A few days later, I watched The Last Kiss with Zach Braff. There's a moment in the film during a wedding when it's clear that many of the almost-thirtysomething characters are about to torpedo their enviable lives, largely by abandoning their loved ones. Watching it, I felt their sadness, loneliness, regret, relief and lust, largely because Heap was singing "Hide and Seek" in the background.
The Last Kiss is a pretty average movie otherwise, but I admit I relate to Braff's character. I'm about the same age, worn down in the same ways, similarly flirtatious with women I've only known for two minutes even when my girlfriend is 50 feet away, easily distracted, simultaneously excited and overwhelmed by grown-up decisions about grown-up things like starting a family and owning a home. But, ultimately, I'm an adult with a good life and a happy home I couldn't bear losing.
Also like Braff's character, I'm not young or energetic enough to go to that many parties or rock shows, and I realize that there's probably nothing lamer than the college student you just had a one-night stand with making you a mix CD, even if that college student is as hot as Rachel Bilson. Music just doesn't matter as much when you're 29 as it did when you were 19.
But for me at least, it can still matter a lot when it's part of a good TV or film experience. Smith and The Last Kiss have done for Imogen Heap what Braff's Garden State did for The Shins and Frou Frou (not so coincidentally, Heap is part of Frou Frou). It's done what The O.C. did for Death Cab for Cutie, what Grey's Anatomy did for The Postal Service. They've turned an above-average but not exceptional piece of music into part of an indelible pop-culture moment.
The first five or six times I heard "A Lack of Color" by Death Cab for Cutie, it was just a throwaway song. But then I heard it on The O.C. and every time I've heard it since, I think about how sad it was when Anna left Seth. I guess what I'm saying is that I, like most thirtysomethings, don't discover new music like a kid anymore. I don't watch MTV or spend hours at record stores or listen to friends' recommendations about hot bands. Even when I spend hours on music blogs, I'm largely downloading bands I already like or searching for live tracks or covers.
The other day, though, I looked for the Imogen Heap song because I couldn't get it out of my head. The song was all over the cool-kid blogs. I found out that some group from UCLA called Awaken A Cappella recently covered it on indie-tastemaker radio station KCRW, and it became the station's top song of the day. And the band's website had exceeded its allotted bandwidth because of its popularity.
Then I went to my iTunes library and saw something rather peculiar. I had downloaded the original version of "Hide and Seek" last December. It was on popular music blog Said The Gramophone's top songs of 2005, and I must have grabbed it, listened to it, felt nothing, gotten distracted and moved on.