Geek love: How two music nerds pick their perfect wedding song.

John Lennon once wrote a song called "(Just Like) Starting Over," 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." 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.

Tags: georgia hubley, ira kaplan, john lennon, maybe i'm amazed, paul mccartney, the last days of disco, wedding songs, yo la tengo

Melissa Maerz has written for the New York Times, Rolling Stone, Entertainment Weekly, Wired, and others.

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Geek Love: Finding the Perfect Wedding Song