Special Episode: The songs that shaped our listeners’ lives (and Sophie’s, too)

This transcript was generated by AI and lightly edited by our team. Please excuse any typos or errors.

 

Sophie Bearman  00:01

Hello, and welcome to a special episode of Life in Seven Songs from The San Francisco Standard. I'm your host, Sophie Bearman. It's been a little over a year since we launched this show, and this milestone got our team thinking about what we've learned so far from making it. And it felt like it would be a good time to reflect, answer some questions we get a lot about the show, share more about me, and get to know you -- our listeners -- a little better. And we have some news to share as well. You might have noticed that we're popping up in your feed more regularly. We are now officially a weekly show, so you can find us here every Tuesday. And to go with that, we've got some new show art, which we think captures the spirit of the podcast. Be sure to check it out. 

 

Sophie Bearman  01:06

I have a confession. I have never considered myself a quote music person. I don't play an instrument. I'm not the friend you want on your trivia team when a mystery song plays at the bar -- I will not be able to tell you what it is. But one of the biggest things I've learned from making this show is none of that really matters. You don't need to be an expert in music to have it move you. It finds you in small moments, pivotal ones, and everything in between. So in that spirit, I wanted to share some of the songs that have stayed with me and the stories behind them. And to help me do that, I'm joined by our Senior Producer, Jasmyn Morris.

 

Jasmyn Morris  01:56

Hey Sophie.

 

Sophie Bearman  01:57

Hey.

 

Jasmyn Morris  01:58

Okay, so we obviously don't have time to hear all of your seven songs, but if you could choose just one that would help listeners you know get to know you a little better, what would you choose?

 

Sophie Bearman  02:09

I feel like choosing one is even harder than choosing seven. 

 

Jasmyn Morris  02:12

Definitely. 

 

Sophie Bearman  02:12

This is unfair. Take this as like, one of my seven, but the song I chose is When You Say Nothing At All by Ronan Keating, which I'm kind of embarrassed to admit I first became aware of from the film Notting Hill. I've probably watched that movie multiple times a year, so I know the song well. But it has these lyrics that have sort of taken on new meaning for me since I became a mother. I recently had a daughter. She is 10 months old now. I sing this to her a lot at night to soothe her before I put her to bed. And I remember seeing it and having this, like a-ha, light bulb moment where I realized the lyrics were just us in this like, special cocoon of a moment. The lyrics say, 'It's amazing how you can speak right to my heart. Without saying a word, you can light up the dark.' And there are so many nights where it'll be 3 or 4am in the morning and it's just me and my daughter in the nursery, in a rocking chair, and I am singing this to her and probably crying a little bit with joy or whatever emotions of just overwhelm -- at the sort of closeness that I have been lucky to feel in my life with my sister and my husband and my mom, my dad, and so many people. But nothing compares to holding my little baby and without her saying a word, knowing that I'm everything that she needs.

 

Jasmyn Morris  03:39

I can see you tearing up right now.

 

Sophie Bearman  03:40

Yep.

 

Jasmyn Morris  03:41

Let's take a listen.

 

Music  03:42

[When You Say Nothing At All by Ronan Keating plays]

 

Sophie Bearman  04:02

It's corny, but I don't even care. I love it.

 

Jasmyn Morris  04:06

It's also interesting how you say you're not a music person, and yet here you have this memory of connecting with your daughter, and in that moment you chose to sing.

 

Sophie Bearman  04:16

I actually sing all the time. I love to sing. I come from a pretty musical family, and I think there's some baggage there, because I always felt like the odd one out who couldn't keep a tune to save my life. 

 

Jasmyn Morris  04:31

Hilarious. All right, so let's talk about the origins of this show and how you came to host it.

 

Sophie Bearman  04:36

I took six months off from The San Francisco Standard to hike the Pacific Crest Trail in 2023, and I did that with my husband, and it was a trek. And while I was on the trail, I got a call from the Standard's CEO with this sort of seedling of an idea, which was to do some sort of podcast about the songs that people say have shaped their lives. And I was listening to a lot of music on trail, because by day, like, three, my husband and I got totally sick of each other. We ran out of things to say. Yeah. So it was podcasts and music and so that was on my mind of like, 'Oh yeah, our lives do have soundtracks.'

