lights that flash in the evening/through a crack in the drapes

Last night i was asked about why i was so obsessed with The Replacements last year. I initially responded that my fascination stemmed from Westerberg's prowess as a songwriter and, perhaps the biggest mediocre-record critic-cliche about the Replacements ever, the uniquely earnest and bitterly honest voice in which Westerberg writes and sings, as true of "God Damn Job" and "Shiftless When Idle" as it is of "Bastards of Young," "Skyway," or "Can't Hardly Wait."

But there were other reasons. The most banal is that i love the guitar playing - Stinson, when sober and clean, was capable of wonderfully melodic lead work. I'm also a sucker for horn lines (see Crazy in Love, "Heart of The City," "Sexxx Laws," RJD2's "Ghostwriter," etc.) and "Can't Hardly Wait"'s little bursts, combined with Westerberg and Alex Chilton's guitar harmonies, approach the sublime.

But i think the major reason i latched onto Westerberg's work was because i was "graduat[ing] unskilled," with "dreams unfulfilled," because i needed "a god damn job," because i very much wanted someone to "hold my life" until I was "ready to use it," because i was wrestling with how to say "'i'm sorry' to an answering machine," because i'd shouted "fuck school," when school is replaced with a four-letter word beginning with "Y" innumerable times and because i've always loved songs about other songs ("i'm in love - what's that song? I'm in love with that song," Westerberg's tribute to Chilton.)

It feels extremely corny to say "his words spoke to me" or something like that, and there was never a perfect fit, and i find some of westerberg's stuff really problematic, and i love the stuff that i didn't relate to very much at all, and i was always extremely self conscious about equating myself to Paul Westerberg, and there's something deeply masculinist about it all. But there were moments when those six albums from Sorry Ma to Pleased To Meet Me felt like an eerie soundtrack to my life as i feared and sometimes hoped it would become.

Does that make any sense?