happy," Kaplan sings. "It never made me happy before."

I have not heard a more eloquent explanation of how falling in love can change the way you listen to music. There is a song you've heard a million times before—in the supermarket, in the car, in the locker room at the gym—and it never made a big impression on you. And then one day you meet this new person, and suddenly, you are paying close attention to these lyrics, the ones that droned on in the background before. You are embarrassed to find yourself taking everything literally. The lyrics say, "Let's be happy," and just like that, you are happy. The lyrics say, "I am human and I need to be loved" and yes, it's so true! The lyrics say, "Let's get it on," and ... well, what the hell, why not?

But if you are really listening, there is a catch. After Kaplan's simple, giddy epiphany—"I was happy"—you realize he is speaking in the past tense. Then the next line switches to present tense, making the whole thing a memory: "And the song says ‘Don't be lonely' / It makes me lonely / I hear it and I'm lonely more and more." So this Boy Meets Girl story sounds a little older. Years have passed, and the couple is still together, but the song makes them feel sadder now.

I can't remember the first time I heard "The Last Days of Disco." But I remember when I thought I was hearing it for the last time. I had just broken up with my then-boyfriend. We'd been dating for what felt like forever—since college—and after graduation, he had moved across the country to live with me in my first real apartment. We listened to Yo La Tengo a lot in those days. They reminded us of senior year, which was, in a way, our own "last days of disco"—or at least a last hurrah before jobs and bills and other adult stuff made things more complicated.

Eventually, he moved out. And I held up OK. Really. Until one night I went to a party and the DJ played "The Last Days of Disco." One minute, Kaplan was singing, "The music was great for dancing," and I was dancing. The next minute, he was singing, "I'm lonely more and more," and I wasn't dancing anymore. When the song ended, I went outside, sat on the curb, and cried. Sure, I had lost my boyfriend, but it was more than that. I had also lost my favorite love song. The problem with the songs that once made you happy is they tend to remind you that you were happy once.

But if I have learned anything from Ira Kaplan's boy-meets-girl story, it is that love songs have no sense of timing. You can't choose which one is yours. You can try to cue up your favorite song to play at the precise second you decide you've fallen for someone, but in the end, something like "Funkytown" is going to play at some perfect moment, and then you're stuck with it. I don't know what song Ira Kaplan is singing about in "The Last Days of Disco," but I know it is his now, for better or worse, for good. So many years later, when I was taking a road trip with my future husband and the car stereo landed on Yo La Tengo, it seemed like a sign. I told him the story of the college boyfriend. And he told me about his first girlfriend, how she made him listen to Paul McCartney's "Maybe I'm Amazed"—the first love song he ever liked (and one I used to hate). And then we joked about making each other's exes die slow, excruciating deaths. Now every time we hear those songs, we think of that road trip, and we also think of our exes. It's like taping over a cassette with new memories, but still hearing the old ones mixed in beneath it.

My future husband hasn't always loved Yo La Tengo, but he's warming to "The Last Days of Disco." When you're dating someone, you fall in love with some of the songs they love. And every time you break up with someone, you bring a few of your new favorite songs—and your ex's old favorite songs—to the next person. By now, I've built up a pretty good mix-tape, and "The Last Days of Disco" should be the opening track—a much-loved, overplayed memory that's gotten a little warped over time. At this point, I'm surprised anyone else besides me wants to hear it. But maybe that's part of getting married: really listening to someone else's Greatest Hits, and working hard to make them as much yours as they are the other person's.

Which reminds me. There's another song I want to play at my wedding: Paul McCartney's "Maybe I'm Amazed." [5] OK, I know, but ever since the road trip, it sounds like a different song. Thinking about that, I wonder if John Lennon was wrong. Love isn't about starting over. It's about moving on.