 

Jasmyn Morris  05:21

So I gotta know, while you're hiking the PCT, what were you listening to? Did you have any songs on repeat?

 

Sophie Bearman  05:28

Oh, yes, yes, I had many. But I think when I got the call, I was in the desert section, and I had been obsessed with Glass Animal's Heat Waves. And it's like, 'Late nights in the middle of June, heat wave has been faking me out.' It's -- well, it has a lot of mention to heat so it just fit. 

 

Music  05:48

[Heat Waves by Glass Animals Plays]

 

Jasmyn Morris  05:50

And that takes you right back to the desert? 

 

Sophie Bearman  06:02

Oh, yeah, right back. 

 

Jasmyn Morris  06:03

So when the CEO called you with this idea, what was your first reaction?

 

Sophie Bearman  06:10

I thought it made a lot of sense. At first, I ran through all the why it wouldn't work type things -- maybe I'm not the right person. But then it just dawned on me that it's not about taste, it's about the songs that move you. And it could be like a song that you don't even think is that good, but it's just become part of your soul and story, and it does connect to so many specific memories, and it can transport us through space and time and bring us right back to a certain age or feeling. It unlocks something.

 

Jasmyn Morris  06:44

Okay, so one question we get a lot is, why seven? How would you answer that?

 

Sophie Bearman  06:50

It's kind of a numerology thing. To me, it symbolizes completeness. So you have like, seven days of the week, seven notes in a major music scale, seven continents, seven wonders of the world... There's just this sense of like a life fully lived -- or when you've got through seven, you've told a story. That's what this show does. We start in childhood often, and we make our way through someone's life. And why not seven?

 

Jasmyn Morris  07:16

Lucky number seven, as they say. Okay, so as you said earlier, it's been about a year since we've been making this show. If you had to guess, who do you think our most popular artist is?

 

Sophie Bearman  07:26

Ooh. It has to be Tracy Chapman, I think. Because Fast Car is so popular.

 

Jasmyn Morris  07:32

Tracy's a close second. 

 

Sophie Bearman  07:34

Okay. Is it The Beatles? 

 

Jasmyn Morris  07:37

Yeah, of course. The Beatles have been chosen about seven times.

 

Sophie Bearman  07:41

Seven!

 

Jasmyn Morris  07:43

We've got seven again. Eleanor Rigby, Here Comes The Sun, Hey Jude, Lady Madonna, Strawberry Fields Forever, Let It Be, She's Leaving Home... It's The Beatles but all different songs, which also speaks to their genius. Yeah, but yes. Tracy Chapman is a close number two. She has been picked six times with Fast Car being -- 

 

Sophie Bearman  08:02

Yes, Fast Car is like by far the most parlor choice. Yeah. Exactly. 

 

Jasmyn Morris  08:06

All right. Well, Sophie Bearman, thanks so much for sharing your two songs with us.

 

Sophie Bearman  08:12

You're welcome. I didn't expect to cry so quickly.

 

Jasmyn Morris  08:15

I definitely expected you to cry quickly.

 

Sophie Bearman  08:17

Honestly, that's fair.

 

Jasmyn Morris  08:18

Partly because I know you, but also the show seems to have that impact on just about every guest, and I have receipts...

 

Sophie Bearman  08:28

I can see a lot of emotion.

 

Rita Wilson  08:30

They didn't tell me it was going to be like therapy.

 

Kara Swisher  08:34

I love this song. It makes me cry. 

 

David Archuleta  08:35

It would make me cry before I came out. It made me cry after I came out. It still makes me cry.

 

Amanda Knox  08:40

This song still gets me. Whoo.

 

Pepi Sonuga  08:44

Why am I crying? Oh, my God, this is so annoying. Sophie, maybe it's the music. It's the music.

 

Cord Jefferson  08:51

I don't normally cry in interviews. This was -- this was nice. It was cathartic.

