Daily Jam - Fade Into You

I am a shy teenager caught in an eternal slow dance in a school’s gymnasium, hushed, embarrassed, and awkward, my arms forever enfolding my unrequited love. I am an admirer pining away from a distance, but never standing to meet, gazing and longing forever. I am the loving and lonely soul who gives away my whole heart only to have it given back to me. I love what can never love me back.

I was in the ninth grade when the dreamy Mazzy Star released their second album So Tonight that I Might See, and I first heard the wonderful melancholy yearn of “Fade Into You,” the penultimate misfit slow dancer. The band’s ode to unrequited love pushes its strengths front and center with lead singer Hope Sandoval’s haunted and sorrowful vocals floating in the mix while the mournful slide guitar stabs us all in the pits of our hearts. Every lonely, outcast teenager had this song on a mixtape. It scored countless dark and solitary nights, accompanied long, handwritten letters that were never to be delivered, and soundtracked a thousand daydreamed scenarios. It served as the theme song of choice for any number of adolescent splits and breakups, a sublime stand-in for the pages and pages of bad poetry that teenage heartache inspires.

And it’s still transcendent almost 30 years later.

Listening to “Fade Into You” now, I can’t help but feel my 15-year old insecurities bubbling up to the surface for reevaluation. I guess it’s all still there. That awkward, inexperienced kid still has his place, his dark and cluttered bedroom, somewhere deep within my soul.

But that’s okay. It’s all good and well so long as we have Mazzy Star to act as our prescriptive medicine, our audio pain pill.

Listen below, our Daily Jam.