“Anthems for a Seventeen Year-Old Girl (Live at Lollapalooza 2006)” – Broken Social Scene
(Words/music: Broken Social Scene, original version available on You Forgot It in People, Arts & Crafts 2002)

Earlier today, the music blog Idolator linked to an Associated Press article that compared the way some people discover opera music to “love at first sight.” Idolator veered off slightly, focusing on the jealousy and mania of obsessive love, leaving the “first sight” notion largely untouched.  I don’t think the notion of loving music is up for debate and that many of the same qualities – overprotectiveness, obsession, etc. – say more about the person than about the band.  Still, even with my skeptic’s heart, I believe in “musical love at first sight” because it’s happened to me.

In 2003, I attended the CMJ Music Marathon, and the two specific shows I remember were seeing Ted Leo at CBGB’s and seeing Broken Social Scene at the Bowery Ballroom (coincidentally, in the same night).  This was around the time that You Forgot it in People started to make waves, and I went entirely on my friend Dan’s recommendation.  Aside from staring in wonder at the number of musicians crammed on the stage, my lasting impression of that night came sometime in the middle of the set when they performed this song.  They brought out Emily Haines from Metric (who in a black dress was a welcome refuge from the sea of scruffy Canadian men populating the stage) and from the moment the sand the first line of the song, I was transfixed.  Everything about this performance – the way Haines delivered her lines as an incantation, letting the band push her further and further into her trance.  Then, as the music started to peak, Haines started looping and distorting her voice, surrounding her own voice with these manipulated versions of her own and letting the electronic choir mix with the horns and the guitars.  Haines herself seemed under the spell, as she sang the last minute hunched over, bobbing up and down in time with the music. If I was impressed earlier, this was the moment I was hooked, the slow motion movie scene where the love interest tosses her hair back and smiles.  Not long after, I sought out You Forgot it in People and listened to it over and over.  Since then, I’ve put “Anthems” on countless mixes, usually with some version of the “love at first sight story” attached.

I’ve posted the Lollapalooza 2006 version because I wanted a live version that Emily Haines sang (and Kevin Drew’s introduction is priceless as well).  There isn’t as much vocal distortion at the end, mainly because Amy Milan was there to be the second voice, but I especially love how warm those guitars sound and how the mallets on the tom toms create this gentle, almost “popping” sound.  I don’t have a recording of the 2003 CMJ show, but I imagine that this version represents it fairly well – the interplay between the vocals and instruments, the gradual build over the entire song, and especially the way the high pitched looped vocal cuts in near the end of the song.  From everything I read about their set at Lollapalooza 2006, it sounds like a lot of other people fell in love with a few songs that night.

More on Broken Social Scene: Allmusic | Amazon MP3 | Emusic | Last.fm