 

Sophie Bearman  08:56

Now you're making me cry.

 

Rita Wilson  08:58

Look at us both crying.

 

Sophie Bearman  09:04

Coming up after the break, we'll hear from some of you about the music that's defined your lives so far. Stay with us.

 

Sophie Bearman  09:38

If you've listened to an episode recently, you probably know that we've been asking you to reach out to us and tell us what songs have shaped you -- and some of you really came through. So I want to share some of those calls, some of those songs, and those stories. Many of you chose songs that took you back in time to moments of transition or transformation -- like Matt, who called in with the song that made him realize the power of music.

 

Matt  10:07

When I think about the songs that shaped me, Bob Dylan's Tangled Up In Blue comes immediately to mind.

 

Music  10:14

[Tangled Up In Blue by Bob Dylan plays]

 

Matt  10:18

I remember vividly the first time I heard that song. I was probably 14, lying in bed, headphones on, and I remember being transported to some far away place.

 

Sophie Bearman  10:30

Listener Jack chose Roam by The B-52's.

 

Music  10:32

[Roam by The B-52's plays]

 

Jack  10:44

I heard it at a time in my life when things were really starting to look up in a big way, following a fairly miserable period in my early and mid 20s, and it makes me yearn to pack a suitcase and head out of the door to somewhere else.

 

Sophie Bearman  10:55

We also heard from Tim, who picked a song that captures that feeling of unbridled youth

 

Tim  11:01

When I hear Paranoid Android by Radiohead, I'm dropped right back to the summer of 1997. 

 

Music  11:01

[Paranoid Android by Radiohead plays]

 

Tim  11:06

I'd sometimes just ride my bike through the street lights, headphones on, OK Computer my soundtrack. A whole world of possibilities still lay before me.

 

Sophie Bearman  11:18

And for our next listener, Carole King's Beautiful was kind of life-changing.

 

Mutha Chucka  11:25

I was super gay from when I was little and super effeminate, and there were lots of mean words thrown at me when I was a kid throughout my whole life. So the signal was -- to me -- was, you know, hide yourself. Don't be who you are. You know, they were going to toughen me up with baseball and football and hockey, and I was terrible at all those things. Awful.

 

Sophie Bearman  11:44

But then one Christmas morning in 1973, he got the gift that kept on giving Carole King's album Tapestry.

 

Mutha Chucka  11:52

I can remember -- I got this black record player with the speakers on the side, and it folds it down, putting on the record. And it was the third song on the second side. And of course, you know, there's -- you come to Beautiful and that song is like fuel to not just feel good about yourself, but to feel okay about spreading joy in the world.

 

Music  12:19

[Beautiful by Carole King plays]

 

Mutha Chucka  12:24

Hearing those words, you know, for somebody who was struggling -- because I also didn't feel very beautiful. I was a little bit of a chubby kid. The first thing I would do when I got up was put that fucking song on to just start my day on the right foot.

 

Sophie Bearman  12:38

This listener, who goes by Mutha Chucka, is a beloved drag queen who has gone on to grace the pages of Vogue and Out Magazine. He's even been featured in a book called Legends of Drag.

 

Mutha Chucka  12:50

Despite what everybody told me, I made myself beautiful. I had a great drag career. I blame Carole King.

 

Sophie Bearman  12:58

While a lot of you chose songs marking a beginning of sorts, just as many of you shared songs tied to an ending. Listener Nick called in with a song connected to the loss of his father, and the moments just after his dad died.

 

Nick  13:13

I found myself pulling over on the side of the highway. On the radio, came Beautiful Day by U2. I started crying to a degree I've never really cried before. And for 10 years, I couldn't listen. It was a reminder of my last moments with my father. It hurt too much. After a long depression and alcohol abuse, I recently started listening to Beautiful Day again. This time, it has a whole different meaning to me. In the recovery world, we take things one day at a time, and when I hear Beautiful Day, I know that today's gonna be okay. I know that my dad is with me.

 

Music  13:51

[Beautiful Day by U2 plays]

 

Sophie Bearman  14:02

We also got a call from Angie, who chose the song As by Stevie Wonder.

 

Angie  14:08

That song has resonated with me for a very long time. I was raised in a close knit family. And today I attached the song to me and my husband and our daughter. We call ourselves 'we three.'

 

Sophie Bearman  14:24

This idea of 'we three' is really important to Angie, because it wasn't always three. Many years ago, she and her husband lost a child in a house fire.

 

Angie  14:37

She was two years old, and I must say that losing a child -- having a child go before you -- it's like a freak of nature. It's a complete perversion of life. And so there's a part of the song that takes me there, but doesn't leave me there.

 

Music  15:00

[As by Stevie Wonder plays]

 

Angie  15:07

We're all living today, but tomorrow we could become the past, and we don't know whether we will or not. So that's where it takes me. It takes me from our daughter who died in the fire to this place where -- you know, 'as today I know I'm living' so live.

 

Sophie Bearman  15:24

That kind of connection -- using music to honor those around us now -- is at the heart of this next story, too.

 

Eleanor  15:31

I tried out for the school talent show by learning the lyrics to Sound of Silence by Simon & Garfunkel. And I interpreted the song into American Sign Language.

 

Sophie Bearman  15:44

This is Eleanor, who grew up in the 1960s with two deaf parents.

 

Eleanor  15:49

I went on stage and I performed the song, and I was very pleased with how it turned out. Well, immediately when I got off the stage, the school principal informed me that I would not be allowed to perform that and that I should be very, very ashamed of myself.

 

Sophie Bearman  16:05

That response didn't make sense to me, so I called Eleanor to find out more.

 

Sophie Bearman  16:10

Why did they react that way?

 

Eleanor  16:11

She thought it was ugly. She thought I was gesturing. Because the thing is, ever since we were little, people would always make fun of us for signing. They would mock us. She reacted to me the same way that all those people making fun of us would react to us. You know, if it was something I had done, like when I had put gum on Mr. Jackson's chair? I got it, I should be ashamed of having done that. You know what? You're right. But signing? The Sound of Silence is all about the lack of connection between people.

 

Music  16:41

[The Sound of Silence by Simon & Garfunkel plays]

 

Eleanor  16:57

What a perfect song to sign to because it really spoke to the shame that's put on people who are different, the condescension. I mean, my very earliest memory was a neighbor said to me, 'What's it like to have a mommy who's deaf and dumb?' And I said, 'My mommy's not dumb. You are.'

 

Sophie Bearman  17:18

Did anyone say, 'Good job,' after the show?

 

Eleanor  17:21

No, no. I look back and think I was really trying hard to make good in a situation that was so painful. But for me, what it did is it formed this strong belief that nobody is greater than anybody else.

 

Sophie Bearman  17:38

Eleanor went on to become an interpreter, advocate and psychotherapist working with the deaf community. We also heard from Alex.

 

Alex  17:47

I chose Madonna's Vogue because it helped, like, awaken my queerness when I was still really closeted as a teenager. And it also is related to a triumphant figure skating story from my teenage years.

 

Sophie Bearman  18:02

Alex happens to be my coworker at The San Francisco Standard, but I never heard this story before.

 

Alex  18:09

So I grew up in Ohio, and my little sister, she got me into figure skating, and so we actually started pair skating together. And it was very much like The Cutting Edge -- the movie from the 90s. Very dramatic. Blood, sweat and tears. Fighting on the ice. I've dropped her many times. And so every Christmas there would be this sort of, like open recital where you got to actually, like, choreograph your own routine. And so for one year, my sister and I decided to pair skate to Madonna's Vogue. I was, like, doing the hand snaps, and she, like, came over from the side of the rink. We did the death spiral. It was so fun. And, like, I didn't know it at the time, really, but it was, like, my first public gay like, appearance, basically.

 

Music  18:56

[Vogue by Madonna plays]

 

Alex  19:07

I can picture myself doing that with my sister like, in my head, like a film.

 

Sophie Bearman  19:12

How old were you when you did that performance?

 

Alex  19:16

14, 15, 16, something like that.

 

Sophie Bearman  19:18

If you could go back and play vogue for that younger self on the ice, what would you want that version of you to hear?

 

Alex  19:26

I mean, at the time, like I knew deep down that I was gay, but because I grew up Catholic and everything, I told myself like I would get married to a woman. I was very sure that I was going to be able to fake that. Now, like looking back, it's like, first of all, don't fake it. Second of all, you had no chance. And that's totally fine. Like, be that gay little boy on the ice and enjoy it, because it's a lot of fun.

 

Sophie Bearman  19:57

Last but not least, we hear from Chris, who shared a memory connected to the song Every Breath You Take by The Police.

 

Chris  20:06

This song brings back memories of my dad, and he was a very busy man, and so I didn't get to spend too much time with him. But when he was free on Fridays, we would visit this pizza parlor, and we would play arcade games and eat pizza together, and there was a jukebox there. And every time my dad would choose Every Breath You Take. So this song will always be special to me. 

 

Music  20:26

[Every Breath You Take by The Police plays]

 

Chris  20:44

He was a busy entrepreneur. He really enjoyed what he did, but it comes at a cost, which is, you know, working really hard. That's why I wasn't able to see him much.

 

Sophie Bearman  20:56

Chris, given that your dad wasn't around all that much, why do you think -- of all the songs you could have picked -- you chose one to do with your dad?

 

Chris  21:04

Great question. I've heard you say this, on your show, that you know music can basically transport you to a certain time, and you remember where you were and how old you were and what you were going through. And so when that song comes on the radio or when I hear it, that's the memory that I have. It's that pizza parlor and being with my dad and my brother.

 

Sophie Bearman  21:28

Did you ever tell your dad how special those Fridays were to you?

 

Chris  21:31

Unfortunately, I never did. My dad passed away a few years ago. It would be awesome if you know I could tell him that before he passed away.

 

Sophie Bearman  21:42

A lot of time has passed since Chris was that little kid in the pizza parlor, and now he has children of his own.

 

Chris  21:49

I think many parents, once they have their children, there are things that they want to repeat what their parents did, and there are things that they want to do differently. And I know there was the tough situation for my dad. I think any entrepreneur, you gotta be all in and really committed. So I understand why he wasn't always as present for us, but being more present in my kid's life and knowing what they're going through on a day to day basis, knowing what clothes they wear, what friends they have, what activities they do, is important for me, so I can have conversations with them about those things.

 

Sophie Bearman  22:29

Before we ended our call, Chris shared another song that has made an impact on him.

 

Chris  22:34

I'll say this about your show: I think the intro and outro music is great.

 

Sophie Bearman  22:39

Yeah? It's catchy, right?

 

Chris  22:42

It feels kind of, I don't know, a little bit nostalgic, reminiscent, sappy, so that's why I like it.

 

Sophie Bearman  22:49

That might be the first time our music has made someone's list. That's all for this week. Thank you to everyone who submitted a song and a special thank you to the voices you heard in this show: Matt, Jack, Tim, Mutha Chucka, Nick, Angie, Eleanor, Alex and Chris. If you weren't featured this time, we may do this again in the future so our email is always open. You can send us your song and story anytime at lifeinsevensongs@sfstandard.com. We've got some really exciting guests coming up -- and again, we're a weekly show now, so make sure to subscribe so you don't miss anything in your feed. Life in Seven Songs is a production from The San Francisco Standard. Our senior producer is Jasmyn Morris. Our producers are Michelle Lanz -- she also mixes the show -- and Tessa Kramer. Our music consultant is Sarah Tembeckjian. Executive Producers are Griffin Gaffney, Jon Steinberg, and me. The masterminds behind our theme music are Kate Davis and Zubin Hensler. And our brand new show art is by Jess Hutchison. If you want to hear the songs you all submitted to us in a playlist, you can find them at sf.news/spotify and listen to them in full. I'm Sophie Bearman. Thank you for listening, and we'll see you next week.